Recording - March 2015 - 44

can use to test monitors' response to busy sounds and bass. Use the same
recordings whenever you evaluate monitors; that gives you a consistent baseline for comparison.
4. Don't be fooled by a pretty smile. In years past, manufacturers would
sometimes voice studio monitors with a "smile" curve, featuring big boosts in
the bass and treble. (We used to call this "boom-and-tizz".) Monitors with a
smile curve will sound more impressive in the showroom than their flatter competitors, but over the long haul those un-neutral speakers will push users to
make recordings that won't translate well. They also lead to "listening
fatigue"; you can't use them for long stretches without your ears and brain
saying "Enough already." Go for neutral.
Occasionally sales people will use a monitor's controls (or even an equalizer) to dial a smile curve into a relatively neutral monitor. This is yet another
reason you need to try monitors out in your room-and make sure, when
you're setting them up for a trial, that they haven't been jimmied into a nonneutral sound.
5. Do your listening tests at moderate levels-just loud enough to override
the sound of your own speaking voice, as heard in your head. And, in the
showroom, watch out for one pair of monitors that's set to be louder than the
rest; our ears hear louder as better, even when it isn't. (See Mike Metlay's article elsewhere in this issue about listening levels.)

need a dedicated monitor controller. (See Mike
Metlay's excellent discussion of these in Recording's
September 2014 issue.) If you use a subwoofer, or
plan to, make sure your monitor controller will let
you work with a sub.
Bad speakers I
If you read the articles in last October's issue
about the early days of Motown's studios, or Ryan
& Kehew's Recording the Beatles, you'll note that
a lot of great records were tracked or mixed on
un-neutral monitors like the Altec 604 series.
Those were 12" coaxial speakers with metal horn
tweeters mounted in the center, and they had a
rainbow's worth of coloration. How do I reconcile
my advice to use a neutral monitoring setup with
all those great records made using un-neutral monitors?
Easy: those records were made by engineers
with years of experience under their belts, including years spent mixing on Altec 604s. When I
worked in television, our one and only monitor in
the closet-sized audio booth was an Altec 604,
and though it's not something I'd choose for pleasure listening, after eight years in the booth with

Occasionally sales people will use a monitor's controls (or even
an EQ) to dial a smile curve into a relatively neutral monitor.
A very basic setup
Obviously, I can't tell you exactly how to set up your room. What I can do is
describe a generic monitoring setup that will give good results much of the time.
First, apply some room treatment. Treat the front of the room (the wall behind
the monitors, and the side walls back as far as your sitting position) with
absorption, using the guidelines I outlined last month. Use absorption thick
enough to soak up frequencies down to 125 Hz, and bass traps if needed.
Then treat the back half of the room with diffusion, using commercially-available
diffusers or my bookshelf kludges. Also see the sidebar, which talks about a specific acoustic problem common in small studios.
Set up your monitoring position: make an equilateral triangle with your
head at one corner and monitors at the other two. (See Figure 1.) For typical
monitors, set them up vertically, with the tweeters on top (ignore if they're
coaxial) and the speakers toed in to point at you. Place the monitors vertically so your ears are halfway between the woofer and the tweeter-and, it
should go without saying, the monitors should both be at the same height.
(Read the monitors' manual for more specific instructions.)
Ideally the monitors should sit on stands mounted on the floor; those should
be robust, and shouldn't wobble or rock. If you have to place monitors on a
table, you'll probably want to use one of the devices designed to keep them
from transmitting vibrations to the table top; those devices help speakers that
are stand-mounted too.
Your monitors should be more than 3' from the back and side walls; if your
room arrangement makes this impossible, a lot of monitors come with adjustments that compensate for too-near-the-wall placement. The presence of these
controls will be a factor in what monitors you choose to buy, if you're stuck
with a room that makes less-than-ideal placement necessary.
You'll need some way of controlling the monitors' levels, selecting sources to
feed them, and switching the monitor feed to mono. Some recording interfaces
provide these controls; if you're not using such an interface, you'll probably
44

RECORDING March 2015

that Altec I knew its foibles intimately, and could
trust myself to tune those foibles out and create a
mix that would sound good to listeners at home.
I was there for eight years, though. The engineers at Motown and Abbey Road had a similar
period in which they could acclimate to their
Altecs; they knew those speakers inside out, and
could make good records on them, despite the
lack of neutrality. It's the same principle that
applies to using headphones as monitors: with
enough experience, a seasoned engineer can do
it.
You're in a different place: you're starting out in
this game, and neutral monitor speakers have
become affordable enough that you can learn
your craft on them.
I still support getting to know your monitors really well. I've been using the same pair of 5" twoways, the venerable BBC-designed LS3/5a monitors, for thirty years, and though they too have
foibles (mostly restrictions in the bass), I've learned
them even better than I learned the Altec way
back when, and I think I make better recordings
because of that.
That is why I don't recommend changing monitors often, even if the change is an upgrade. A
reasonably neutral speaker that you know really
well is more useful, in the long run, than a fabulous speaker you're just learning. Start with something reasonably neutral, then stick with it.

Recording - March 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - March 2015