done. my mr5's are leaving. the annoyances of the bottom octave hiding just beyond the horizon of audibility have finally pissed me off enough to say 'enough'. guessing sub 150 is bad for the soul, and worse for your mixing.0

i do believe i'll be funding a set of hs80m's forthwith.

BUT- anybody, besides snax (adams're too spendish), have suggestions for monitors in the 5 bills range? i've given MOST of 'em a whack--- krks (lovely for listening, but sloppy bottom end), m-audios (murky all over), larger mackies (either bright or, mr5's.. which sounded good to the bottom octave.. which doesn't exist). All i got left is ADAM lil' guys.. and i dunno if there's anything else translatable!

you punks got any recommendations on the table? and hell-- i found a set of 'em for $239 a piece on amazon (!)-- so if anybody's lookin.. sheeeit.. not a bad price!

I can be of no assistance, i still only have Logitech PC speakers here.

They have low end(via sub - too much) and i am used to them, but man, i really wonder how much easier mixing would be with real speakers.

I am using Alesis Monitor Ones with a powermap pushing them. They do ok, I would not say great with the bass. They were teh cheeps. I think with eh powermap I went about 300-350 for the setup. The got decent reviews on gearslutz so I went with what I could afford at the time.

If I may post a response anyway - HS80Ms, at that price... That would be your value-for-money option, gotta say.

Now, the KRK VXTs, those sound nothing like the Rockits. I don't know how they translate, though; my acquaintance who has them only played obscure electronica through them, so damned if I know. They were, to my ears, a good sounding speaker. I was quite surprised.

But I digress. For that price, HS80Ms- couldn't beat 'em with a stick.

yeah-- y'know-- i really do like the sound of KRKs for listening a bunch. i haven't played with the vxts-- i'd LOVE a pair to listen to mixes on as a second set... if only money would allow such things

anyhoo-- yeah-- i really can't seem to think of anything else that really fits the bill. i think i'm taking 'payment' for a singer songwriter dealie session with a friend's daughter as one of 'em, and funding the other with the shipping away of my mr5's post-haste... aka post-christmas...

what'd you listen to when you picked up the adams?

You probably know this, but if you make money doing this stuff you can possibly write off monitors and other recording equipment as a business expense for taxes.

Not sure what the exact rules are, but it could be possible.

oh sure, dev-- yeah-- i am most devotedly NOT making money out of recording-- but were I, I'd have some magical monitor action written off fo sho.. but to do all that i'd need to be a business entity with a tax ID number. i ain't that-- but mebbe someday. right now though... i keep dirty old money out of the equation for a variety o' reasons..

Hey if scummy business men around here set up false companies to launder money through on an almost daily basis, it can't be too difficult.

If a freelance writing get comes to fruition for me here soon (I have some leads on some people who need content by the week) I might start up my own little business to write off a computer, fancy printer and other things. A Business Admin. professor and I talked about it once over drinks, and he made it seem like it really was not a big deal.

But I am sure being in the black is a big part of it.

wait wat?

Dan is like Rumpelstiltskin. He will record ye, but for a price: your firstborn child.

ha! yeah.. spose that should be clearer.

I am in fact taking her firstborn child...

NO WAIT..


i'm really not.. but my boss' daughter is a really talented singer/songwriter-- and he's throwing some money my way to record her-- but i'm taking the money in the shape of gear.. so it ain't technically income, and nobody asks me for taxes. and i still get to stay a 'sonic experimenter'.. not a pro engineer.. which i ain't.

And I'm not normally a big KRK fan. They have big bottom for sure, but I'd take the bigger Mackies before them, and certainly the Yamahas. The KRK VXTs are a different animal entirely. My electronica-producer friend paired 'em with the matching sub, and there's low end for days, but they have a much more defined midrange too... The intarwebs hype about those is real. Those are a good speaker.

What I listened to on the Adams- well, the obvious Dark Side Of The Moon, NIN Downward Spiral for my glossy noise, Deutsche Grammophon classical stuff, was it Coltrane or Mingus for the jazz stuff, Gov't Mule, Dead Can Dance, Massive Attack, mid-90s Metallica for insane low end on a rock record, etc., all stuff with lots of spatial depth and really nuanced shiny sounds. They translate well to other systems and the Grados paired with an external amp (I am not a fan of the Saffire's headphone amp) correspond pretty decently.

If you use the cans for any sort of serious work, this is important, I think; not to knock my Polks or Sennheisers, but they sound nothing alike. (And thus make fine alternate pairs.) Sometimes I want or need to work on the 'phones. Yeah, the Adams are better, but they're 10x the money, they'd better be.

I don't know how much you'd like the Yamahas for listening porpoises, but I would expect them to translate pretty damn well. Now, I have heard good things about the Yamaha MSP series, too, the MSP7 specifically, but- I have not heard them. And I know you need your low end. I'm about the mids, you need the big bottom, far as I can tell.

yeah.. i think that's truth-- much as i love well defined midrange-- i'm finding that the soul scratching goodness also has a lot to do with a parculyur stout bottom octave that i'm spending too much time fishing for.

funny also how we're thinking alike on the headphone amp of the saffires. i can't drive it particularly loud with 80ohm cans... which is probably a blessing.. BUT.. it's just grunt-free.. and i was thinking that might need something meatier as well-- even if it was just a hunnert dollar class d amp or schmancy like this : http://www.audiophileproducts.com/headphone-amp. either way-- the whole monitor sitch has gotta get a little bit better- and i'm sure treating the room a bit would be seriously helpful.

it's weird how yer ears change a bit when you work in ONE room consistently and you start hearing the faults of your recordings... you realize you didn't hear them previously- or you did and they didn't irritate you nearly as much as they do after cueing the recordings 5 billion times..

these suckaz are purely for working... lord god.. i never envision the day i'll EVER listen for pleasure through anything descended from an NS10...