Choice of new monitors

[Matcher]

I'm finally on the brink of upgrading my monitors and have narrowed my short list to Dynaudio BM6a mk2, JBL SLR4326, M-audio DSM1. The last to drop from the list were the cheaper Yamaha HS80M, or a 2.1 with the HS50Ms, and M-audio EX66. If by a chance you've heard some of these, or better yet own or have owned a pair or more, feel free to comment on them. I've spent, again, hours after hours reading reviews and comparisons, and what it all seems to come down to, is which monitors you like enough to learn to mix with them really well. All manufacturers claim their model to be the most neutral sounding and blabla, but still each brand has a different signature sound that has to please the engineer in a way that inpires him to deliver an outstanding mix. Personal preference has to be one of the top priority when choosing monitors. So, it would also be interesting to hear what monitors people use here, and why.

[XYZ]

Can you go to a music store with a current mix and listen to them?

I find that, for me, a huge portion of the reviews and comments come from someone that owns that product, and they are more often rationalizing their own purchase than providing specific or even real information.

Also, I'm becoming a fan of room correction, yet am very negative on speakers that have room correction in them. My reason for this is as follows.

When you have DSP in your speakers, you are either running D/A through your audio interface, then A/D in the speaker, then D/A again before the power amp. All these clocks are not synchronized, or not synchronized well, so you are probably adding jitter to jitter, degrading depth and image.

I'll take a slight breather and tell you I am NOT one of these people that will say something like "Oh, by this $3000 pre-amp or that $400 patch cord (etc.); it makes a HUGE difference, etc. etc.," I guess I'm one of those people that has terrible ears, because, despite the fact that I do have some very nice pre-amps, I'd say their effect is subtle at best. I also think that a $10 ADAT light pipe cable sounds identical to a $500 one, as long as the clocks are synchronized.

So, if these guys self proclaimed golden ear guys can hear the difference, and I know the real golden ear people have proven they can, I'll admit that it does make a difference; I'm just an iron-eared guy.

Anyway, this iron-eared guy CAN hear the difference between a prosumer clocked set of A/Ds, and professionally clocked A/Ds. What I'm saying is, my experience with a good clock vs a great clock is significant, and obvious. The first time I heard my exact same setup, in the exact same location, with the exact same music, but with pro-D/As, it was ear candy. Like listening to my near-fields but more of the experience of having headphones on. You could just point exactly to where things were in the stereo field, and wide things sounded WIDE. Far away things sounded far away. Subtle riffage and nuance parts in music [rock and roll, so not THAT subtle], were now there. I mean I could listen to music I had heard a hundred times, and newly experience it--things like "I never knew that harmony part was so good" or "I never realized that guitar run was there." Not to over exaggerate, I can hear those parts NOW even on other systems--but I now know were to listen, and I had never heard lots of stuff until I listened to purchased music on a pro-sumer system [Mackie HR824 monitors]. I'm going on and on with this because I don't want to exaggerate this at all. But, the moment, and ever since, I switched from my 828 D/As to my apogee D/As; well, lets just say I now know what "imaging" is, I now know what "width" is, I now know what "depth" is--these are specific things that even an iron eared guy like me can obviously hear.

Anyway, I hope that provided enough and not too much foundation for my recommendation on digital speakers, like the JBLs.

I'll start out by saying that I think JBL is a great speaker company and they make great products for good prices. But here is what happens if you ever become like me and you start caring about imaging/depth/clarity or what ever you want to call what you get with pro-quality clocks. So lets say you find someone that can run you an experiment of a system before and after, back to back with a prosumer clock vs a pro clock. And you go WOW like I did. Well, your best bet will be to SELL your JBLs, because if you go out and by a great D/A with a great clock, well, that analog signal will just be converted to digital again, and and then back, with a clock that costs 1/20th of what your "pro" clock used. Linearity, band edge filters, and other A/D subtleties/distortions get tripled.

