Want Advice/Opinions: Next Set of Monitors

[Robert Lane]

Over the past 2 decades I've had a handful of great near-fields, from Blue Sky, JBL, Focal and others. And while I'm in the process of rebuilding the biz post-covid I've decided to make a more serious investment in my audio environment, specifically the monitor pair.

Because of the content I produce the audio portion isn't an afterthought, it's a primary concern. The sound-bed of music, VO, EFX... it's all part of the landscape in telling the story and helping the viewer really enjoy the presentation - whatever it is.

So important is the audio to me that I'll almost always create a storyboard around the music FIRST, then create the visuals based on the emotion and energy of the music. Yep, it's a backwards process for most, but that style is what has always set me apart from other producers and made my stuff more dramatic and interesting to watch.

I've got 2 schools of thought on the monitor situation:

1. Get another set of near-fields - albeit at a higher price point than what I've had previously. They're purpose-built for editing and flat-accurate (or as much as the brands claim to be). I've no hesitation about this.

BUT...

2. What I'm considering is instead of near-fields is a high-quality pair of loudspeakers, also designed to be dead-on accurate but, with purposeful coloring. Obviously. And they'd be connected to a high-current, Class-A/B amp to get as much clean, powerful signal as the budget will allow. No, not McIntosh, that's still way beyond reason.

So here's what I've selected as possibilities for both options, and I'd like your feedback. Ha, no pun intended:

Near-fields:

- HEDD Type 07 MK2 Series

- Adam S2V 7"

- Adam A8H 8"


For the "hi-fi" option:

- Bowers & Wilkins 706 S3

- NAD C 3050 integrated amp

- Panamax MR4300 line conditioner

- The best pair of oxygen-free, large-scale copper wiring from amp to B&W's.

If you don't know anything about these units, don't chime in just for the heck of it. I want the audio pros to respond with either relevant experience or, advice based on both concepts.

I've been around long enough to know the difference between loudspeakers and near-fields, but my gut tells me that based on how I mix things the hi-fi option might be a logical, out-of-the-box thinking option. Maybe not, that's why I'm posting the question.

Fire away...

[Allan Black]

Hi Robert, you haven’t pictured your control room, the size etc. and what speakers do you actually use now?

Over the years I’ve had 16” Tannoys with Bryston amps. 12” JBLs down to 6” Auratones. You’re not recording big classical orchestras, I think it’s horses for courses so I’m proposing near fields. I’m an ADAM speaker fan, I still have my original A7s.

I’d be looking at the ADAM S2V 7” they’re active so you don’t have to include an extra amp, there’s ’room adaption’ control on the rear and they’re bit smaller than the A8Hs. You might be able to take your best sounding track down to the shop and audition it on those speakers.

Cheers.

[Robert Lane]

I'm not using any monitors now. After covid shutdown my production company (TV commercials) I'm just now in the process of rebuilding, ground-up.

I've converted my dining room into my new edit suite which surprisingly is very "dead" with nearly zero reflections anywhere and a neutral sonic environment.

So I'm starting with the audio monitors, going to upgrade the ancient 2013 iMac into a Mac Studio M2 and next will be camera/lenses/location audio etc.

On the nearfield side I've been leaning towards the HEDD units because they're amazingly tunable for the environment:

https://hedd.audio/products/type-07-mk2

Unfortunately there's nobody in my area to demo them, I'd have to travel to California (which might be a good excuse to get a mini-vacation in before the holidays) but other than the controls they seem to be a head-to-head competitor for the Adam's.

I'm still considering the B&W option because the way I mix things end up sounding like you're listening things on a hi-fi system, so if I start with that as a baseline maybe it'd be less work. Dunno, it's still just a theory I'm working on.

[Paul R Johnson]

Ive done what you have done in my video studio. My audio studio sounded so much better with the 25 year old monitorsI know so well, and the video studio using passive 5” RCFs was fine but just hiding things, like hums and occasional colouration from reflections.

I decided to buy some active Adam 8” speakers for the audio studio because a friend had some and I liked the sound, BUT put them in the audio studio to replace the tired speakers there. Old 8” celestions. Not the best when new, but i know them so well. I found the Adams difficult. They sounded wonderful, but too modern, so i moved them to the video studio, which was a real success. Instantly more revealing of my occasional problems, and unexpectedly also making hiss more obvious to even my aged ears. Hugely better sounding and somehow, either side of my very large multiview screen, they do not sound like two speakers, but a proper soundfield. The old 5” speakers were very obviously two sources. I had not expected that. I suspect the ribbon tweeter is what does it.

