John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I've been out of recording for a while, and it's time to start the process of getting back in, specifically mastering, which I did a decent amout of before I sold off everything.

I've got a pair of NHT Super One's, with crossovers modified by a tweaky engineer friend (pretty succesfully, I might add, I can do just about the same quality of work I could with my Quested 3208's, albeit with a little more effort). I also have a HSU Research VTF-3 sub that seems adequate at this point.

I'd like to build the next set of monitors, either from a kit or not, and I wanted to see if anyone (especially barefoot) had any ideas on what might work the best for my personal preferences.

The room is ~ 15x23', with a fairly complicated ceiling that probably averages about 9 1/2'. So, something like 3300 square feet.

I have tended in the past to prefer;
- Soft dome tweeters or ribbons. Never heard a metal dome tweeter set of speakers that I've cared for.
- Sealed cabinets, a'la Dunlavy, if I'm going to go for a full range three way.
- flat as possible, obviously, and I seem to be sensitive to rises or bumps in the higher octaves- a touch dark is better for me than a touch bright.

Speakers I have really liked the sound of in the past were, first and foremost, Dunlavys. My Questeds were a very close second, and I absolutely loved the soundstage on the Genelec S30's, and would have bought them if they were a touch flatter sounding to me. Little bit lumpy in the mids to my recollection. I also like my little NHT's. Never liked any of the other Genelecs. The ADAM's I've heard sound amazing, but a little hazy or imprecise to me. Seems like they'd be easy to get wrapped up in the sound of and miss some of the details.

I don't really have much of a preference as to whether I do a sub/satellite thing, or a full range three way, but I'd like to avoid trying to get into the 45-50Hz range with a two way speaker, as I have not personally heard one that did it well. If I can do a very good set of two ways and the HSU Research sub sounds good up into the 60-80 Hz range, then great.

I want to start on the decision making now, with an eye towards building this spring/summer, so at this point I'm open to ideas. I'd like to keep under a grand or so plus amps, less is even better. Active or passive is fine, whichever one seems to work the best.

Thanks for any thoughts/opinions!

Hello-

I built my main monitors and I am quite happy with them (although I am now addicted to the pursuit of speaker perfection so I will rebuild soon). A couple of questions-

Active or passive?

Clients around or just you- EG big sweet spot or is that not necessary?

My thoughts-

I think digital active is awesome- but it is a can of worms too. It has taken me a year to finally get my XO as good as possible (actully I am still trying to imporve on it), but then again with passive you might never get near as close. + you can time allign all your drivers on the same baffle and do it with different slopes if you want.

My advice would be to stay away from ribbons in general- their strange dispersion pattern will not evenly excite your room, especially if it is more live. This is one mistake I made and one reson i want to rebuild.

Also a 3-way system always has one big obsticale as i see it. If you want really great bass resoloution I feel that you need a high xmax sub driver (like my speakers or barefoots), but I would not take any of them up past 100hz. Then you will find that most any tweeter (no matter what the spec sheet says) will sound best XO's at least 2.5k or even higher (just listen to sine waves and you will typically hear motor noises etc from tweets when you push them lower). This leaves one mid woofer to cover whats left. I feel that I have yet to encounter a mid woofer that has truly exceptional punch and speed in the 80-160hz octive and that awesome upper midrange.

I currently have audax 8" aerogels wich are fantasic in the top part of their range, but the low loss surround tends to rattle a bit at med spls and up. The scan speak revelator or the ushers on the other hand have a nice kick and a decent midrange, but not awesome at both. Other drivers presumably have fantastic punch, but that probably means more excursion wich means more IMD wich means not the best upper mids.

My current line of thinking is that 4 way is ideal- the next system I build will probably be-

Hequiphon OWI
Either a great cone mid 5" or so or an ATC sm75-150s
Probably accuton 7 or 8" mid bass
and the TC2+ 12" sub drivers.

As for the no crossover in the critical voice region i say blah- if it is phase coherent and makes a clean sine and has the attributes you want in that range then you can make it work with a digital XO. BTW human voices easily put out 70hz-15khz depending on the voice somtimes more on either end- Only those full ranges (with their whole bag of dispersion problems) will cover all of that. Plus for voice 2k is far more critical then 500hz IMHO-

Anyway I recomend going for it if your woodworking is up to par and you don't need to use them professionally til next year or so-

Good Luck-

RC