hs80's came in.. they're cooling off the tweeters out in the geerage.

despite the hellish brightness of new dome tweets before being run in a while-- i can gladly say, god is in the bottom octaves..

never again 6" woofs without the big woofs somewheres.

i can't wait to hear them tomorrow!

Are you playing something through them to break 'em in, or are they just acclimating?

Either way, congratulations on being able to hear the fundamentals of a bass guitar.

hee..

naw, i'm letting a really well recorded, broad band girl vocalist record play on loop.. may's well burn the shit out of the midrange.. rather let the tweeters suffer for a couple days than have myself do it.

and seriously.. bass guitar.. aaah... fuck, my mixes sound bad. i hope it's just lack of being broken in..

That was my reaction to getting new monitors too. My mixes, I mean, not yours.

They took some getting used to, too. I've found myself EQing less with them, though. Especially the bottom end.

y'know-- it's weird-- i've been letting them burn in now for about 12 hours, and they're still fairly gnarly sounding. the tweeters are uncomfortably bright, i'll tell you what (everything's set flat though).. i can see what people mean when they say they're relatives of ns10s. i'm hoping they break in a bit, 'cause the midrange on these things is sharp and nasty so far- but i guess it'll keep me from overaccentuating upper mids, that's for sure. it's gonna take a LOT of listening on these things to get used to their sonic signature.. and they don't inspire me to WANT to listen just yet.

i shouldn'tve ever sold my B&Ws goddamn it. i'm not remorseful about the hs80's- but the B&Ws at least sounded like familiar music. they definitely ask to be turned down though. ouch!

i have faith all will be as it should be.. but getting there.. ick.. ugly process.

Mine are fully broken in by now, and they're still pretty gnarly sounding. Not nearly as gnarly sounding as they were when they were new though.


As an example: The Polk MOMO component speakers in my truck are slightly less bright than my HS80s. Which is to say, the HS80s are pretty damn bright. Not sibilant or anything, though. Just bright. I like that about them, though.

I've run them at around 85db for 2 straight days now-- the joy of having a place to record NOT attached to the house!

Suffice to say, they sound WAY better now, but i'm gonna burn 'em in through the weekend just to make sure. :thu:

I think they'd make a brutally honest listening speaker, for sure-- but i'm really glad that they're not my daily listen. it's nice too-- the very bottom opened up a bunch as well-- the lowest rumbles of bass were kinda.. well.. a little weak at first.. but they've developed a bunch over the last 36 hours.

definitely excited to see where they end up-- the pair i listened to previously sounded.. for monitors.. fairly loverly- and they had a LOT of mileage on 'em in a treated room.

I'll chime in here with "speaker break-in is not an audiophile myth". 'S not boutique power cable stuff; it's a physical object that needs to get shaking for a bit before it settles in.

Once they've sorted themselves I'd be interested in hearing your take on them vs. the Mackies you were working on prior.

yeah-- definitely no myth here. all the moving parts gotta get moved in, for sure.

what i CAN say, so far, is that the hs80's have this almost violent peering in aspect about 'em. i feel like i'm looking across layers of the recording.. i know, weird poetic description-- but i can't describe it any other way. you're not listening to MUSIC anymore on them-- any more than looking at an xray is looking at a photograph.

it's some weird analytical mojo, and it's kinda ugly, but kinda fascinating. it really is de-organifying what you record and turning it into data. very granular, easily assessable data.

i rearranged them with the 'mid shift'-- which drops 2db from the mids, and hit the 2db rolloff on the highs, and they sounded MUCH more like music.. but even all flat, there's definitely something really compellingly clear about these things, even if it's unpleasant to listen to. at low volumes though, they really REALLY shine- which the mr5's did not. i think my ears will appreciate the 83-85db listening. they're tuned to be played quietly, methinks.. cause they want to kill you when you turn them up. actively. like actively try to poke your brains out with dandelion pullers.

Curiouser.. I went, the other day, to try a coupla monitors at the local GC. Threw down with the hs80's, adam a7's, mackie 824's, the new mr5's, and some of the big m-audios.

y'know- having listened to the lot, i'm super stoked i picked out the hs80s-- but much less so for the reason i THOUGHT i would. i listened to the a7's and the mr5's, and i seriously thought that the mr5s and the a7's sounded NICER. both of 'em were round, and pleasant, clear as hell, and just genuinely listenable-- but on NEITHER of them i could hear reverb tails well-- and i wanted to curl up and ENJOY them, 'cause they were freaking PLEASANT. then i tried the m-audios. just too murky altogether. unpleasantly unclear except at loud volumes. the hs80s sounded really clear at lower volumes, i could hear all the unnecessary information i never cared about (or did, and just couldn't hear..), and the more i turned them up, the unpleasanter they got. but not in the maudio way-- in a genuinely grating sort of way that really reveals exactly how ugly 'flat' is. totally in your face and forward. but goddamn clear.

all that said-- i think the joy of them is just that they make you keep your volume down-- which is probably the best thing for my ears in the long run, and best for non-reacting in the room.

the ones i currently have in my geerage have been playing non-stop for 6 straight days now, and sound WAAAY better than they did at first. they're still not something i'd ever want to LISTEN to without adjusting the eq switches. they're definitely sonic tools... i'm looking forward to seeing what they do as the sorta 'optic' into recording and mixing.

Yeah, they're definitely not nice pretty sounding listening speakers. There are quite a few modern albums that I can't listen to on them because they're clipping or they have something funky about them.

For example: Testament's The Formation of Damnation. I don't know if Andy Sneap managed to fuck this mix up, but I think it's probably the mastering engineer that fucked it up. Everything is clipping. Can't listen to it on the HS80m's. I can on my old Kenwood floorstanders, though.