In a video studio, monitoring for our sort of quality and purpose, i have zero time for hifi stupidity, so stuff oxygen free cable, and all the other hyperbole they trot out. Not once in broadcast studios have i seen hifi mentality. No hugely expensive cable, no boutique amps, and hifi branded gear. It isn't cost, its effectiveness. Ive sat in nasty spaces in trucks with Genelec small monitors, run from a 19” rack mount amp of any make, often repurposed. If you justify millions of pounds spent on other elements, they could use expensive audio gear, but they dont. They use what they can hear. I bet your video studio/edit suite is not silent, does have loads of reflections from screens, and probably has to compromise speaker positioning from the ideal. So you need something that reveals and is not tiring. Some equipment is an instant impact on first switch on. Swapping a cheap amp for a silly one is never audible. Pros nevr waste money on fashion and trends.


I would not consider ANY items from your Hfi list. Especially the line conditioners and cable. I went with 8” Adams simply because on paper, the low end matched my old speakers. I’m actually pretty sure had I bought the 7” version I would be just as happy. I have no idea what my speaker cable brand is in the audio studio. It was two core yellow, so I suspect it was probably building site arctic 110v left from a job in 2004. Thickish copper, probably 1.5mm2, perfectly good enough. The video studio of course just has two cables to the interface. Theyre black!

[Robert Lane]

Thanks for the great reply, bravo.

I'm with you about the hi-fi mentality; most of the info geared towards uninformed general consumer marketplace.

Both the HEDD and Adam units have had all positive reviews and both claim extreme accuracy and tuning for the environment so I'll be fine with either.

I'll let the forum know which way I go when it's time and make my own review for others to get some real-world info on units that have little exposure to our genre of editors.

Cheers.

[Allan Black]

Originally Posted by Robert Lane

I've converted my dining room into my new edit suite which surprisingly is very "dead" with nearly zero reflections anywhere and a neutral sonic environment.

Bingo! Even if it’s brand new, your dining room in fact your house wasn’t built as a dedicated recording studio, so the first thing you have to do is to check its electrical cabling to avoid getting any clicks, hums and interference once you install, start running your new set up to build up a client base. Are there any police stations, fire stations or FM transmitters in your vicinity? Possible interference there.

Even if there’s not you should use the money you saved by going ‘near field’ and not ‘hi fi’ to bring in a specialised electrician to check and maybe re-cable your entire house, just not the dining room. Read up about a star ground earthing system, and call an established studio to find out who they used. Do it now.

I can tell you about some examples in Sydney, one studio that wisely rewired their whole electrical system before they started, one that didn’t and it cost them a fortune after they started, and one because of repeated static interference in their power, just gave up and closed their business. You need to be with the first example.

In 1977 in Sydney I bought a 2 story old 1940 building and with the proper advice we re-cabled the entire place with a star ground electrical earthing system, and never had any electrical problems the 24yrs we were in operation, before I got an offer I couldn’t refuse and I sold it all to retire.

Here’s that day in August 1977, I signed the cheque for our building. Eventually Robert you need to be in a similar position to retire.

Cheers.

[Robert Lane]

Interesting story, but I don't plan to ever retire. Boring future.

One of the things that covid f-ed up for me was the release of a new motorsports series for the web. Had a $2M sponsored budget and 10 episodes ready to go into preproduction, then it all had to be shut down. I'm bringing back that show - in modified form - and produce that until I'm fertilizer, not do client work.

So rewiring the house isn't practical or necessary, I can clean up the electrical system with commercial-grade UPS's and line conditioners that will remove any instability from the incoming power grid. That's what I did in my last real office/edit suite I had downtown.

If I was going to actually transform the house into a client-based studio like what Brad Pitt and partners did with Miraval Studios then ya, it'd be a major undertaking.

Appreciate the stories guys, it's good to see how much talent there is out there still posting on DVinfo. Probably makes Chris proud too.

Cheers.

[Robert Lane]

Just for those who are curious...

This is the show that's coming back, god willing late spring 2025:

[Paul R Johnson]

Very few people in the UK have dirty power in any way that needs fixing. The only time we use UPS is for no power outages. We get very few real cuts here. One in my studio in five years since i moved in when a digger outside cut the cable. Fixed in two hours. No conditioning required at all here. Im surprised the US has such bad electricity supply. Our voltage and frequency stability is good here. Power treatment is something we only do to solve a problem. Its never built into a project as standard?

