Confused about Mike Senior's Neumann KH 80 monitor recommendation

[Tackemon]

I'm new to mixing, so this may be a noob question.

I recently picked up Mike Senior's Mixing Secrets book and in the first chapter he goes to some length describing the advantages of using a non-ported design for near field monitors, especially on the less expensive end.

But on his recommendations page, the second recommendation is for the Neumann KH 80 monitors - which appears to be a ported design?
https://cambridge-mt.com/ms3/ch1/
https://www.neumann.com/en-us/products/ ... 80-dsp-a-g

I'm puzzled why he's recommending the ported KH 80, given how much he stresses using non-ported monitors.

On the same recommendation page, he refers to the KH 310 as the "gold standard" - which really is non-ported.

A pair of KH 80s is $1200.
A pair of KH 310s is $5000.

Now considering how much effort may end up going into acoustic panels and such and that monitors are a one-time purchase, I'm starting to think that the KH 310s will ultimately be the smarter buy in the long run.

Am I missing something about the Neumann KH 80? Are they considered high end enough to support a ported design well?

[Zukan]

It doesn't matter which speakers you opt for; they will only be as good as the room they work in, so saving on acoustic panels by purchasing a higher end set of monitors is false economy.

I'll let others chime in on the 80s and ported designs. But, FWIW, I use Neumann KH120As, which are ported, and very good. My room is treated of course.

[RichardT]

Mike's comments about ported vs unported apply to cheaper monitors. Once you're in the territory that Neumann monitors occupy, it's not an issue.

I too have KH120s.

[Wonks]

There is a distinct lack of good quality non-ported monitor designs now at the budget end of the market. Lots of NS10-alikes but they were never flat across the frequency range. In 2011 when the book first appeared (so monitor technology has improved in the meantime), you could get AE22s, which were very good non-ported monitors in the under £1000/$1000 range. But these are no more.

The KH80s benefit from the digital control, so whilst the low-end may not have the time-response accuracy of non-ported monitors, the improved phase response at the crossover frequency is a definite improvement. Plus, using the room frequency response adjustment in conjunction with a good amount of room acoustic treatment makes it even better.

It's performance is generally compared to monitors costing twice as much.

[Luke W]

Others who know far more about speakers will be along to offer more valuable input, I'm sure, but for what it's worth...

Ported designs aren't inherently bad, in the same way that sealed designs aren't inherently good, and there are lots of excellent monitors that fall into both categories.

I think the idea behind Mike's statement is likey to do with the fact that the ports in lots of lower-cost monitors aren't particularly well designed. So whilst they may extend the low-end performance and make bass sound more impressive, they introduce other issues that compromise the overall performance.

I've not spent that much time listening to KH80s, but I know they get a lot of praise from people whose opinions I trust, and the KH family overall is generally very good. I have the KH310s and think they're fantastic; they did indeed seem to me to be smarter buy in the long run, and eight or so years on, I don't regret a penny of it. But, my studio is well treated, and what Zukan has said is crucial, you'll absolutely need to pay as much (if not more) attention to the room as the monitors that go in it. The more you're spending, the more it matters, in my opinion!

[zenguitar]

If you are interested in reading more you might enjoy Phil Ward's writing for SOS over the years.

He's highly reputable, he has written a few articles on speaker design and his speaker reviews are also filled with background information about the decisions made with speaker design and manufacturer.

You can find links here...

https://www.soundonsound.com/author/phil-ward?page=13

Andy

[MOF]

If they have port bungs supplied like my Dynaudios did years ago then you have the choice to port or have sealed?

[amanise]

Room treatment aside, but not deprioritised at all, I've been interested in the Tannoy Gold range - current object of my desires being the Gold 7. But. Looking into it in any detail throws up a paucity of reviews of even that design type - leave alone the specific model. They are pretty much half the price of a similar sized Neuman, but that Tannoy speaker design has a fearsome reputation for sound quality, and also for difficulty of manufacture - which would suggest they'd be more expensive, not half the price. What have I missed about the Tannoy's? Would they stack up against the Neumans at all - given a good room?

[SafeandSound Mastering]

If they have port bungs supplied like my Dynaudios did years ago then you have the choice to port or have sealed?

Exactly, same here for Dynaudio Acoustics BM6P but I don't do so. They are rather a cut above anything else in the punch department for what there was at the price range for being a passive monitor. Chunky copper cable and a 1KW hypex amp helps things along.

Superceded these days though.

You can of course wedge some acoustic foam in any reflex port on any speaker. Notwithstanding taking into account potential for overheating if played at high volumes for extended periods. It's fairly unlikely though.

