Hey Bob,
I have my Event 20/20s in (about) a 6 foot triangle and only have a few inches either way for a sweet spot but my clients sit on a couch behind me or a chair beside me and they sound great. The sweet spot I think is only for critical listening/mixing and should be set as flat as possible. Outside the sweet spot actually sounds more pleasing to me because one hears more of the lower frequencies so I would think that your nearfields would work fine for your clients to audition your video work (audio only is another story of course).
Randy

Comparing the Alesis M1 Active Mk IIs side by side with the LX4s, I found the Alesis sounded significantly better, although at a much higher price.

The Alesis monitors also can't be expanded to 5.1.

Well here's the thing. I actually make more out of audio work than video but mostly it's just transcribing audio however last big job I did actually involved mixing audio. Now that was a bit of an eye opener. You'd think it dead simple, only two tracks, one vocal and one piano. I managed to get pretty clean recordings AND shoot the video at the same time but simply mixing the vocal and piano I was truly amazed at just how different the mix sounds depending on what you listen to it on. I'm not talking anything complex here, just the relative levels of vocal and piano!

Now I'm in the process of blowing the kids inheritance kitting up for HiDef and I'm thinking HiDef video and low def audio doesn't sit well with my ideas on the importance of the audio in any production. If I'm going to be looking at >$6Ks worth of video monitors shouldn't I be spending the same amount on audio monitoring?

Quite apart from the sweetspot issue with near field monitors they do seem a bit light on at the bottom end, given they're mostly using 6" drivers that's hardly surprising! But speaker technology seems to have made huge leaps in the last decade or so, I come from the days when woofers were at least 12" and 15" JBL drivers were pretty much the norm in studio monitors, so I'm wondering how do these modern designs stackup against these 'old school' monitors?

The only modern studio I've been in was kitted out with Genelec 5.1 setups. They're getting a little outside my price range but boy those HUGE subs look might sexy.

Here's another thing though, a lot of these modern setups add a single sub for the bottom end. Now maybe I've got this all backwards but isn't this really for a different purpose, namely the LFE channel? Shouldn't the mains be used for monitoring the full mix, something doesn't seem right to me having everything above say 100Hz going through a set of stereo speakers and everything below 100Hz coming out of another single speaker. Shouldn't the mains be capable of say 20 to 20KHz and the sub kept for just the LFE? In that case adding bottom end to a setup by adding a single sub isn't the right approach.

Hm,
I can get the Alesis for about 40% more than the LX4s at the moment, can't I just add two more M1s and a sub for 5.1?

Bob.

No, that would give you 4.1 :O)

You'd have to find a center channel speaker also. Gets a lot more pricey, and I'm not convinced that it would be optimal for 5.1.

Spot may have the most experience with 5.1 setups, I'm just doing 2.0 for my editing right now.

I think the LX1 with the expander pack is generally considered the lowest cost 5.1 system for real mixing.

I believe the LX 5.1 system is 5 evenly matched speakers. As coursedesign points out, you would still need another center channel for 5.1 which means you need buy another set of two speakers and have one left over.

Bob, I'm using the LX4 5.1 system, based on Spot's earlier advice, with an M-Audio card and I couldn't be happier. I agree with the other comments that you need "matched" speakers. I can't imagine that mixing and matching would be a good in a surround system.

Alesis is good gear. But I wound up with the M-Audio based primarily on Sport's endorsement and price

Jay

Farss, the '2.1' setups you talk of aren't really using the '.1' as an LFE - it's there purely to extend the frequency range of the setup. Bass below a certain point is fairly non-directional ie you put the sub to the left, right or center and it's going to sound pretty much the same. This is why you can get away with a single sub.

It's important to realise that in this context the sub isn't there for 'wow' factor, but merely to fill in the low end - it should blend so that you don't even know it's there, but when you switch it off you miss it!

Ideally you'd have two subs, or even better, no sub and 2x full (or perhaps 'fuller') range monitors.

ibliss,
well yes, whilst LF sound isn't directional and what comes out of a LFE channel has no direct correlation to the rest of the audio using a single speaker for the bottom end of what comes out the FR,FL speakers is going to give a lot of phase errors due to the distance between them.

So ideally what one should have are 5 full range speakers and a purpose built sub for the LFE channel. I agree that gets pretty expensive.
What I'm thinking about is a setup thats good for 2.0 mixing / monitoring and 5.1. Given that the centre channel is only for dialogue it probably doesn't need that much bottom end so maybe you could skimp on that and the two rear channel speakers when and if they're added. The LFE could be a window popping monster although I suspect it doesn't need to be that flash as it's only for FXs.

I guess what we really need is some input from someone like SPOT who'se I assume got such a setup.

Bob.

"what comes out of a LFE channel has no direct correlation to the rest of the audio"

Well, until you start mixing audio dvds.... :)

And I think it's not uncommon to push music through the sub/LFE too.

I've tried a basic 4.0 setup using two different pairs of speakers, and it's just impossible to work with! You'd really need to spend a long time with eq's and level matching to try and match the sound of the speakers before you can even think of using them for making any serious judgements in a surround context. I should think that the same would hold true for the centre speaker - it would need to be well matched to the other 4 speakers.

I would imagine that if your setup supports it, the best price compromise would be decent stereo monitors, and then something like the M-Audio LX speakers for the 5.1.

Spot, where are you now? we need input! :)

When they did the VASST tour, they used these.

M-Audio SP-5B monitors
Blue Sky 6.5 monitors w/Bass Management System

I think the Blue Sky monitors are over $500 a piece.

In his studio setups, they list

M-Audio SP5B monitors in 5.1 surround
Mackie 626 w/1801 sub woof/ 5.1 surround
Genelec 1029 monitors in 5.1 surround

Try this one for size..might help a little.
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/tutorials/mixaudio.htm

Read thru that and Jay's excellent book, taken on board the importance of room design as well. This isn't all something that's going to happen tomorrow, just trying to ensure that what I do tomorrow doesn't have a negative impact on what I do in the medium term, plus maybe some others will get some good ideas.

From what I'm reading and hearing then I'm unlikely to find one setup that's good for both stereo music mixing and 5.1 video/movie soundtrack mixing?
Or can one build a decent setup that'll do both with the caveat that you should ALSO have a plastic fantastic typical 'home theatre' setup just to check how Joe Average is going to listen to it?

I just checked out the Genelec site, hmm. They seem to have their act together with detailed recommendations for both stereo music and 5.1 setups, basically you can start with something decent for stereo and then if needed grow it to a full 5.1 setup. Of course the prices are kind of staggering and I'm guessing even with the poor shape of the USD shipping is going to cost an arm and two legs, better have ANOTHER talk to the bank manager!
Bob.