Now lets contrast this with just pro-sumer D/As and a good set of analog near-field monitors. With this system, when [if!] you upgrade your D/As--no sweat. You will enjoy every dollar you spend. Ah, but what about room correction? That is kind of cool [And I can tell you it is only frosting, it is not the cake, but I still like and use it]. Well, if you use a computer-based version of this, you can have your room correction and killer D/As too, because the room correction is done before the one and only D/A conversion.

So, anyway I hope you can see that of the 3 you asked about, my clear choice would be the Dnya's since they are non-DSP monitors.

Having said all that, maybe you are not all that interested in this imaging stuff, and it might not matter to you. It is NOT a huge difference. Any prosumer D/A with any of these speakers will sound great. I'll say if you are one of those that thinks you may be further developing your system and/or ears in the future, and/or you find yourself wanting to mix dense music, you may want to leave the door open for a superbly clocked system--if you do? Avoid the DSP monitors.

I guess I want to listen to music through speakers designed by speaker experts, and D/As designed by D/A experts.

I hope this helps, sorry so long.

[Frodo]

Great post, XYZ.

Here's what I did-- I put together a CD of mixes and tracks-- some original, some commercial. First, I chose the kind of music that I work with along with a few other styles. Then, I put a dummy "control" track on the CD and boosted a narrow band of a certain frequency for just that track. It didn't matter what that frequency was so much, but generally I was concerned with tones around 120hz and again in the 200hz area, based on what I know of my room.

I listened to that CD for a few days to get to know it very well, then I took the CD shopping with me for monitors.

I noticed several things:

1. Some monitors sounded bad no matter what music was played through them.

2. Some monitors sounded better on some music than it did on others.

3. Some monitors sounded *too* good to be trusted (if that makes any sense)

4. Some monitors sounded very familiar where certain characteristics of the CD I'd made seemed consistent on all the tracks. Those were the monitors I took note of. Even the dummy track with the 200hz bump in it felt familiar.

Then I got away from it for several days just to rest my ears.

5. I went back and focused on only the "finalists". I narrowed it down to three models and brought them home. It is very important to listen to your monitors in your own environment!! What sounds good in the store may sound awful in your studio.

6. I took a mix I'd done and mastered it using each of the three sets of monitors. They all sounded different and all "seemed" to require making different adjustments.

7. I then ran the three mixes plus the original out onto a CD and took it to a friend's studio. The pair that translated the best was the pair I chose.

Everyone's ears are different. Everyone's needs are different. The most important part of the process is to understand *how* you hear and *what* you hear. I believe the right monitors will reveal themselves.

[Matcher]

Very cool post XYZ, I enjoyed reading it through!

Yes, the clocks and converters matter a lot. I know I don't have the best clock or converters in my Traveler, but after the BLA modification they should be good. They don't do the Traveler mod anymore, so it's hard to find the original details of the modification, but here's something in case you're not familiar with the old mod: The converters are Asahi Kasei (AKM), and are the same converters used in many other brands of interfaces, including Digidesign, RME, M-Audio, Roland, and many more. The modification allows the AKM converters to perform as they were designed to. My unit's clock was also replaced with the BLA microclock, so jitter should be as low as 1-10 ps. After the mod, I could hear stuff that was hidden somewhere before. The highs were clearer and the sounds were generally more detailed. So, I'm definitely a fan of good clocking!

I haven't been able to test different convereter, clock, and routing setups, but I'm sure M-audio and JBL have been researching the clocking stuff before coming up with the DSP products, and based on the reviews they've got it pretty much right. If the signal is kept digital all the way to the speakers, and clocked decently, there should be even an advantage to analog setup, or the DSP products have little purpose. The reviews I've read about the LSR, DSM2, and Digidesign RM2 have been positive, so I'm thinking they're worth checking out. Here's a quote from mixonline's DSM2 review: To test the digital inputs, I used a digital send from a Lynx Aurora 8 AD/DA converter. The DSM2's digital inputs (and subsequent conversion to analog) held up quite nicely next to the more expensive Aurora system. The imaging was spot-on with vocal tracks, guitars and drums. I did notice some differences in timbre on a bright side-stick and sibilance on the vocals, the DSMs' reproduction being somewhat brighter in the 6 to 8kHz range. This translated to the fifth vocal part above the root coming forward slightly by comparison. All in all, these slight nuances are going to be evident in any system comparison.

