Monitor upgrade?

Good question! Let’s say, options between maybe $1,200 and 2k on the pair. Powered vs. passive? Thoughts on size? My room is roughly 15 by 17, pretty well treated. Also interested if anyone has used and/or has opinions on the Adams F7, which were relatively inexpensive. Way better records than mine have been made on way shittier speakers, and I appreciate grinding and just making the most I can with the tools I’m fortunate to have. Still curious to hear what the esteemed gents of RGO have to suggest, including more music, less consuming. Thanks as ever, folks.

If you generally like the F7’s you might try the Adam a7s or a7x’s. Ribbon tweeters have a sound that some people like and some don’t. I personally like them, and have had a7’s for a long time and love them.

Well most fall in love with real ribbons but Adams isn’t a real ribbon, it’s a planer or AMT😎

I have been using ADAMS A7s for years now... I really like them, No Sub.

Cheers

Wiz

Check the JBL 7 series. Blew me away. Immediate purchase for me.

Any thoughts for the newish Genelec 'The One' models?
Cheers, Ross

I like my jbl LSR monitors. Real easy to work with for long periods.

I went with the Focal Shapes and haven't looked back. I used to have two sets of monitors to reference on, but once I put in my Focal Shapes (the 50's) I totally quit even turning the other pair on, and now I have a pair of $1,600 monitors sitting on the floor in my bedroom closet.

The Focal Shapes, they just relay everything to you so purely you can't get it wrong, I mean if there is an issue, regardless of the frequency area, they reveal it until you fix it and for me that's what you want. I think what I love the most about them is they fixed two things for me that were always something that pissed me off on the first car listen which was, muddiness surrounding or in the vocal and precise interpretation of the dynamics. Because they have the passive radiator you get the sound of sealed cab monitors, but you also get the fluffy bottom of ported speakers, they relay that dynamic information so so good. NS10's, the only damn reason I ever used those monitors was because since they were a sealed cab/paper cone, whatever the snare sounded like on them was spot on, but you paid for that little bit of knowledge when your ears gave out after 3 hours on them. The Shapes, they relay that 10x better, but for every instrument, vocal and drum head there is, and you can listen to them for hours and hours and your ears feel fresh when you're done.

I'll second the stereo sub suggestion as well. You can go with a much less expensive pair of monitors if you'll put in stereo subs. You can take so much strain off your monitors by dialing in those subs to cover the low's and sub's freq information. Having a single subwoofer is good, but when you go stereo subs, if you don't have the bottom end dialed in right you can instantly hear it because of phase etc. What I've found is when you set up your monitoring situation, think of how the most complex stereo listening situation is going to be out in the world, try to set up your monitoring rig to mimic that and make it sound good. You'll be totally surprised by how your mixes will sound good on any system or headphones you listen on, even TV's. I got caught up in having 2 sets of monitors, a mono bluetooth speaker, pair of audiophile headphones, pair of apple earbuds and finally a TV to sit and run my mixes through to make sure it'd translate when all I had to do was put the money and time into just 1, just 1 system that will translate to all of those. I love how much space I have and how much time I'm saving.

I had a very brief listen to the Shapes, but I knew you would chime in.
The SoloBe and the whole Be Series uses better drivers, but the Shape’s are a better System, top to bottom they are more consistent and easier to learn but the Be’s are probably more accurate if that makes sense. It’s a bit about priorities and that’s what makes speakers so fun. I would never have really noticed that the Shapes weren’t as accurate if we had not had them sitting next to Be’s And it was so distracting to switch back to the Shapes and not notice the difference in tweeter and woofer.

A Bit about stereo subs, simple trick to get the sound of big mains out of small speakers and it’s a lego like system you can build, I mean buy in stages.
It’s not about more SPL or deeper low end, it’s about that nasty region 2 octaves above or below the crossover point, if you can get your sub Physically within 1 wavelength of approximately 2 octaves above the crossover point you will have acoustic summation and the drivers in your near field and sub will work together in that four octave region. Positioning becomes easier though you may find the best position of near fields is different without any sub, with single sub and again with stereo subs, any 2 matching subs can be used as stereo subs just don’t be fooled into using them as 2 linked mono subs. Keep the signal for the left and the right sub separate an active sub could care less if it see’s only one channel, you might also learn on some inexpensive subs that when used as a single sub left and right were not treated equally.

ericn would you recommend running the main monitors full range or use a crossover? Also, where would be the best position for the two subs?
Thanks!

You need to crossover, or in other words High pass the sub and low pass the monitors. Many active monitors have switchable high pass that can work quite well for the near field and often my starting point while using trying to dial in an active subs low pass. If the near fields don’t have switchable high pass and I’ll just use the subs built in crossover. Many subs use generic plate amps and frankly the crossover section in a lot of these just suck. Outboard crossovers are a mixed bag on the low end the Rane & Ashly analogue are pretty ok but could use a Trip to Jim Williams, BSS a step up I have a FDS360 that I should send to JW, the 360 and the Similar TDM require that you solder resistors and Caps to change the filters and bypass the limiters.
Another inexpensive solution are these little inline filters I’m using a bunch right now www.hlabs.com/products/crossovers/

Digital drive rack boxes can solve a lot of problems, but unless you spend big bucks on the Lake/Clair/Dolby or XTA the converters suck, but both have rare examples with AES I/O !
Another favorite old box the Crown VFX that lets you do some interesting asymmetrical filters.