Picking up from a previous thread: http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=242378. BusterKeaton asked me to post my impressions, so here goes.
First, thanks MyST, PAW and Spot for pointing me to these speakers. I would have done something really stupid without your help.
As background, I bought the M-Audio LX4 5.1 studio monitor setup. I paid $400. This after spending 2 weeks visiting every computer and audio store in town.
These speakers have fantastic clarity. I hooked them up, placed them where I could, ran some basic calibration, and they sound SUPERB. Everything is very clear and spatially positioned. IMHO, the latter is the mark of a great speaker and these have them (off the shelf with the ugliest setup you can imagine, see below). These are definitely the speakers to get for the low-end budget (<$500). Far superior to anything you'll find in a stereo/video store. Simply put, store systems make the room sound good and sacrifice accuracy. They don't sound good when your ear is right next to the speaker. These M-audios let you sit close and they make that little audio world in your head clear as a bell. In fact, if you're a solo editor sitting in a small room working on a computer, I'll bet these things are superior to a $1,000 store-bought "home theater system". Maybe more. Definitely go the studio, near-field monitor setup instead. If you have more $$$ to spend, buy higher-end studio monitors with more power.
It'll take some time to measure and position these guys. Currently I have a horrible setup: I work in the corner of a room with an L-shaped desk. I have two 21" monitors in my face in the corner of the ell. So until I can mount the speakers on the walls, I now have a 90 degree angle for FL and FR and am sitting 2' from them. My rear speakers can only go to 180 degree. So I basically have an "ultra-wide stereo" setup instead of a 'surround" :-)
I'll be able to properly re-position the front 3 speakers on the wall over the computer monitors and facing down at me.. But I'm doomed to a max 180 degree position for the rear speakers. If I didn't have youngsters who'd poke a hole in a woofer as soon as listen to it, it might be different. So since I don't want to be bought up for child-slaughter, these speakers must live on the wall and out of reach.
These speakers also sit back on the desk right now, so I'm getting reflections from the desktop. This is causing some phase cancellation, so they're sensitive to head movement, i.e., off-axis coloring. If I move my head 3" up and down, the sound changes. I'm pretty sure I can eliminate this problem. Still, the sweet-spot in the room is going to be pretty small.
I haven't cranked them yet (need to wait till post-burn-in), although I did briefly push to the point of distortion. Yes, these are not loud, piss-off-the neighbor speakers. And if you bring in all your friends to sit around and watch/listen to your mix, they're going to have to crowd in and take turns in the sweet-spot. But they're plenty loud enough for solo mixing.
Now going OT to the thread title: I'll pick up on this later, but some initial thoughts for now since it ilustrates the newbie impression. Spot, some ideas for your next book. I've been a little disappointed that your current book doesn't delve into 5.1 editting more. On first read it was very useful. On second read with app in hand, I couldn't understand it at all :-) pg 195-198: Yes I get it, but no I don't *get* it. I looked on your CD for an example 5.1 veg and there wasn't one. That would be very useful. Now I'm scouring the audio forum trying to learn about advanced busses. Since I can't send bus->bus, I can't yet see how I'm going to turn 2 channel into 5.1. Elegantly, that is. Basically, I have two mixing scenarios for the amateur stuff I want to do: (1) Adding some stereo music source and converting to 5.1, so as to override the silly surround fx those home-theater players insert. (2) Taking some basic sound and dialog from my on-board camera mic and adding music as background. So simple stuff. But its eluding me right now.
To illustrate, take a simple approach for 2->5.1: Send the stereo to front-left-right, mono the stereo and send to the front-center, send the stereo through some reverb for the rear-left-right speakers, pull all the low-end and send it to the LFE. But this requires the same audio track duplicated 4 times. And I have to manually add matching lo/high passes for the LFE and non-LFE channels. Hardly elegant, although I could at least develop a reusable veg template.. Or I can use the surround panner and get signal to 5 channels, but they're the same signal so no fx on the rear/center. And the surround panner sends nothing to the 5 channels *and* the LFE, so the latter *has* to be created separately.
Alternatively, I thought I'd mirror the 6 speaker channels with 6 busses. But I can't send a track to more than one bus, and I can't route a bus to another bus.
Anyway, I'm lost right now but fun is in my future as I work it out :-)
The other thing that occurred to me as I was playing around is that 5.1 is going to be a nightmare to mix in general for a wide population. There is a huge variation in the setups of the various listeners, i.e., the majority of home setups stink. I can definitely see myself making a brilliant mix at home and having it sound like sh*t at my friends house :-) Even if I didn't overdo my "guitar flying around the room" too-many-new-toys mixing effort :-)) And there are many gotchas lurking for the 5.1 mixer, e.g., ensuring the stereo and mono mixdown sounds ok, or more subtle, e.g., see a very interesting thread at http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=19&MessageID=185980.