The RM2 is too expensive, and I can't listen to the JBLs but maybe I'll find the DSMs, and my friend uses BM6A so they're somewhat familiar. The MK2 might sound just a bit different, but I haven't heard anyone saying that. Tomorrow I'll listen to some Genelecs and KRKs too just out of interest.

I haven't tried ITB room correction but have been reading somewhat good feedback of it. It has it's advantages over traditional acoustic treatment, particularily in project studios where the space isn't designed for mixing. If I end up getting analog monitors, I'll need to add ARC to my budget.

[Matcher]

Frodo, great to hear your comments too!

That method looks quite close to what I'm planning to do. I wasn't thinking of taking the top candidates home for the finale, partly because I think there are no JBL LSRs for sale in Finland, but I'll definitely have to reconsider. It's not the same thing to listen to a familiar mix on monitors, and to actually mix with them and experience how they react to changes in parameters- and how you react to that

Btw, after reading all this stuff about DSP monitors it came to my mind that will there be IR-technology for DSP monitors in the future? You'd have one monitor with the capability to produce the sound of all the top models. Line6 has the Vetta line which emulates different speakers and cabinets pretty well, so maybe it's not entirely impossible.

[bongo_x]

The problem with reviews of things like monitors is subjectivity. I know many talented people who have good reputations and we would disagree completely about monitors. That makes it hard to get a real idea without hearing them. The descriptions may not match up at all with your impression once you hear them. I've heard some people's monitors, that they love and spent $2-3k on, that I wouldn't spend $200-300 on because I just don't like them.

I'm also not that picky though, and I'm in the camp that thinks you just get something decent and get used to them. That being said, I got some KRK V6's (not the new ones) a while back that I'm very happy with.

bb

[Shooshie]

My favorite pair of monitors for mixing were a set of Meyer HD1's. Unfortunately, they're very expensive, and they need a subwoofer, as well. But they do have incredibly clear sound, and can take a LOT of overloading and abuse.

Shoosh

[Frodo]

The problem with reviews of things like monitors is subjectivity. I know many talented people who have good reputations and we would disagree completely about monitors. That makes it hard to get a real idea without hearing them. The descriptions may not match up at all with your impression once you hear them. I've heard some people's monitors, that they love and spent $2-3k on, that I wouldn't spend $200-300 on because I just don't like them.

I'm also not that picky though, and I'm in the camp that thinks you just get something decent and get used to them. That being said, I got some KRK V6's (not the new ones) a while back that I'm very happy with.

bb

Bongo, you are quite right.

As we talk about monitors, one thing we fail to consider is that all ears and all pairs of ears in combo are different. Aging ears contend with unfathomable listening requirements and there's no way to tell just how one pair of ears work compared to another.

But I intentionally hesitated to make any specific recommendations because what works for me may easily not work for someone else.

Among the monitors that sounded great were the Genelec 1032's. In fact, they sounded "too" good... too sweet. My mix CD sounded so much *better* that I no longer knew what I was listening to. I recalled what so many have said about the Yamaha NS10s--- that they are not great monitors "per se", but if you can make a mix sound great on NS10s, that mix will sound good on anything. This gets to the essence of what great reference monitors are all about.

There was a predecessor to the JBL LSR 6328s (can't remember the model) that I really loved. My mixes, for all their faults, sounded very familiar on these. Even the control track with the 200Hz bump sounded pretty much like I'd come to know it. But the JBLs were more than I wanted to spend.

But I've heard some Adams that were terrific. Can't remember whether it was the P-11s or their S2As.

Someone was trying to sell me on some model from Blue Sky, but I never got to demo them.

Shooshie mentioned Meyer and every time I hear that name I go "ooooo" inside.

So, what did I actually buy? Doesn't matter.

