23 Jul
2004
23 Jul
'04
4:57 a.m.
I've got a pair of Alesis M1 Active and a pair of
Mackie HR824.
I love the Alesis because they are cheap and tougher
than nails. Mine have been abused to no end for about
four or five years. I can mix on these things until my
eyes fall out.
I do not like the HR824 monitors. Despite Mackie's
claims that these things have built in protection for
every concievable problem they don't-that's my
experience. I have never abused these monitors and
they are not used very often. One day I'm doing very
moderate level listening and one of them blows. These
are expensive monitors, I think they sound dynamite
but I don't trust them. It pisses me off because I'm
afraid to use them.
When I purchased the HR824 I compared them to about
eight other leading studio monitor manufacturers
products--I'm not talking about the super high end
stuff. The comparisons were all done in the same room.
I used a half dozen CDs with million dollar
productions. Hands down, they sound better than all
the others. I was really impressed by how bad some
monitors sounded. There's a couple monitor
manufacturers getting very good reviews but their
product is garbage. A little research revealed that
these manufacturers are not audio experts, they are
video experts designing audio monitors.
Phreak the chains, ride the trains, why not you, why
not me, choosing monitors is a crazy lottery, you
spin, you win, you loose, you choose; blah:blah,
blah:blah, blah, blop!
ron
--- Chris Pickett <chris.pickett(a)mail.mcgill.ca>
wrote:
Florin Andrei wrote:
__________________________________
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I'm quite familiar with a wide range of
high-end
studio headphones, but
i'm much less familiar with studio monitors.
So, what do you guys own or use? What do you
recommend?
I own a pair of near-field Alesis M1 Active MkII.
It seems like they're
"value" monitors, which means
they're
mediocre-sounding (in the studio
monitors league) but they didn't punch a hole
in
my wallet.
http://alesis.com/products/m1active/
They're bi-amplified and, yes, that you can tell:
the transition between
the bass cone and the treble bullet is smooth and
there are no
out-of-phase artifacts. There's no smearing
like
with passive filters on
the output high-current lines.
They're a bit bass-heavy and i actually think
they're intentionally made
like that. Alesis has a weird recommendation in
the manual, saying that
you should plug one of the holes with a cloth if
bass is too fat, or
even both holes if bass is waaay too big. I kinda
feel that they
intended them to typically have one hole plugged
at all times. That's
something for a bass-control knob to adjust, i
know, but for the price
($400) i guess i have no right to complain.
It's actually very weird how such a small bass
cone can deliver so well
at such low frequencies. Even if i turn up the
volume, they're still
crisp and controlled. I never turned it up into
the distortion zone, my
neighbours are not exactly fans of electronic
music. :-)
Treble is good, but definitely not as transparent
as, say, high-end
Beyerdynamic or Sennheiser phones. They're a
bit
harsh and lack sparkle
(although certain narrow bands in the mid-high
i'm
pretty sure are
actually over-emphasized), but not too much.
I didn't see a frequency response graph yet, but
i'm pretty sure
there's
a "noodle" with all kinds of curls in
the treble
zone. Nothing
impossible to live with, it's just that it
feels
like it's there.
Midrange is ok, but not remarquable in any way.
It's not too quiet or
anything, it's just that it's kinda
tasteless.
I keep them in my bedroom (no laughs please) and
actually they're close
to a corner (ok, now you're allowed to
laugh).
No, the fat bass is not because of that, they're
fat anyway (but the
corner may make the situation worse - i'll
have to
fix that one day).
I sadly keep mine on a bookshelf, two feet apart,
and have a wad of
paper towel in each of the four holes to reduce the
bass. I think
they're an extremely good deal and I've heard many
people say they are
the closest thing to Mackies in that price range.
As for loudness, the same observation. I think
there's a frequency
graph that comes with them and they look pretty
flat. If anything, the
sound on mine is just restrained, if that's the
right word.
Cheers,
Chris