[Robert Lane]

It depends on the area and how close to a nuclear power facility you are.

In my neck 'o the woods we're blessed with being a non-disaster state; no fires, floods, eartquakes, tornadoes... none of the stuff say like California, Florida or the eastern coastline has to put up with.

And because our original phone system going back to the 1940's had a nuclear-hardened point-of-presence here, our area all the original copper - and now fibre - is also very clean and very stable with very few niggles.

(Interesting side-note: I did some consulting for a now defunct division of an AT&T marriage with BT called, "Concert". We got to tour the "P.O.P." and learned why during the cold war that making telcom and SATcom as reliable as possible was priority #1 here. Amazing stuff they did back then. And we still have massive cables running on the ocean floor connecting us to the European and Pac-Asian continents for data and voice. But I digress...)

With exception to my old office downtown where we'd have a power cut nearly every month because some drunk or distracted driver would take out a nearby transformer or fibre pedastal, here in my new home area it's been almost 100% stable.

There's always going to be "noise" in power transmission lines regardless where you live on the planet, caused by natural resistance in cabling, the various transformer and relay stations pushing along the high-current across the lands and even just the fuse-box at home creates it's own resistance and noise and sends it down the line to your power outlet. Nobody has naturally occuring 100% clean, noise-free power, it's just not physically possible. It's just the way an electrical power grid works.

So a UPS disconnects you from the internal grid in your home/office and the newer units have conditioning built-in (yeah, they're much more expensive than the typical UPS you'd get at an electronics store) but the difference is audible when you're dealing with high-current relays in the nearfields we use.

And you can clearly see the difference on a 'scope, between house/office power outlet and what comes out of a conditioning UPS. The stuff right from the socket is messy at best, out of the UPS it's a nearly 90% reduction in "noise" and fluctuations.

The other main difference between your power and the US is that we're at differrent line frequencies; you're 50hz, we're 60. That's exactly what started the whole PAL vs. NTSC video spec differences, is the power grid. And it's all because of the raster lines that could be picked up by video cameras during a shoot; if the frame-rate matched the raster line paint frequency, you'd see that nasty black horizontal line on a TV screen while filming.

Amazing how as production professionals have to consider something as simple as the power we get to do our work. But it's kinda cool in a tech-geek sorta way too.

[John Nantz]

Scott - good thread you have here.
Educational and interesting replies.

Have a question, coming from a hi-fi background but believe that "Two thirds of good video is good audio". (so please don't shoot the messenger)

anyway, here it goes:

Originally Posted by Robert Lane

ISo a UPS disconnects you from the internal grid in your home/office and the newer units have conditioning built-in (yeah, they're much more expensive than the typical UPS you'd get at an electronics store) but the difference is audible when you're dealing with high-current relays in the nearfields we use.

So, when you use the term "UPS", you're talking about a more sophisticated unit that one generally gets. For example, we've got a couple here from Costco, an older Trip-Lite and a newer CyberPower unit (battery on the TripLite gave out so got the second one while I ordered a replacement battery.

We have had power outages (surrounded by lots of trees [aka, "firewood"] in western Washington) and wind storms wind up causing fir tree branches and falling trees to take out the main power lines. The units help with smoothing out the blips (branches hitting the lines but not taking them [ed: lines] out) and the occasional outage (providing time to safely close down the computer). I'd think that the voltage regulation via the surge outlets, [voltage] which can be seen on the screen, is reasonably good. These were 1350VA to 1600, running in the $150 - 200 range.They'd probably only 'condition' voltage, but not likely frequency.

Are these the type you'd classify as not, or not very, suitable? (f.e., 'typical electronics store')

[another edit: you mentioned "relays". One of the UPS units in the office, just recently, started cutting out (quitting) and it may be the relays. However, don't know if they're they same kind of relays that were referred to. I disconnected some items from the UPS and haven't had a problem since so the relays are probably wearing out. Didn't have any large speakers but did have a lot of other "computer" related items (including computers, monitors, printer, backup drive, etc, kinda stuff).]

[Robert Lane]

Who's Scott??

Yes, the UPS's I'm referring to you don't get from Costco or Best Buy. Usually places like Grainger or even B&H photo where they sell the larger units that can power an entire rack of equipment for a full day before needing to shut down the computer/peripherals. About $2,500 is an average cost, but the clean electrical supply and having many hours of usable work time is mission-critical to me.