The important thing is whether or not mixes done on one's monitor of choice translate. It has just as much to do with the ears as it does with the monitors.

[XYZ]

A couple of comments on your post:

I haven't tried ITB room correction but have been reading somewhat good feedback of it. It has it's advantages over traditional acoustic treatment, particularily in project studios where the space isn't designed for mixing. If I end up getting analog monitors, I'll need to add ARC to my budget.

In my book, digital room correction [I'll call it DRC for short], is not a competitor to real Physical Room correction [I'll call it PRC]. It is more like PRC is the Cake, and DRC is the icing. Icing without the cake can get messy quickly. In fact, I'd strongly recommend against DRC if you have not done a reasonable job with PRC. If you want to read a tome on this, I believe Frodo, myself, Shooshie, James, and a bunch of others had a very long post on this when ARC came out. Do a search on ARC and I believe you will find it. I'll summarize it here.

When I first started looking into why my mixes were so way off on other systems, but sounded OK when I mixed them, I did an experiment. I built a file with 1 second of sine wave starting at 20 Hz and going to about 1 kHz. I played it on my monitors. Wow. There were some frequencies where my system was quite soft, and sometimes when it was shaking the metaphorical rafters. This is with monitors that were measured in an anechoic chamber to be +/- 1dB. Also, I'd play a constant tone, and walk around the room. In some spots it was very loud, some very soft. Walking around the room was like navigating the rockies from a volume perspective. This was not a subtle effect. I'm not exaggerating. Literally, I could be in a spot were we could have a conversation, and take a couple of steps [or change the frequency by], and the same volume coming out the speakers would have an effect of being uncomfortably loud. I recorded this tone through a measurement mic, and found over 30 dB between the peaks and valleys. To get to the punchline, my room, like nearly any room, had resonances. If you are in a node of that resonance, it is shocking how soft it is. If you are in a peak of that resonance, it is shocking how loud it is. I highly recommend you do this experiment. You very quickly learn that the subtlties of JBL vs Mackie, vs KRK, vs Adam are *trivial* compared to the huge effect your room has. Huge. Paradoxically, if you have a sweet sounding room, your mixes could sound terrible. Here is why. Let's say you have a room [and a mixing position], that has emphasized bass, clear hits, and a null in the muddy frequencies. Well, you will wind up having extra emphasis in the mud frequencies, a lack of lows, and possibly a lack of highs. As Shooshie said, NS-10s kind of do this on purpose--they are weak in the low and high end, sort of forcing mixes that have emphasized bass, and emphasized highs, with possibly improved clarity through a reduction of mud.

This is also why we are recommending you try these out in your setup. What if a particular speaker resonates slightly at 120Hz, and you happen to have a room resonance at 120? Well this may not be a good match, even if they otherwise are great speakers, and have gotten glowing reviews.

Also, don't be lulled into choosing speakers based on frequency response, or reviewers impressions of frequency response. There is way more to it than that. Much like microphones, speakers are imperfect at best, and have a "sound" to them that is more than just frequency response. You have probably heard of "tight" bass vs. "Loose" base [typically sealed cabinets vs ported or bandpass bass cabinets]. Well they can all have, or be made to have an identical frequency response, but they will sound obviously different.

Anyway, back to PRC, you will be greatly benefited by spend some time on this. It is surprising to me how even audiophiles will spend $2k on a subtle at best speaker cable upgrade but won't spend some time and half that on PRC that would make, literally or possibly a 20 dB improvement.

So, before you get your new speakers, measure your room with your current speakers. You will be amazed. There are freeware programs that will let generate sine waves for you, to include swept sine waves, I can tell you the one I use if you want.

Once you are shocked with what your room is doing to things, it turns out there are a number of things you can do to mitigate the big problems. First, once you do the above measurement, take your problem frequencies [both peaks and nulls], and take the speed of sound and divide by these particular frequencies. This will result in a wavelength. Look for dimensions in your room that are fractions of this [like 1/4 and 1/2]. Most probably [for example], your room will resonate according to it's width, length and height as a place to start. Now just moving your speakers a few feet can do wonders. The other thing I found that bass trapping is like sex. The more you have, the easier time you have. Also, the more bass trapping you have the more bass and better bass you will have at your monitoring position. Again, that ARC post had a bunch of stuff on how to cheaply do bass trapping.

