Recording - January 2016 - 25

I found it interesting that these speakers
did take a bit of adjustment to sit perfectly
in my room; while we often leave review
speakers flat after our tests of the tone controls, we got our best results from the
ASM-6 with the mid-low switch at -2 dB
and the treble at -1 dB, which nicely balanced the mids with the rest of the sound
spectrum and removed the highs' tendency toward overemphasis.
In our listening tests, we found that the
ASM-6 worked well with a wide variety
of musical genres. It's a clean and crisp
speaker without the in-your-face character
that some like in rock monitors, and we
found it especially well suited for acoustic
jazz, Americana, and the less-grungy
parts of the indie rock world. R&B and
electronic dance styles benefit from the
speakers' considerable bass extension,
but if they're placed too near a back wall
or corner, the bass runs the risk of becoming woofy and ill-defined.
These speakers have a remarkably
wide and smooth sweet spot and very
good stereo imaging no matter where
you sit. They're quite forgiving of lessthan-ideal seating arrangements in small
rooms; you can scoot around your mixer
and back and forth between your effects
racks without too many nasty surprises.
It's worth noting that these speakers
can get really, really loud. They've been

measured at 85 dB SPL, which is not a
bad listening level to calibrate your room.
However, they'll go way hotter than that,
and you run the risk of frying your ears
without realizing it because they deliver
such clarity at even the hottest levels.
I found the ASM-6 a delight to listen
to for long periods at the aforementioned 85 dB SPL (which is roughly
where I like to work anyway if I possibly
can). Ear fatigue was minimal and my
mix decisions after a few hours (with
suitable rest breaks) were no less reliable than those at the start of a session.

I used the ASM-6 for editing, music
recording and mixing, and sound
design, and found that my results translated very well to other systems. If anything,
I found myself mixing just a hair bass-shy
because there was so much good bass in
the ASM-6 compared to my usual monitors (sans sub). I brought up some of my
old tracks and mixes from the 1980s ("If
nothing else, I can always serve as a
bad example") and found the ASM-6 to
reveal the subtle details and defects that
slipped by me, back then.
Conclusions
The ASM-6 is an intriguing speaker; it
takes some careful adjustment to match to
your room, perhaps more so than some
other speakers I've reviewed recently, but it
presents a sonic picture that's clear, detailed,
and easy to listen to without being overly
flattering. I could easily learn to mix on these
speakers and produce reliable and reproducible results, and so could you.
Senal was a new name to us before
the ASM-6 speakers arrived on our
doorstep, but you can bet it's a name
we'll remember.
Price: $649.95 each
More from: Senal,
www.senalsound.com
http://www.senalsound.com http://www.mil-media.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - January 2016
