Recording - February 2010 - 38

KRK Systems ERGO In a Moss Garden The space where I do most of my work (Moss Garden Music) is a fully treated mix room. Here I try hard to follow the rules: The mix position is 1/3 of the distance from the front wall, there is bass trapping, clouds and reflection panels from GIK Acoustics, my KRK E8B speakers (reviewed January 2008) are placed on Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizers (reviewed March 2008) on top of custom solid oak stands, and the console desk is custom-built alder-laminated MDF core with calculated angles and placement to minimize reflections. So what did ERGO do here? On the one hand, to my relief, not much, however on some material, especially smooth R’n’B (Sade, Seal, Steely Dan, Mariah Carey), I would be lying if I did not admit to further tightening of the low mid frequencies. While slight, it was enough to irk me that my room still had some flaws, yet encouraging to know ERGO could fix them. Your space? So is ERGO necessary, and what can ERGO do for you? Tough question. At a $500 street price (recently lowered from $700), ERGO does require some thought. My room’s sound treatment was only a few hundred dollars more than the price of ERGO, and I am very happy with my space and yet ERGO was still able to improve upon it. The improvements were more dramatic in rooms that weren’t fully treated or problematic in size and shape; in situations where your space is already cramped, temporary, or untreatable, ERGO may be your only solution (although I don’t feel it can substitute for room treatments and neither does KRK). I can’t tell you how much ERGO will improve your recording space, but I can tell you that it works! Price: $799 More from: KRK Systems, 772 S. Military Trail, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442. 954/949-9600, www.krksys.com. Paul Vnuk Jr. (vnuk@recordingmag.com) is a recording engineer, producer, musician, and sound designer in Milwaukee. His latest projects can be found online at www.majale.com. Thanks as always to Christopher Short for his assistance. How it works ERGO uses a 1024 tap FIR filter (Finite Impulse Response, a type of a digital filter) for its room correction in the frequency range of 20–500 Hz. All of this happens at a 96 kHhz sample rate. ERGO only corrects for the midrange and low end of the spectrum, where the sonic mud lives. This helps with standing waves, bass buildup and imaging, but ERGO cannot correct for flutter echoes and reflection issues. It is not an equalizer per se, so it corrects for, but should not color or alter your sound. Once the data is gathered you can choose one of three listening modes; one is optimized for the sweet spot, another for listening casually around the room, and the third is, of course, bypass. Bottom of the stairs I started with the most problematic space, my small editing suite inconveniently located in my basement. While this space allows me to do some editing work at home and still be around my family, to say it is “less than ideal” is an understatement. For space reasons my 4" KRK VXT4 monitors (reviewed August 2008) are crammed right up to the wall and I need to take two steps back to be in the sweet spot. Like many of our rooms, this space exercises the “necessity over correctness rule” for audio. While I don’t typically use this space for critical mixing, I wound up running into deadline issues on a loop library-based song project and liberally abused the “if they sound good here, they would sound good anywhere” theory. I am very glad that there was a project manager to QC everything. He called me up a few days later asking what had changed in my setup, saying he had toRECORDING FEBRUARY 2010 boost all the bass tracks in my mixes! What was going on? I wished I knew and then ERGO arrived. Thanks to ERGO the problem was confirmed as way too much bass buildup in this small space, and while cool for casual music listening, this caused me to undermix the bass in my tracks. ERGO solved this issue with a cut in the low end that was quite obvious. On Jupiter Jupiter Studios is the moniker of my friend and fellow sound designer Christopher Short’s studio, which, as mentioned, is in a re-appropriated den in his home. For mixing Chris uses a Blue Sky MediaDesk system, a “2.1” (satellites plus subwoofer) array. This did create a bit of an issue with the ERGO; we could not run ERGO in true subwoofer mode as the Blue Sky system is fully integrated and treated as a stereo monitor setup. Luckily it worked just fine. Chris’ room is actually quite dead; we were both surprised at the drastic difference ERGO made to his sub frequencies and low mids. Chris heard it as a meaningful improvement to his mix’s tightness and imaging. The difference was obvious and stunning. The music was fuller, more focused and in general sweeter to listen to, and Chris was bummed when I had to take the unit back.

http://www.krksys.com http://www.majale.com

Recording - February 2010

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