Most accurate monitors under £700

[Arpangel]

Ha Ha! that's like saying a McLaren 750 is just "OK"

Ha indeed! NS10s, ATCs and an Avantone / Auratone are the ones I run into most frequently and like.

I very seldom see PMC monitors & have never been in a room with KH monitors. Sometimes run into Amphion in pop / rock studios + Barefoot & Adams (especially the A77X) in dance studios.

We have big ATC SCM100s at the main studio, and they are indeed great.

However, at home I have Neumann KH150, and to be honest I don't feel I'm missing out that much... I'm certainly not quite hearing the £13k difference!

I might feel different if I compared them side by side in the same room, but I don't think I'll bother!

The KH150 I thought about recently, but I'm not sure.
If I mention anything to do with getting rid of my Behringers I immediately get blasted with "spend it on room treatment" so I’ve given up now.
I feel like saying if you want to known what my room sounds like then come and have a listen, I think it’s fine as it is, it's a very unusual space, that I think is acoustically naturally good.
It's a basement, with no ceiling! just open beams, and the walls are very irregular, with lots of alcoves, and some walls are made out of large odd shaped rocks that act like irregular deflectors, also my speakers are well away from walls, and nowhere near corners, the sound to my ears is very dead, recording vocals in here you don’t hear any obvious room reflections.
All of the corners have things in them, that act like bass traps.
My room is so irregular, it’d be difficult to know where to put any treatment, and what treatment? it's there already and there isn’t anymore space to put anything!

[James Perrett]

The KH150 I thought about recently, but I'm not sure.
If I mention anything to do with getting rid of my Behringers I immediately get blasted with "spend it on room treatment" so I’ve given up now.
I feel like saying if you want to known what my room sounds like then come and have a listen, I think it’s fine as it is, it's a very unusual space, that I think is acoustically naturally good.

I guess that you know your current setup so can produce good sounding recordings with it. One of the strengths of the Tannoy dual concentrics is that you can work much closer to them than other similarly sized speakers. You can almost treat them like giant headphones. I would guess that a pair of decent monitors in your room (KH80 standard or better) will tell you more about the music that you are producing than the Behringers.

[Aled Hughes]

We have big ATC SCM100s at the main studio, and they are indeed great.

However, at home I have Neumann KH150, and to be honest I don't feel I'm missing out that much... I'm certainly not quite hearing the £13k difference!

I might feel different if I compared them side by side in the same room, but I don't think I'll bother!

Thank you for posting - it's very interesting to hear somebody’s perspective who is intimate with both speakers.

I'm not claiming that the £2k KH150 are a match for the £15k ATCs. The Neumanns are extremely capable monitors, but obviously cannot go as deep nor as loud as the ATCs (and not many rooms can take the ATCs size anyway!). However, when I get home from the studio to continue working on material, I don't sense a great step down in quality and information, and I'm very happy to finish projects at home on the Neumanns.

Similarly, I do a lot of TV animation dubbing work at home on the Neumann, and when I take them to the studio for the final once-over with the producers, I rarely if ever hear issues on the ATCs that the Neumanns failed to inform me of.

I would like to hear the larger Neumann KH420. They'd certainly be a consideration if our ATCs were to give up the ghost - and just over half the price!

[richardstringer1993]

I live in a private rented flat I cannot be making Rockwool panels and hanging them on walls and ceilings etc...I have some 100mm thick acoustic foam which is excellent on the midrange and high frequency but I took it down due to the VOC's. I put it all downstairs to air and now after about two months or something the foam doesn't smell at all anymore. So i'll be putting it back on the walls sometime, but only when i've bought some 3ft tall x 1ft wide x 1ft deep bass trap foam in the corners of the rooms. It's as much as I can do, anymore and the landlord will kick me out, i'll be glueing velcro patches to the back of each foam panel and then attaching them to the wall which i'll put velcro patches on.

I'll have a look at possibly getting the Neumann KH 80 DSP monitors they'll hopefully be far more accurate than my old Alesis M1 Active mkII monitors.

[gtsos]

As previous poster said, get the Kh80 monitors. And the mic to do the room correction thing. Later when you’ve saved up some more cash, get the kh750.

[richardstringer1993]

Yeah thanks, i'll save up for the KH80 monitors first.

