- First thing you must ensure you do is correctly set up your monitors
- The speakers have been tested in thousands of ways and the manufacturer has provided you with the optimum set up for that particular monitor, if you align them correctly to start with many problems will never develope to start with.
- Another thing that gets over looked if the optimum or suggested operating level (volume in dB) some speakers are designed to work at specific volumes, if you drop bellow this level the sound will be coloured or masked by natural accoustic effects,
- you want to stay away from corners, corners+bass=problems.
- Correct amp power. If your monitors are unpowered (no amp built in) ensure that the amp output (power *watts) matches the monitors power ...in other words if your amp goes to 150watts your combined pair of monitors should be 150watts (or 75watts each). If your amp exceeds your monitors capacity and you push them past their operating capacity you are going to overdrive them and this will damage the speakers ability to reproduce sound accuratly ...and thats a problem.
If are in the position where the amp exceeds the monitors capacity you should place a limited between your monitors and amp, this will protect your speakers.
If however your monitors are 50watt each (100watt combined) and your amp is 75watt there is no problem, your monitors will just be limited to 75watt maximum volume (37 watt to the left, 37watt to the right.
- Second thing on the list is absorsion.
- its a good idea placing soft items around the walls and roof to diffuse or minimise standing waves (or black spots) appearing.
- absorbtion blocks are mistakenly placed in (for lack of a better word) mirror image positions from each other, but sporadic positioning is best as it helps the diffusion of the standing waves,
- you may need to place foam behind & directly in front of your monitors (on the wall behind your head), if your on a budget pillows towels and duvets will do. You may want to invest in a pad for the monitor to sit on.
- things to bear in mind = the denser the material the more bass it will absort, but if its too dense its gonna reflect (so wood, metal and glass are out of the question), some people carpet their roof or one of their walls. Denser(as in foam duvet) materials also work better when dealing with bass traps (the nastyness that happens when bass hits the corners I mentioned earlier).
- Third thing is find the sweet spot:
- The sweetspot is the perfect position to sit stand in in the room, it is located directly infront of and between the monitors. If your unsure of where it is check your manual, but its generally about an arms lengh(arm and a bit) distance from the monitor in a small space however as the room increases in size you will find it moves towards the center of the room, with a little amplification thrown in (to compensate for the room size ^_^)
- And last Signal flow:
- at the start of a session/mix zero your desk/mixer and ensure that the levels are correct (with regards to bus channels and monitor/output levels). It wont in anyway affect what you hear unless your right in the red to start with, but if your mulittrack(mix out) channel is lower than your monitor level (depending on what hardware you use) you can end up recording quieter than you hear/think ..and this can result in noise being introduced into the next stage of the mix when the lower (mix out) recording is amplified to compensate.- If you are going to use EQ (inserted between mixer and monitor) make sure you remember that you may not be hearing what is being recorded. and if possible take notes of the EQ configuration/settings.
If your wondering what standing waves are:
Standing waves are like voids of dead air that cause strage things to happen, giving you the impression stff if there when it is not or that there is too much bass when the bass is perfectly fine. - this results in use incorrectly mixing or mastering our tracks.
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