Recording - March 2014 - 23

how famous and well-liked speaker brands like Genelec, ATC, PMC, ADAM
Audio, Event Electronics, and Equator Audio sound when I work with them-
but after a certain point, this all falls into "this is what worked for me, but
maybe not for you." I know for a fact that (just for one example) my experiences with one very popular speaker line stand in opposition to those of several of my colleagues who write for this magazine.
Who's right? The engineer doing the work in the room. So we come back,
time and again, to the basic idea of testing speakers with material we know
backwards and forwards, in the genre where we expect to be working, in the
room where we're going to be working.

Final tweaks
Once you have the speakers you like in your room, make good use of a
reliable metering system to make sure everything's balanced. It's not that
hard; just open up your DAW and grab a plug-in.
There are lots of good choices; Metric Halo SpectraFoo is an old standby, and
iZotope's new Insight is getting a lot of attention. My personal favorite is the
Brainworx bx_meter. This plug-in provides great tools to be sure you're getting honest output across the L/R soundstage. After all, the last thing you want to do is to
set up your speakers in a lopsided room, only to find out that every mix you're sending out makes people turn their heads like those dogs in Hallmark cards. If you have
a Universal Audio UAD-2, there's a UAD limiter with precise metering-bypass the
limiter function and you can use the metering to check your output balance.
So go ahead and find a local pro audio dealer that will lock you in a room for
a while. Between this article and the others in this issue, there should be no shortage of good ideas and starting points for speaker choices. Happy monitoring.

The myth and reality of the NS10
In many studios today, large and small, old
and new, people jump to use the Yamaha NS10
and NS10m passive monitors. Don't jump.
NS10s were originally put on the market to
emulate consumer home stereos. They were supposed to sound mediocre, and guess what?
They still do. In the late 1970s, when people like
Bob Clearmountain began using them, engineers would affix tissue paper over the tweeter
to dull some of the harshness. Even after the
NS10m came out, dulling some of that brilliance, the NS10 was still a favorite-not
because it sounded the best, but because it was
a sound most engineers knew and it made you
work for that good mix.
Before the NS10 became popular, most studios
used tiny single-speaker Auratones for AM radio
simulation and behemoth horn-loaded mains for
mixing. The NS10 was a (happy?) medium.
Nowadays the NS10 remains a solid reference
monitor with which to check your mix, and they
will make you work. But you have to get to know
them before they can make you work the right
way. Today, not only are people not dealing with
the sort of home stereos from the 1970s that
inspired the NS10, but there are so many other
speakers available on the market that will give you
honest, transparent and well balanced reproduction, the NS10 is no longer a necessary first
choice. For many folks it's not a choice at all, even
if "every studio" supposedly has a pair.-EG

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Recording - March 2014

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