Now my guess is, it is a lot more fun to buy new speakers than to buy a bunch of foam, f-glass, or cotton acoustic treatment, and then figure out how to install it without taking up all the space in your room; so you will wind up buying the speakers . If you run the above experiment, you may go for the PRC first however; it will make a huge difference. For higher frequencies, use foam and the "mirror trick" to knock down first reflections [physical comb filtering].

Once you get your room reasonably flat, THEN the the ARC phase and gain tuning will actually improve things. If you use it in a raw room, I'm afraid you will find that it

PRC is the bulldozer to fill in the massive holes and knock down the big piles of dirt. ARC/DRC is more like the rake you use after the bulldozer is done. If you try to make a lawn without the bulldozer...well, the rake may brake before you ever get the big holes filled in. Not the best metaphor; hopefully the point is made.

Finally, even if JBLs clocks are fairly good, they are non-upgradable, and your Black Lion clock won't matter since you will be listening to the JBL clock.

Now, back to the original question! You can see my bias is toward spending all of your speaker money on speakers, then spend your room correction money on room correction, and spend your DAC money on DACs. Just because "JBL does a good job" -- do you believe their DACs would compete with, say, a benchmark DAC? The entire speaker package has an amp, a processor, a DAC, a cabinet, a speaker, controls, etc. Let's say the JBLs cost 1000. The benchmark DAC alone costs that. I guess what I'm saying is that, yes, JBL does a nice job. I'm also saying a fantastic job on 30 dollar DACs won't compete with a middle of the road job on 1000 dolar DACs. Also, who do you think will do a great job, given a budget, on DACs? A speaker company? Or a DAC company? I've found in this area, the experts tend to build terrific systems in the area they are experts in.

Also, a comment about convolution. Convolution can only mimic the time-invariant portion of a system. Any non-linearities won't be able to be simulated by a convolution--since

If I were in your spot, trying to pick really good speakers, this would be my list, based on the $1k you seem willing to spend on the JBLs, I'll stick to this price range. I'll also assume you are looking for 8" full range, and I'm going to list the popular speakers [based on my "impression", no hard data there, just what I hear, read, and see many people using] that you see in pro studios :

--Adam A7--the bottom of the line of this top of the line speaker has these wonderful ribbon tweeters. Ultra pro in your price range.

--KRK VTX8 or V8--these seem to be extremely popular with my hip-hop RnB friends here in LA. They rave about em. These are also extremely popular

--Mackie--HR824v2--I've got a biase toward mackies because of value and technology. They use a feedback sensing coil on the speaker cone to bring the motion of the speaker into the feedback loop of the amplifier. Since Macke is a speaker expert AND a power amp expert, they are able to highly integrate these two. Not sure why others don't copy this design as it seems to work. Anyway, big bang for your buck, and ruler flat speakers. Extremely popular.

--Event ASP6 or Opal--A speaker company that continues to get excellent reviews.

--Tannoy 6D--Prides themselves on extended high frequency response--they believe this matters even though it is above your ability to hear, it still imparts some magic. Also, highly respected speaker company.

--Yamaha HS80--I put it on the list because it is supposed to be the "replacement" for the NS-10. Yamaha makes a whole bunch of things that are pretty nice, but not specifically a "speaker" company

--Genelec 6010--A speaker company that makes great speakers. The rounded, extremely stiff cabinet minimizes resonances. Again, a great speaker from a great speaker company

This is from memory, so others will help to improve the specifics of this--the general idea is there.

As you can see, my bias is to buy a speaker from a speaker company, buy a powered speaker from a speaker and power-amp company. I've found that usually, buying from an expert gets you a better deal, and better product. Buy insurance from an investment house? You get neither a good investment, nor good insurance.