First, thanks MyST, PAW and Spot for pointing me to these speakers. I would have done something really stupid without your help.
As background, I bought the M-Audio LX4 5.1 studio monitor setup. I paid $400. This after spending 2 weeks visiting every computer and audio store in town.
These speakers have fantastic clarity. I hooked them up, placed them where I could, ran some basic calibration, and they sound SUPERB. Everything is very clear and spatially positioned. IMHO, the latter is the mark of a great speaker and these have them (off the shelf with the ugliest setup you can imagine, see below). These are definitely the speakers to get for the low-end budget (<$500). Far superior to anything you'll find in a stereo/video store. Simply put, store systems make the room sound good and sacrifice accuracy. They don't sound good when your ear is right next to the speaker. These M-audios let you sit close and they make that little audio world in your head clear as a bell. In fact, if you're a solo editor sitting in a small room working on a computer, I'll bet these things are superior to a $1,000 store-bought "home theater system". Maybe more. Definitely go the studio, near-field monitor setup instead. If you have more $$$ to spend, buy higher-end studio monitors with more power.
It'll take some time to measure and position these guys. Currently I have a horrible setup: I work in the corner of a room with an L-shaped desk. I have two 21" monitors in my face in the corner of the ell. So until I can mount the speakers on the walls, I now have a 90 degree angle for FL and FR and am sitting 2' from them. My rear speakers can only go to 180 degree. So I basically have an "ultra-wide stereo" setup instead of a 'surround" :-)
I'll be able to properly re-position the front 3 speakers on the wall over the computer monitors and facing down at me.. But I'm doomed to a max 180 degree position for the rear speakers. If I didn't have youngsters who'd poke a hole in a woofer as soon as listen to it, it might be different. So since I don't want to be bought up for child-slaughter, these speakers must live on the wall and out of reach.
These speakers also sit back on the desk right now, so I'm getting reflections from the desktop. This is causing some phase cancellation, so they're sensitive to head movement, i.e., off-axis coloring. If I move my head 3" up and down, the sound changes. I'm pretty sure I can eliminate this problem. Still, the sweet-spot in the room is going to be pretty small.
I haven't cranked them yet (need to wait till post-burn-in), although I did briefly push to the point of distortion. Yes, these are not loud, piss-off-the neighbor speakers. And if you bring in all your friends to sit around and watch/listen to your mix, they're going to have to crowd in and take turns in the sweet-spot. But they're plenty loud enough for solo mixing.
Now going OT to the thread title: I'll pick up on this later, but some initial thoughts for now since it ilustrates the newbie impression. Spot, some ideas for your next book. I've been a little disappointed that your current book doesn't delve into 5.1 editting more. On first read it was very useful. On second read with app in hand, I couldn't understand it at all :-) pg 195-198: Yes I get it, but no I don't *get* it. I looked on your CD for an example 5.1 veg and there wasn't one. That would be very useful. Now I'm scouring the audio forum trying to learn about advanced busses. Since I can't send bus->bus, I can't yet see how I'm going to turn 2 channel into 5.1. Elegantly, that is. Basically, I have two mixing scenarios for the amateur stuff I want to do: (1) Adding some stereo music source and converting to 5.1, so as to override the silly surround fx those home-theater players insert. (2) Taking some basic sound and dialog from my on-board camera mic and adding music as background. So simple stuff. But its eluding me right now.
To illustrate, take a simple approach for 2->5.1: Send the stereo to front-left-right, mono the stereo and send to the front-center, send the stereo through some reverb for the rear-left-right speakers, pull all the low-end and send it to the LFE. But this requires the same audio track duplicated 4 times. And I have to manually add matching lo/high passes for the LFE and non-LFE channels. Hardly elegant, although I could at least develop a reusable veg template.. Or I can use the surround panner and get signal to 5 channels, but they're the same signal so no fx on the rear/center. And the surround panner sends nothing to the 5 channels *and* the LFE, so the latter *has* to be created separately.
Alternatively, I thought I'd mirror the 6 speaker channels with 6 busses. But I can't send a track to more than one bus, and I can't route a bus to another bus.
Anyway, I'm lost right now but fun is in my future as I work it out :-)
The other thing that occurred to me as I was playing around is that 5.1 is going to be a nightmare to mix in general for a wide population. There is a huge variation in the setups of the various listeners, i.e., the majority of home setups stink. I can definitely see myself making a brilliant mix at home and having it sound like sh*t at my friends house :-) Even if I didn't overdo my "guitar flying around the room" too-many-new-toys mixing effort :-)) And there are many gotchas lurking for the 5.1 mixer, e.g., ensuring the stereo and mono mixdown sounds ok, or more subtle, e.g., see a very interesting thread at http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=19&MessageID=185980.