[Sam Spoons]

I live in a private rented flat I cannot be making Rockwool panels and hanging them on walls and ceilings etc...I have some 100mm thick acoustic foam which is excellent on the midrange and high frequency but I took it down due to the VOC's. I put it all downstairs to air and now after about two months or something the foam doesn't smell at all anymore. So i'll be putting it back on the walls sometime, but only when i've bought some 3ft tall x 1ft wide x 1ft deep bass trap foam in the corners of the rooms. It's as much as I can do, anymore and the landlord will kick me out, i'll be glueing velcro patches to the back of each foam panel and then attaching them to the wall which i'll put velcro patches on.

I'll have a look at possibly getting the Neumann KH 80 DSP monitors they'll hopefully be far more accurate than my old Alesis M1 Active mkII monitors.

Free standing corner bass traps don't need fixing to the walls (mine aren't) and will work much better than foam so definitely worth considering before you spend on foam traps.

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Hanging panels would be mechanically the same as hanging pictures. At least in this country, there is no regulation or standard tenancy agreement where a landlord cannot allow that. Perhaps it is different in the UK? It’s a very easy DIY job to make the screw holes invisible if you are moving out.

[Sam Spoons]

Gik do 'Art Panels', broad band absorbers with a picture printed on the front.

[MarkyC]

Sorry had not spotted you were moving to Neumann KH 80 DSP monitors from Alesis M1 Active mkII. I made that exact same jump and although I'm not a great mixer, my mixes improved ten fold, particularly the lower end and stereo field.

The detail is soo much better.

I mix on the KH80's and headphones and if it sounds good on them I'll switch back to the Alesis for reference. I find the mixes I do on the KH80s sound better on the Alesis, than if I had mixed them on the Alesis originally.

[richardstringer1993]

I live in a private rented flat I cannot be making Rockwool panels and hanging them on walls and ceilings etc...I have some 100mm thick acoustic foam which is excellent on the midrange and high frequency but I took it down due to the VOC's. I put it all downstairs to air and now after about two months or something the foam doesn't smell at all anymore. So i'll be putting it back on the walls sometime, but only when i've bought some 3ft tall x 1ft wide x 1ft deep bass trap foam in the corners of the rooms. It's as much as I can do, anymore and the landlord will kick me out, i'll be glueing velcro patches to the back of each foam panel and then attaching them to the wall which i'll put velcro patches on.

I'll have a look at possibly getting the Neumann KH 80 DSP monitors they'll hopefully be far more accurate than my old Alesis M1 Active mkII monitors.

Free standing corner bass traps don't need fixing to the walls (mine aren't) and will work much better than foam so definitely worth considering before you spend on foam traps.

I can't have free standing panels I haven't got the space because there's a door right in two corners of the room.

[richardstringer1993]

Sorry had not spotted you were moving to Neumann KH 80 DSP monitors from Alesis M1 Active mkII. I made that exact same jump and although I'm not a great mixer, my mixes improved ten fold, particularly the lower end and stereo field.

The detail is soo much better.

I mix on the KH80's and headphones and if it sounds good on them I'll switch back to the Alesis for reference. I find the mixes I do on the KH80s sound better on the Alesis, than if I had mixed them on the Alesis originally.

In the past years and years ago I found my mixes weren't tooo bad on my Alesis M1 Active mkII monitors but back then I had loads and loads of foam on the walls and massive bass traps. Butthey still aren't that accurate in the midrange and definitely not in the low part of the frequency range. The M1 Actives mkII have very hyped low frequency and i've got foam in all ports too. The best monitors I ever had were back in 2004 when I had Dynaudio BM15A monitors and over £1,500 of 110mm foam panels covering about 70% of the walls and a massively huge 4ft high x 2ft wide x 1ft deep bass traps in the corners. The sound was very dry in that studio but I had to sell it all after a while and moved.

[Bob Bickerton]

[

I can't have free standing panels I haven't got the space because there's a door right in two corners of the room.

I realise you can’t fix to doors in rental accommodation, but sometimes there’s sufficient gap above the door to insert a couple of brackets from which you can hang stuff, perhaps secured at the bottom with some sticky back Velcro, which can later be removed.

I had to mount panels on my control room doors because I had insufficient wall space to achieve coverage specifications.

Bob

[Tomás Mulcahy]

[

I can't have free standing panels I haven't got the space because there's a door right in two corners of the room.

I realise you can’t fix to doors in rental accommodation, but sometimes there’s sufficient gap above the door to insert a couple of brackets from which you can hang stuff, perhaps secured at the bottom with some sticky back Velcro, which can later be removed.

I had to mount panels on my control room doors because I had insufficient wall space to achieve coverage specifications.