And as Shooshie says, see if you can spend some time with them. If your local store has floor models, I'd bet they would let you take them home to try out for a day or two. If you can also borrow your friends speakers, you can do an A/B/C/D comparision. [tell us your results if you do this!].

Anyway, again way too long, but hopefully helpful

[XYZ]

I just thought of another consideration for the DRC speakers--latency. Since your DAC will add buffering latency, and then the speaker ADC, FIR processing, buffering, and DAC will each add additional latency, this may become noticeable. So if you go this way, I'd check to see what this additional latency is.

[Matcher]

In my book, digital room correction [I'll call it DRC for short], is not a competitor to real Physical Room correction [I'll call it PRC]. It is more like PRC is the Cake, and DRC is the icing. Icing without the cake can get messy quickly. In fact, I'd strongly recommend against DRC if you have not done a reasonable job with PRC. If you want to read a tome on this, I believe Frodo, myself, Shooshie, James, and a bunch of others had a very long post on this when ARC came out. Do a search on ARC and I believe you will find it. I'll summarize it here.

When I first started looking into why my mixes were so way off on other systems, but sounded OK when I mixed them, I did an experiment. I built a file with 1 second of sine wave starting at 20 Hz and going to about 1 kHz. I played it on my monitors. Wow. There were some frequencies where my system was quite soft, and sometimes when it was shaking the metaphorical rafters. This is with monitors that were measured in an anechoic chamber to be +/- 1dB. Also, I'd play a constant tone, and walk around the room. In some spots it was very loud, some very soft. Walking around the room was like navigating the rockies from a volume perspective. This was not a subtle effect. I'm not exaggerating. Literally, I could be in a spot were we could have a conversation, and take a couple of steps [or change the frequency by], and the same volume coming out the speakers would have an effect of being uncomfortably loud. I recorded this tone through a measurement mic, and found over 30 dB between the peaks and valleys. To get to the punchline, my room, like nearly any room, had resonances. If you are in a node of that resonance, it is shocking how soft it is. If you are in a peak of that resonance, it is shocking how loud it is. I highly recommend you do this experiment. You very quickly learn that the subtlties of JBL vs Mackie, vs KRK, vs Adam are *trivial* compared to the huge effect your room has. Huge. Paradoxically, if you have a sweet sounding room, your mixes could sound terrible. Here is why. Let's say you have a room [and a mixing position], that has emphasized bass, clear hits, and a null in the muddy frequencies. Well, you will wind up having extra emphasis in the mud frequencies, a lack of lows, and possibly a lack of highs. As Shooshie said, NS-10s kind of do this on purpose--they are weak in the low and high end, sort of forcing mixes that have emphasized bass, and emphasized highs, with possibly improved clarity through a reduction of mud.

This is also why we are recommending you try these out in your setup. What if a particular speaker resonates slightly at 120Hz, and you happen to have a room resonance at 120? Well this may not be a good match, even if they otherwise are great speakers, and have gotten glowing reviews.

I agree, based on common sense not experience in my case, that it's way more important to treat the room first, and then look at ARC or JBL's RMC. At the moment I don't have a room that I can utilize 100% freely, so I'll have to settle for a compromise of DRC and PRC in your words. First it's important to analyze the room to see the problems, and then rectify them with available means. There are good reviews of ARC and RMC at the SOS website (we need to start using more acronyms BTW!) and they too advice to use the DRC methods as a cosmetic tool.

This whole survey began partly because I have this song that I'm working on, and I found myself mixing to the room, not to the speakers. The mix was otherwise nice, but I noticed I had compensated for some of the rooms augmented frequencies with volume automation. I now have my setup in another, bigger room, which I plan to treat moderately. Actually I had my setup here, because I just sold my old monitors and the sub!

Also, don't be lulled into choosing speakers based on frequency response, or reviewers impressions of frequency response. There is way more to it than that. Much like microphones, speakers are imperfect at best, and have a "sound" to them that is more than just frequency response. You have probably heard of "tight" bass vs. "Loose" base [typically sealed cabinets vs ported or bandpass bass cabinets]. Well they can all have, or be made to have an identical frequency response, but they will sound obviously different.

