My new Event Precision 8s rock!

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:19 pm

Follow up... on the Event Precision 8 monitors...

I'M VERY, VERY HAPPY!!!

I opened up a few project and re-visited my mixes. These are pretty much songwriter "drafts" so I'm using stuff that isn't always easy to have sit in a mix well-- like the Pod 1.0 for example. Start layering marshall-emulation Pod tracks and you'll soon see what I mean. I'm using DFHS for drums and Mach Five for bass... I picked up the M-Audio Electric Bass DVD used recently for some bass sounds.

OKAY SO HERE'S THE DEAL... I'm ecstatic. After years of scraping by and getting budget monitors (even my NS10Ms were only $250 or so for the pair when I bought them), it's apparent to me that I've finally seen the light and bought my first pair of monitors that cost me over $1000. (1200 roughly to be exact-- although I realize that these are probably still considered budget monitors in some parts.) Well damn... you DO get what you pay for! I pulled up old projects and did some tweaks with the benefit of these Events and for the first time I felt like I could just "let go" and trust them. I didn't have to think about guessing at what it would eventually sound like on "the outside" and trying to mix around the monitor's quirks.

My car stereo test left me giddy. I made a mix of a song I'm working on... bounced to MP3 using Bounce to Disk... dumped it to my iPod... then listened in my car (I have a cassette-adapter thing... yeah it's an old car... but it's PAID FOR!). I was floored... I had never gotten such a good mix firstt time out of the box. I could never TRUST my 20/20p's or for that matter the NS10M's. But these things... man, oh, man... it was awesome hearing things in near perfect balance. As for NS10M's by the way, I also sort of hate how they sound and only pull them up now because they're good for using occasionally to check certain things... but I know I could mix on these Events even if they were the ONLY monitors in my studio.

I see why EM gave these things a 10 rating and could list only "Pros" and no "Cons." I'm a believer!!

logo80 · Post by **logo80** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:51 am

I do belive you

I bought EVENT ALP5 a few month ago and I'm still astonished when mixing with them... precision 8 are even better... so I can understand how happy are you!
regards, Lorenzo

jon · Post by **jon** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:32 pm

Nice James! That is the only area of my studio I have been truly neglecting and probably the most important. You can see by my profile I am too embarrassed to list my passive monitors. Thanks for the review....
-jon

sdfalk · Post by **sdfalk** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:39 pm

At some point (when I'm a flush with cash again)
monitors are on my to do list.
Thanks very much for the review James.

draudio2u · Post by **draudio2u** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:28 pm

I don't care for them. Sound a bit plastic up top and hollow. Too artificial for me. Then again, I am a speaker snob and like the sound of B&W 705 for a comparison in price and size. But if you like them, that is all that matters. Cheers.

Tonio · Post by **Tonio** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:53 pm

Man, James you're pushing me over the edge LOL

I gotta go check them out.

How far are you sitting form them? 3 feet? I hear they are more of small mid range setting. Any comments there? As in 4 ot 5' away gives them room to breath (and your ears).

T

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 7:17 pm

draudio2u wrote:I don't care for them. Sound a bit plastic up top and hollow. Too artificial for me. Then again, I am a speaker snob and like the sound of B&W 705 for a comparison in price and size. But if you like them, that is all that matters. Cheers.

I hear you. I don't know about those other monitors you mentioned. I just know that these are working for me. You can't be a snob though if you say that these are in the same price range. I thought speaker snob meant you had to spend at least $3000 for a pair. If I had more of a budget, I'd probably want these ADAMs I saw at last NAMM show, but I think they were like 3 or 4k EACH.

Resonant Alien · Post by **Resonant Alien** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 7:15 pm

James,

ME TOO! I bought mine back in Jan, and I am absolutely 1000% pleased! I was mixing on Alesis Monitor Ones before, so this was a HUGE, HUGE leap for me. I thought about sticking my foot in the $500 range, but finally decided to just go for the real deal, and I don't regret it. These mons are worth every penny!

My only complaint is that now I can here all the mistakes in my old mixes that I did on the Alesis....

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 7:57 pm

Resonant Alien wrote:James,

ME TOO! I bought mine back in Jan, and I am absolutely 1000% pleased! I was mixing on Alesis Monitor Ones before, so this was a HUGE, HUGE leap for me. I thought about sticking my foot in the $500 range, but finally decided to just go for the real deal, and I don't regret it. These mons are worth every penny!