The relays I'm referring to are in the nearfields, the ones that live in the built-in power supplies since nearly all nearfields these days are self-powered. The relays especially amplify any "dirty" power they're being fed and that's where most of the floor-noise or "hiss" we all complain about comes from. When you feed them clean power the hiss is nearly imperceptible - depending the unit and the quality of the built-in amps.

I've found that KRK, Mackie, Behrigner, Presonus, M-Audio, low-end JBL and others that are sub-$1K per unit have especially noisy amps, regardless how much power they deliver.

So yeah, clean power has many ramifications in the world of pro-audio/video editing when it comes to getting as good a signal into and out of the monitors as possible.

Keep in mind that like mentioned above, no matter how good the power going in is, if the internal circuitry is crap or sub-par you're still going to get hiss and other less-than-enjoyable output that's audible to the trained ear in a controlled studio environment.

But if you're in a run-n-gun situation and you're cutting edits in a hotel room, you do what you can and don't sweat the small stuff.

[Paul R Johnson]

Relays are the cause of hiss? Surely you jest?

The relays in the products I have that use them to power on and off a unit isolate the power and relay coil side - that's the entire point isn't it? They're a locally controlled switch, no different from a real two pole mains power switch on virtually anything. I'm uncertain now if we are talking about real things or magic?

The only time in the UK people complain about power is in the price - now around 50pa KW/Hr. We do have some RF issues with switch mode power supplies, and occasionally data networks superimposed on mains wiring to allow electronics equipment to be marketed as cable free. I also got a bit lost on the closest to nuclear power plants be good/bad?

Power supply frequency also seems to be irrelevant.

My own experience of UPS devices is mixed. The cheaper variety simply monitor supply voltage and if it drops they switch from the mains power input to the internal inverter version of mains power. The brief gap rarely causes issues. The alternative type which generates continual power from a permanently running inverter charged from mains input is much more expensive, especially in the higher power versions. However, looking at the waveforms they produce, there seem to me to be some distortion of the waveform. Sure, they are better than dirty mains, but as I said, UK mains power is very reliable, outages rare and noise levels low enough I have few issues with supply. I have had a number of oddities but these are always in industrial areas where high power machinery kicks in and out, swinging neutrals a bit which often seems to result in visible dips in lighting - but rarely in audio. A few folk here will use them when running from portable generators, but where real power is available, over hear power conditioners are very rare. Those that do have them have no idea if they are doing anything?

Overhead power at domestic voltages is getting less and less, and supply is more normally underground. Transformers up poles are rarely seen in towns. I don't think I have seen one around my own town. In the country, distribution is overhead, often at 11KV, with transformers down to 240 3 phase (415 between phases) on poles. 3 phase at supply voltages might be overhead going to small units or farms, but normally in built up areas, brick built 11KV substations feed domestic and industrial properties.

I really didn't know the US power distribution system was this odd? Useful info - thanks.

[Andrew Smith]

Originally Posted by Allan Black

Here’s that day in August 1977, I signed the cheque for our building. Eventually Robert you need to be in a similar position to retire.

Alan, that photo of you with the stacked champagne glasses reminds me of those champagne glass pyramids that tended to be the finale of something on TV back in that period of time.

What was the cultural thinking behind the glamour (or whatever) of having stacked champagne glasses?

Andrew

[Robert Lane]

I'm not an electrical engineer so the precise cause of hiss as described to me by someone who works the numbers for a living said that transformers and relays are the Achilles heel in nearfields.

Adam, Focal, Kali, upper-end JBL, HEDD and others where the per unit cost is over $1,000 have spent the money on great if not amazing internals, hence their accuracy and low floor-noise characteristics.

Kali especially, went out of their way to put the research and development into clean power supplies. They don't look like much on the outside but what's hidden in the cabinets are impressive. Those guys are former JBL engineers who decided they could do better than what corporate JBL would allow.

And yes, the US and UK power systems couldn't be more disparate. One of the reasons your grid is cleaner and has less issues is that the USA's contintental landmass is 40x times larger than the UK.

More often than not power originates thousands of miles from final distribution neighborhoods, and with those distances comes hundreds of substations, never ending high-tension lines, splitting transformers where more than one state shares the same grid... it's big, messy and noisy.

The grid that serves my metro area could light up the whole of the UK with power to spare.

When the original plans for power distribution were created there was no such thing as sensitive electronics such as we have today. And although the various suppliers are constantly upgrading the infrastructure for greater reliability and efficiency we'll just never have the simplistic and lower maintenance grid the UK enjoys

Not until we figure out how to how to cost effectively give every household it's own off-grid power generation. Wind and solar... we're still far far away from that reality.