User Manual

11
A Brief Tutorial on Studio Monitors
7. Power down your left speaker.
POWER
100-120 V T2AL 60Hz
220-240V T1AL 50Hz
This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules and ICES-003 for Canada. Operation is subjected to the
following two conditions: (1) this device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must
accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.
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SERIAL NUMBER
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8. Slowly increase the input sensitivity (volume) of your
right speaker until the acoustic level of the test tone
playing reaches 82 dB SPL.
LEVEL
XLR TRS
ACOUSTIC
SPACE
HF DRIVER HP FILTER
MAXMIN
U
INPUT ACOUSTIC TUNING
Linear
-1.5dB
-3dB
-6dB
Linear
+1dB
-1.5dB
-4dB
Linear
60Hz
80Hz
100Hz
TM
LEVEL
MAXMIN
U
9. Stop the pink noise and turn your left speaker back on.
Play some program music you are familiar with through
your speakers and sit down in your mix position. You may
need to fine-tune your speaker placement until the sound
is balanced and you have a nice, wide sweet spot from
which to mix.
Note: If 85 dB is too loud for your room, either because of
noise constraints or because the room is too small, you can
redo the above calibration steps and dial in each speaker
to 79 dB instead. The important thing is that both speakers
are set to the same SPL level, not the level itself.
Room Acoustics
Well-designed studio monitors are engineered to
reproduce an input signal with extreme fidelity,
maintaining near-flat frequency and phase response at
all levels up to the threshold of clipping. However, the
performance of any monitor will be influenced by the
acoustics of the space in which they operate. Dicult
room acoustics, even with proper speaker placement, can
interfere with achieving the highest fidelity your monitoring
system can provide.
For example, if your room exaggerates high-frequencies,
your mixes will lack life and feel flat elsewhere. If your room
exaggerates low-end, that thundering tom roll, will lose all
its thunder when you hand o your mix to your drummer to
take a listen.
In most home-studio environments, the room is not
designed to maximize the listening experience, so it’s
necessary to recognize and correct what that space does
to the sound in order to optimize the monitor system’s
performance. In general, the following physical features of
a room can aect a sound system’s performance:
• Room size
• Construction
• Reflectivity
Understand how the room aects your mix
• Size. The size of the room directly impacts how well
certain frequencies will be reproduced. For example, if
you measure a room diagonally, you will discover how well
that room will be able to sustain low frequencies. This may
seem odd until you think about the physical length of audio
waves at various frequencies. For example, a 50 Hz wave
is about 22.6 feet long. (To calculate how long an audio
wave is, divide the speed of sound—1,130 ft./second—by
the frequency. For a 50 Hz wave, 1,130/50 = 22.6 ft.) So a
room that is 45 feet on the diagonal is going to regenerate
low frequencies more eectively than a room that is 15
feet on the diagonal.
When a room’s width or length correlates directly to the
length of a waveform at a specific frequency, a standing
wave can occur where the initial sound and the reflected
sound begin to reinforce each other. Let’s say we have a
long, narrow room where the distance from one side to
the other is 22.6 feet. When a 50 Hz wave bounces o
the wall, the reflective wave travels right back along the
same path and bounces o the other wall, and the cycle
repeats. In a room such as this, 50 Hz reproduces very
well—maybe too well. So when you’re listening to your
mix in that room, it will appear to have a heavy low end
because the low frequencies are being exaggerated by the
room acoustics. Since you hear exaggerated lows, you’re
likely to compensate for them, and when the mix is played
elsewhere, it will lack low end.
Construction. Low-frequency waves are powerful
enough to cause the walls, ceiling, and even the
floor to flex and move. This is called “diaphragmatic
action,” and it dissipates energy and strips away the
low-end definition. So if your room’s walls and floor
are made of solid brick and concrete that don’t vibrate