True, like with any hifi products too. I trust my ears. For me, they matter the most

Anyway, back to PRC, you will be greatly benefited by spend some time on this. It is surprising to me how even audiophiles will spend $2k on a subtle at best speaker cable upgrade but won't spend some time and half that on PRC that would make, literally or possibly a 20 dB improvement.

So, before you get your new speakers, measure your room with your current speakers. You will be amazed. There are freeware programs that will let generate sine waves for you, to include swept sine waves, I can tell you the one I use if you want.

Once you are shocked with what your room is doing to things, it turns out there are a number of things you can do to mitigate the big problems. First, once you do the above measurement, take your problem frequencies [both peaks and nulls], and take the speed of sound and divide by these particular frequencies. This will result in a wavelength. Look for dimensions in your room that are fractions of this [like 1/4 and 1/2]. Most probably [for example], your room will resonate according to it's width, length and height as a place to start. Now just moving your speakers a few feet can do wonders. The other thing I found that bass trapping is like sex. The more you have, the easier time you have. Also, the more bass trapping you have the more bass and better bass you will have at your monitoring position. Again, that ARC post had a bunch of stuff on how to cheaply do bass trapping.

Now my guess is, it is a lot more fun to buy new speakers than to buy a bunch of foam, f-glass, or cotton acoustic treatment, and then figure out how to install it without taking up all the space in your room; so you will wind up buying the speakers . If you run the above experiment, you may go for the PRC first however; it will make a huge difference. For higher frequencies, use foam and the "mirror trick" to knock down first reflections [physical comb filtering].

Once you get your room reasonably flat, THEN the the ARC phase and gain tuning will actually improve things. If you use it in a raw room, I'm afraid you will find that it

PRC is the bulldozer to fill in the massive holes and knock down the big piles of dirt. ARC/DRC is more like the rake you use after the bulldozer is done. If you try to make a lawn without the bulldozer...well, the rake may brake before you ever get the big holes filled in. Not the best metaphor; hopefully the point is made.

Yes, I'll need to pick up a cheapo omni mic at least to carry out the tests. Maybe I can borrow it from a friend though. I was recommended some software a time ago, but any additions are welcome.

Finally, even if JBLs clocks are fairly good, they are non-upgradable, and your Black Lion clock won't matter since you will be listening to the JBL clock.

But does that matter even if the monitor is slaved to my microclock via S/PDIF? I'm pretty much a novice so sorry if that's a silly question

If I were in your spot, trying to pick really good speakers, this would be my list, based on the $1k you seem willing to spend on the JBLs, I'll stick to this price range. I'll also assume you are looking for 8" full range, and I'm going to list the popular speakers [based on my "impression", no hard data there, just what I hear, read, and see many people using] that you see in pro studios :

--Adam A7--the bottom of the line of this top of the line speaker has these wonderful ribbon tweeters. Ultra pro in your price range.

I listened to them today again. Last time I listened to them over at my friend's place. They're nice, very open, spacy, clear, bright, un-hifi. The only downside could be that I compensate for the brightness by cutting the HF, that would result in dark mixes. Still, this is one of my favorites now.

--KRK VTX8 or V8--these seem to be extremely popular with my hip-hop RnB friends here in LA. They rave about em. These are also extremely popular

I got to hear the VXT8s today too. They were nice too, but not as open as I like, and pretty hifi sounding. Wouldn't probably suit my needs.

--Mackie--HR824v2--I've got a biase toward mackies because of value and technology. They use a feedback sensing coil on the speaker cone to bring the motion of the speaker into the feedback loop of the amplifier. Since Macke is a speaker expert AND a power amp expert, they are able to highly integrate these two. Not sure why others don't copy this design as it seems to work. Anyway, big bang for your buck, and ruler flat speakers. Extremely popular.

--Event ASP6 or Opal--A speaker company that continues to get excellent reviews.