My only complaint is that now I can here all the mistakes in my old mixes that I did on the Alesis....

You know... I dislike any kind of snobbery and that includes gear snobbery. Obviously there is a place for inexpensive gear, but I had a real awakening recently. I started to notice that the people whose work I respected as far as recording etc. all had their own "boneyards" chock full of budget reverbs and mic pres and all that sort of thing. And I realize I'm building up one too. This has come home to me with my latest CD project in that I had to face the fact that my gear was not up to snuff to even TRACK guitars.

I've been recording up at Jim Watson's place and he's got some great gear and I really wanted to take some of the tracking load off of him and also I feel more comfortable in my own studio. Jim was sort of hesitant to the point of offering to loan me a pre. I could tell that he didn't want to compromise the recording with me tracking stuff with my Mackie 8-Bus pre's. He was right. So I vowed to start buying quality stuff so that even if I could not do *everything* in my studio, at least I could track guitars with the best of 'em.

Step 1 was just hearing better... and I'm happy with the Precision 8s. That's a home run in my book. I'm happy with these monitors and feel good about them. As an extra bonus they do not seem fatiguing at all and I feel I can work with them longer.

Step 2 I made today by ordering a MOTU HD192 expander to replace my 1224. I may at some point even try to up the improvement with the Black Lion mod, but Jim had hesitancy about using my tracks with the 1224 A>D and I trust him. He uses the HD192 and I trust it's an improvement in the A>D. Not the ultimate, but pretty damned good.

Step 3 is the next issue I'm grappling with and that's choice of mic pre-amp. Jim tracked my guitars with a Millennia Media HV-3C and they sounded great, so I'm tempted to go with this unit. I think Jim's of the school that says "Get it IN clean... grunge it up later if you need to." I am holding off a little because Millennia is going to have a built in A>D option available soon with POW-r dither. In fact, I had been debating whether I should hold out to get that and pass on the HD192 and just bring in output of the HV-3C into my system using AES/EBU input on my 1224? In the end, I'm gonna go ahead and get the HD192.

Also... I'm going to make the move to mixerless and sell my Mackie 32-8 or get a case and press it into service as a live board eventually. I think with some quality pre's and DI's and decent plugs (UAD1 Ultra Pak) I'm gonna do my mixing in the box. I've heard the arguments for analog summing, etc. I don't know. I've heard two sides of this... most recently that an article was going to be published soon that showed in double-blind tests it was inconclusive that anyone could tell the difference. I know that my In-The-Box DP mixes sound pretty darn good, and the ability to come back to them and make one tiny change without affecting anything else and just bouncing to disk is such a major, major benefit.

Any way... I've rambled again. Bottom line is that I'm turning my studio into a tracking station first. Serious mixing is on hold. I'll do one-offs and my own demos, but I'm going to throw the dough into one area so I can buy better stuff, rather than spread my investment across the whole studio.[/i]

Resonant Alien · Post by **Resonant Alien** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 3:10 am

James,

I hear you. Gear snobbery can be a drag and I certainly didn't mean to sound like I was trashing the lower priced mons like Alesis - those bad boys served me well for 8 years, and they are great mons in their own right - I did some pretty decent stuff on them - in fact I kept them so I can have a second set of mons for A/Bing - it was just time to experience something different, and in this case, it made a big difference for me. This isn't always the case, as many people have pointed out on this board - expensive gear doesn't always make better recordings....

On the preamp issue, have you considered the Focusrite ISA 220 - channel strip versus straight pre, but I love mine? I went through this decision process about 8 months ago and I considered just about everything - ISA 220, Avalon 737, Manley, UA LA610, Vintech Neve emulations, Langevin. I test drove the ISA and the UA, but couldn't get my hands on the other ones. I really like the tone and color of the UA, but in the end I chose the Focusrite because it was warm but has less color than the UA - although I liked the coloration and sound of the UA, I thought since I was only going to be able to get one pre, that I should buy something that could service more needs, and I thought the Focusrite was a good compromise - works great on direct guitar and bass as well as vocals, and mic'd acoustic guitar sounds really sweet through it.

Rick

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 4:33 am

Resonant Alien wrote:James,

I hear you. Gear snobbery can be a drag and I certainly didn't mean to sound like I was trashing the lower priced mons like Alesis - those bad boys served me well for 8 years...