Simply try it and find out if you like it. Whether any given reflex monitor can be said to be partly designed to be infinite baffle (closed box) by provision of a bung by the manufacturer is of course arguable.

It will reduce your bass extension by quite a bit, though the roll off becomes less steep and improve bass timing / punch (maybe) or maybe not. I leave my BM6P unbunged as they are super punchy speakers anyway.

I still use them as a double check here, they are showing their age a bit now but still serve as a very useful check of specific sonic attributes. If I add anything further here it will be those that are replaced. Fine for now though and useful as a second check (simple cause I know them intimately for 15 years).

Best thing to do is try it hear what works in your room and your sonic preference/results.

[Drew Stephenson]

If they have port bungs supplied like my Dynaudios did years ago then you have the choice to port or have sealed?

No port bungs with the KH80s (I guess you could make some but they'd be a weird shape) but they're not designed for them so I'd avoid.

I have the KH80s and have had them for a while now. At the time they were, to my ears, noticeably the best thing in their price range.
I've subsequently added a KH750 sub that, after careful positioning, has improved their performance by taking away the heavy lifting from the low end.
Borrowing an MA-1 measurement mic and running Neumann's room correction improved them another step, giving me a pretty much flat response from about 23Hz to about 18kHz (about 3dB down at 20k) and improved transient response.
So I would suggest that the KH80s are still one of the best performers in their price range but that they also give you a potential upgrade path in the future.

N.B. I do have a pretty heavily treated room that was designed to fit the EBU room size guidelines.

[James Perrett]

What have I missed about the Tannoy's? Would they stack up against the Neumans at all - given a good room?

Tannoy are now owned by Uli Behringer and they have a policy of not sending out review models. I'd be quite interested to hear them too but the smaller Tannoy dual concentric speakers have always garnered mixed reviews so I'm not sure whether they can create the same solid illusion of performers in front of you that the big Tannoys do. The imaging on the big Tannoys is almost uncanny - and they really pick recordings apart so that you can hear every instrument in its own space. They're great for analysing recordings but maybe not so good if you want a bland, pleasurable experience.

[amanise]

What have I missed about the Tannoy's? Would they stack up against the Neumans at all - given a good room?

Tannoy are now owned by Uli Behringer and they have a policy of not sending out review models. I'd be quite interested to hear them too but the smaller Tannoy dual concentric speakers have always garnered mixed reviews so I'm not sure whether they can create the same solid illusion of performers in front of you that the big Tannoys do. The imaging on the big Tannoys is almost uncanny - and they really pick recordings apart so that you can hear every instrument in its own space. They're great for analysing recordings but maybe not so good if you want a bland, pleasurable experience.

The Gold 7 has a 6.5" main driver, from memory, where would that fall on your 'big/small' range? It's front ported, and has EQ trim for small tweaks.

[James Perrett]

The Gold 7 has a 6.5" main driver, from memory, where would that fall on your 'big/small' range? It's front ported, and has EQ trim for small tweaks.

Anything less than 10" is definitely small when it comes to Tannoys and their real studio monitors tended to use 12" or 15" drivers. In fact, the 12" models tend to have the "Little" prefix in their model name, as in the "Little Gold Monitor" or the "Little Red Monitor".

[amanise]

The Gold 7 has a 6.5" main driver, from memory, where would that fall on your 'big/small' range? It's front ported, and has EQ trim for small tweaks.

Anything less than 10" is definitely small when it comes to Tannoys and their real studio monitors tended to use 12" or 15" drivers. In fact, the 12" models tend to have the "Little" prefix in their model name, as in the "Little Gold Monitor" or the "Little Red Monitor".

Right, thanks. I wonder what their reason for not offering review systems is - it doesn't make sense...

[Wonks]

As has been said, now part of Behringer, and they rarely submit stuff for review.

[amanise]

As has been said, now part of Behringer, and they rarely submit stuff for review.

Yes, rhetorical question really. The Behringer thing makes no sense (to me) either. Oh well. It is what it is, innit.

[ajay_m]

Thanks to Wonks and a "random act of kindness", I have a pair of Tannoy Gold 5s. They are being used in an untreated room so you have to take what I say with the appropriate reservations, but given that just about every hifi setup on the planet is also in an untreated room, that's how your beautifully mastered stuff gets listened to, so... anyway....

I have had many years of experience listening to conventional hifi speakers and my preference tended towards B&W in terms of overall neutrality though quite a few British speaker manufacturers had, and have, made some fine products over the years.