Bob

That is a great idea. I have a door in a corner too, but I can fit one panel on the wall perpendicular to it, very slighty prevents the door from fully opening. But it improves the sound noticeably. I used two drywall screws. It's a white wall so I can cover the holes afterwards with polyfilla, they disappear

[Sam Spoons]

I live in a private rented flat I cannot be making Rockwool panels and hanging them on walls and ceilings etc...I have some 100mm thick acoustic foam which is excellent on the midrange and high frequency but I took it down due to the VOC's. I put it all downstairs to air and now after about two months or something the foam doesn't smell at all anymore. So i'll be putting it back on the walls sometime, but only when i've bought some 3ft tall x 1ft wide x 1ft deep bass trap foam in the corners of the rooms. It's as much as I can do, anymore and the landlord will kick me out, i'll be glueing velcro patches to the back of each foam panel and then attaching them to the wall which i'll put velcro patches on.

I'll have a look at possibly getting the Neumann KH 80 DSP monitors they'll hopefully be far more accurate than my old Alesis M1 Active mkII monitors.

Free standing corner bass traps don't need fixing to the walls (mine aren't) and will work much better than foam so definitely worth considering before you spend on foam traps.

I can't have free standing panels I haven't got the space because there's a door right in two corners of the room.

I did ask earlier about the other two corners, then I suggested the wall ceiling junction but you couldn't work with that either. You have said you have experience of the improvements that room treatment gives (even foam which is never as good as proper mineral wool based panels) so you really must feel that acoustic treatment is unacceptable in your room. You also said "I can fit one panel on the wall perpendicular to it, very slighty prevents the door from fully opening. But it improves the sound noticeably. I used two drywall screws. It's a white wall so I can cover the holes afterwards with polyfilla, they disappear" and "but only when i've bought some 3ft tall x 1ft wide x 1ft deep bass trap foam in the corners of the rooms." which sounds much the same sa adding free standing corner bass trap in the corners?

So, spend the money on headphones and forget about proper monitors, they are never going to justify their cost (or existence) in an untreated room.

[richardstringer1993]

[

I can't have free standing panels I haven't got the space because there's a door right in two corners of the room.

I realise you can’t fix to doors in rental accommodation, but sometimes there’s sufficient gap above the door to insert a couple of brackets from which you can hang stuff, perhaps secured at the bottom with some sticky back Velcro, which can later be removed.

I had to mount panels on my control room doors because I had insufficient wall space to achieve coverage specifications.

Bob

If I did this then I wouldn't be able to open the door in the room, the edge of the door when closed is about four inches from the side wall there isnt even close to being enough space to hang anything. in two corners of the room. Plus what makes it worse is, the radiator is about five or six inches away from the corner of the room too.

[Albatross]

Hang a panel from a couple of hooks at the top of the door and just hang it up when you're mixing. If you put swivel feet on it you can use it as a free standing panel too.

[Wonks]

Is there anything stopping you using the end with the two doors as the mixing/monitor end instead? It might mean moving stuff around but is it possible? Hopefully you might then fit some free standing bass traps up the other end.

[James Perrett]

So, spend the money on headphones and forget about proper monitors, they are never going to justify their cost (or existence) in an untreated room.

I'd disagree somewhat with this idea. While not ideal, our brains are reasonably good at discriminating between direct and reflected sound. If you work close to the speakers, the direct sound then becomes more dominant.

I'd say that the KH80s still make sense and will be more of a long term investment than something cheaper.

[SafeandSound Mastering]

One thing I was going to mention is over many years velcro (the glue backings) may not be as innocuous as you might imagine. They could rip paint, wallpaper or even aging loose plaster off the wall. And you might get a fine or lose a deposit if/when you move to make good.

[Sam Spoons]

Yes, anything stuck to the walls has the potential to do much more damage than small well repaired screw holes.

[Stratman57]

I find those picture hanging adhesive "velcro" pads are much easier to remove from walls without damaging the paint. They also work a treat for pedal boards. (I'm still trying to get the adhesive velcro residue off some of my pedals.

Regards, Simon.

[Sam Spoons]

These are the best adhesive I've found for removability without damaging but whether they'll be strong enough for hanging acoustic panels I don't know.

https://command.3m.co.uk/3M/en_GB/command-gb/

[ajay_m]

The command hooks are very good but you do need to clean the surface first with isopropyl alcohol to degrease it (check carefully that the paint etc won't be damaged). Otherwise in my experience they can fail under moderate loads.

[Albatross]

What about this type of thing? Over-door hanger... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CGD6GCQW

You could probably make a nice thin one if those are too tight from a metal ruler, you'd get two out of this one from poundstretcher... https://www.poundstretcher.co.uk/heavy-duty-metal-ruler and no measuring as its already marked up