Oh no... wasn't trying to say that's what you were doing. I said there's a place for inexpensive gear... be it recording equipment or guitars for example. Say you're learning guitar... you go out and get yourself a Fender Squire or something and it does the job. As you progress and gain some knowledge you begin to understand the benefits of a more expensive instrument. So it is with recording gear. When I started trying to record at home, if you showed me an Avalon U5 and said it's over $500, I'd have said "that's ridiculous." Today, I bought one. It took me this long to understand the *reason* for it. (I'm a self-admitted notoriously slow learner!) Likewise, my Event 20/20p's are crap next to my ASP8s... total junk. Of course I'll sell them to someone who is just beginning their journey, and they'll be pleased. They'll think I was *nuts* to blow 1200 on "some speakers."

On the preamp issue, have you considered the Focusrite ISA 220 - channel strip versus straight pre, but I love mine? I went through this decision process about 8 months ago and I considered just about everything - ISA 220, Avalon 737, Manley, UA LA610, Vintech Neve emulations, Langevin. I test drove the ISA and the UA, but couldn't get my hands on the other ones. I really like the tone and color of the UA, but in the end I chose the Focusrite because it was warm but has less color than the UA - although I liked the coloration and sound of the UA, I thought since I was only going to be able to get one pre, that I should buy something that could service more needs, and I thought the Focusrite was a good compromise - works great on direct guitar and bass as well as vocals, and mic'd acoustic guitar sounds really sweet through it.

I spoke to my friend (and now mentor I guess in this area) and he really sold me on the Millennia HV-3C. I'm ordering it tomorrow. He has racks of all sorts of expensive pres and he told me he wishes he had just bought more of these. He tells me it will work great for vocals and guitar. I trust his opinion on this, so I'm going that way for starters. The millennia is a very non-coloration pre from what I understand, so that maybe the best way to go for my first professional level outboard preamp.

Thanks so much for the suggestions though!

Resonant Alien · Post by **Resonant Alien** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 6:46 am

Hi James,

You'll have to post and let us all know how you like the pre.

I'm trying to decide now between the Black Lion modification on my 828mkII or going with an RME Fireface. Any suggestions?

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 9:51 am

Resonant Alien wrote:Hi James,

You'll have to post and let us all know how you like the pre.

Will do!

I'm trying to decide now between the Black Lion modification on my 828mkII or going with an RME Fireface. Any suggestions?

That I don't know having never the Black Lion mods myself. I might wait to hear hwo they turn out from someone who has had them done. Myself... I'm usually inclined to go with an interface made by the same company who makes the software as this makes me feel like the drivers should work better and the interface will be better supported, but now that this is all dealt with through Core Audio maybe that's not a big deal anymore?

BradLyons · Post by **BradLyons** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:05 pm

The ASP8's are good monitors for the money! I owned a pair of them but about a year ago I upgraded to the ADAM Audio P33A's and wow! I'm about to add (3) P11A's for 5.1 surround. Good monitors are important to have for any level recording system. While the ASP's are far from great, they are certainly far from bad. For the money, however, they offer a ton of power, good bottom-end, decent clarity and accuracy, and a lot of power. Oh yeah, they have a lot of power!

Good investment, nice for rock where you want some thumping bass.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:12 pm

BradLyons wrote:The ASP8's are good monitors for the money! I owned a pair of them but about a year ago I upgraded to the ADAM Audio P33A's and wow! I'm about to add (3) P11A's for 5.1 surround. Good monitors are important to have for any level recording system. While the ASP's are far from great, they are certainly far from bad. For the money, however, they offer a ton of power, good bottom-end, decent clarity and accuracy, and a lot of power. Oh yeah, they have a lot of power!

Good investment, nice for rock where you want some thumping bass.

Wow... have they been out a YEAR already? Time sure flies. Yeah, well I can imagine the ADAMs are pretty kick ass. I think the ribbon tweeter is really the wave of the future. That said, I don't think that Events are THAT far from great at all. I think they're pretty damn good. I have friends that mix film scores and televison shows for a living on 20/20bas. Granted, I don't make a living by selling this stuff. Truthfully, Brad... on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being "bad" and 10 being "great"... just what number would you assign the ASP8s? I guess 5, being equally far from great and far from bad?

I think "far from great" is a bit harsh... considering all the reviews I have found online that rate these as exceptional.

MOTUnation.com

My new Event Precision 8s rock!

My new Event Precision 8s rock!

Sorry,

Re: Sorry,