This reaffirms my belief

Totally agree. I’ve been selling some outboard gear to upgrade my speakers.

I’ve pretty much forgone using speakers in my home studio because there simply isn’t enough space to put adequate treatment to get the room to the point of “the speakers not lying”.

Just been using HD770s and been getting great mixes while using other references, now without the references it’s impossible, but with my apple earbuds, my Bluetooth speaker and my car, my mixes have never sounded better.

I wish I could bring my PMC result 6s into the room and feel confident in them but it’s impossible with the limited space. I admit it hasn’t felt necessary though cause I hear my mixes translating very well atm.

I think room acoustics should be the priority and monitors afterwards, but if you can’t get at least 7-8 inches of absorption all around the mix position you’re not gonna get the speakers to “not lie” and then it begs the question of whether or not you’d be better off just learning your headphones and references really well

Wow! This is awesome to hear. So rare that spending *less* on a monitor is the right way to go…

Same. I could never get sonar works or room eq wizard to do much for me. The narrow dispersion waveguides have the magic stereo image but seem to change the tone. The small ATCs just don’t sound like the way I hear music. They’re too “monitors” in the Yamaha sense vs the SCM50 and up and lose the visceral feeling and hide how things sound in the real world or on big, better speakers despite telling you how they sound in a much more detailed way than Yamaha. They tell you how it sounds rather than show you how it sounds. Maybe they’d be perfect for editing dialogue or something for hours but even then it’s rare that sibilance is painful on them. The Neumanns and Genelec the ones just sound heavily filtered and low head room. The Shapes and the old KRK 6000 and now V6S4 were really good and the newer Focal ST6 line is even better. I really like the Solo ST6 even if it’s minutely too bright and the Shapes too which are minutely too dark and I’ll probably get the Solo ST6 when these break unless the Reflector Audio stuff is somehow good or APS or Dynaudio gets better distribution. I thought the older, more resonant Focal Solos were pretty unusuable but the new stuff is great.

Dynaudios are cool too if you get their higher end monitors new or old like the Ms and BMs and the Cores which i haven’t heard but they seem pretty cool, just poor distribution in the US.


yeah smaller speakers blend better closer up and activate less room nodes. A smaller monitor can easily be better. The crossovers can also be perceived very differently in the real world too

Yeah it happens, often the best product in a line isn’t about the price, often the more expensive product is all about winning the spec sheet wars. Bigger and more expensive isn’t always better.

Yeah we often forget we do this because we like it, even in the audiophile world, there is always a quiet debate about most transparent vs enjoyable to listen to. You either need to find a balance or go for both.

Yes there is also the fact that sometimes a speaker just works in a certain room.

Yeah translation is a big issue. Magnesium damps the Shape Twins tweeters versus a good soft dome that makes the frequencies clear as day. Even then the ATC dome and others are overdamped versus the super lightweight metal domes like the Focal beryllium, compression drivers, and many horn loaded assemblies so the translation is not really there to a ton of systems and you might be fixing not problems you shouldn’t be or not fixing problems you should be.