--Tannoy 6D--Prides themselves on extended high frequency response--they believe this matters even though it is above your ability to hear, it still imparts some magic. Also, highly respected speaker company.

These I haven't been able to hear.

--Yamaha HS80--I put it on the list because it is supposed to be the "replacement" for the NS-10. Yamaha makes a whole bunch of things that are pretty nice, but not specifically a "speaker" company

I checked the 5" models with the 10" sub, and though I kinda liked their "cardboardish" sound, comparing them to the MSPs revealed them to be quite dark and small, up front sounding. I don't know if this is a good thing when mixing cause I haven't been able to mix with them, but I know I'll enjoy using other speakers more.

--Genelec 6010--A speaker company that makes great speakers. The rounded, extremely stiff cabinet minimizes resonances. Again, a great speaker from a great speaker company

Listened to 8020 and 8030 today, and they sounded pretty unbelivable. Maybe a bit hifi, but very open. The bass was just amazing. I was pretty sure there was a sub hidden somewhere but no. These worked especially with electronic stuff. Rock and pop seemed to miss some of the highs that I know are there, and separation wasn't as good as with the ADAMs. When I first heard the gennies about ten years ago, I hated their HF character, but for some reason I can't hear it that well anymore. Might be the abuse of the ears or a different model. Now they are one of my top candidates with the ADAMs.

Dynaudios were a bit boomy in the low mids and LF IMO, that might lead to thin mixes. Otherwise they sounded really nice, and had their own strong character.

The JBLs seem like too much a risk now that I've found something I know is very usable.

[HCMarkus]

I concur with much that has been said herein, well thought out and based on experience, but wanted to point out that if you are running a stereo pair plus sub, the JBLs will allow you to run digital in. Yes, you are still at the mercy of the JBL converters, but your clock will be your digital source, the Traveler's SPDIF or AES/EBU.

You definitely want to avoid repeated D to A to D to A...

I ended up with some Dynaudio BM5s and a big ol' sub which I pull in and out of my monitoring chain to check low end, and have been finding my mixes are translating well. But the room is still in transition, so only time will tell.

[BradLyons]

Just because a monitor has a digital input, doesn't mean you should use it..... Having DSP processing v/s a digital input are quite different.

[michkhol]

I would also pay a good deal of attention to the transient response and phase coherency. You can in practice compensate for the room and coloration but for those two you can't. "Fast" speakers will give you more information about the mix provided that the DAC and amplifiers are "fast" too. It may be not obvious, but in the majority of two-way speakers the crossover frequency lies in the most sensitive frequency range of the human hearing. Basically we listen to the crossover, not the speakers. The crossover introduces phase shift, the more the cheaper it is. Phase affects the spacial information, sometimes it will be hard to hear the 3D soundscape with certain speakers. When I compared Dynadio BM5A and Adam A7, several people who were with me in the room confirmed that A7 had a very fast but flat sound, BM5A was a bit "slower" but with an impressive 3D soundscape. Please note, this happened in my room, YMMV. My next project is to build a monitor system including a low-power tube amplifier and custom-made monitors with 8KHz crossover frequency. I mix mostly classical and world music, so I don't need them to be deafeningly loud.

[kgdrum]

evaluating the monitor in your room is very important.If you have the ability to try them in your studio ,do it.
I use Focal monitors,the 1st pair I had were very good : Focal Solo 6 very nice detail,sound stage etc.....
http://www.focalprofessional.com/en/pro ... lo6Be.html
but something never sounded quite right to me,after a 6 months(full disclosure:I have a working relationship w/ Focal)
I swapped them for the Focal Twin 6 and instantly this was MY SPEAKER!!
http://www.focalprofessional.com/en/pro ... en6Be.html
I have a real hard time evaluating a speaker in a showroom and I don't think I could have made an informed choice without trying them in my studio.
I know if I didn't have the ability to try these in my room,I'd still be searching for the right monitor.
Monitors can be great on their own but they might not be a correct match for the room: example small room w/speakers that need a bigger space or the opposite(speakers are room dependent).
imo correct system matching requires the correct speaker for the actual room.