The Gold 5s are, to my ears, exceptionally neutral with a refined midrange and treble response which is utterly unhyped. They immediately highlight lower-midrange colouration in a cheaper pair of Tapco S5 budget monitors I've had for a long time. They are not flattered in my room as nearfields, presenting rather a peaked response at around 160Hz but this is not their fault; that's the innate room nodes from my listening position. Positioned on shelves against the front wall, and being front ported, they are much better sounding.

Of course, they do have a fairly restricted lower end, which their larger brethren will to some extent improve on.

They appear to be quite popular as conventional hifi speakers, from what I can see, and one reviewer felt he preferred them to the Neumann KH80. I feel this might be a little optimistic but they are, to my ears, voiced in a similar way. I would definitely audition the range if you can.

I do note some comments were made on build quality. I have not had any issues whatsoever with reliability and I can see no obvious quality issues with the two units I have, which, for reasons to do with the previously mentioned random act of kindness, differ significantly in age. So they do represent a snapshot across quite a period of time in terms of quality, which is encouraging. There have been occasional mentions of the rear panel rattling at high volume levels on the larger models, which would be something to check.

[Sam Spoons]

Beheringer, in the past, have been criticised for their business practices, in particular they propensity for copying other manufacturers designs. Add that to some of their products being truly dreadful back in the day and you end up with them having a poor reputation so there's probably a element of paranoia in that decision.

The current product range includes both seriously terrible products like the DI120 to things like the X32 mixer which was a game changer for us grass root sound guys.

[amanise]

Thanks to Wonks and a "random act of kindness", I have a pair of Tannoy Gold 5s. ...

Thanks! I reckon that's as good a review as can be expected then - which is pretty glowing really. Thanks very much for sharing that! Definitely makes me feel less risk exposed when thinking about the 7s.
Hope it helps the OP too.

[ajay_m]

Not to mention the Wing series. Both these and the X32s are out there in countless numbers and have withstood the rigours of live sound for quite a while. So while, yes, Behringer have had an... interesting... past, I think it would be inappropriate to look at all their stuff as being poor quality or just copies - the above products certainly weren't copied from anyone, and in terms of "bang for the buck" they are pretty much unchallenged. It's regrettable that Behringer don't provide review models and that they also limit resellers, but then this is part of keeping costs down and figuring that - particularly for live sound, where the industry is merciless - if the products weren't any good, they wouldn't sell. It's rumoured there could be up to a million X32s out there for instance, which is a pretty staggering figure if true.

[Tackemon]

Thanks for all of the great replies!

I guess I was getting a bit hung up on (and maybe being too literal about) Mike Senior's statement in chapter 1: "In my experience, you'll have to part with well over $2500 for a ported nearfield speaker system that can reliably deliver what you need to mix competitively..."

Since a pair of KH 80s are $1200 a pair and even the KH 120s are "only" $1900 a pair, those are both under his $2500 threshold, so that was a bit of a head scratcher I guess.

Sounds like I was just overthinking it, haha.

[Arpangel]

I looked at those new Tannoys, but deep down I know they aren’t going to be anything like the traditional Tannoys, and those have always been large, I had a pair of Cheviots, and Little Reds, they are in a different league to these small budget monitors.

[James Perrett]

Sounds like I was just overthinking it, haha.

It is also worth looking at when Mike wrote that. It was probably before the Klein + Hummel brand were rebranded as Neumann and the KH120 came out. K+H were much less well known before they were bought by Sennheiser and rebranded as Neumann.

If you read more deeply into the subject (and Phil Ward's reviews are actually a great primer on speaker design) you'll see that there have always been sensibly designed ported speakers but in the 1990s and 2000s there was also a whole crop of speakers that made excessive demands on the port loading to increase the quantity of bass which resulted in the time domain smearing that Mike talks about.

[Hugh Robjohns]

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the concept of ported (reflex) speakers, and pretty much all high-end studio monitors are ported, for very sensible engineering reasons.

But, like most technologies, it can be engineered well or abused, and the point Mike was arguably over-egging was that most low-budget ported speakers werent/aren't engineered very well, with very serious compromises when it comes to making valid mix decisions.

The low frequency response of a sealed cabinet depends on the cabinet volume and starts to roll-off gently from a relatively high frequency, with relatively little phase shift. If you want a good low-end extension with that roll-off starting at, say, 50Hz, you need a very big box.

So, if you're making a small monitor speaker, choosing a small sealed box inherently means it will start to roll-off from a higher frequency — maybe 150Hz, say, but at a gentle rate. And it will therefore appear to be lightweight or bass-light to the casual listener

In contrast, a reflex ported cabinet of the same size uses the port to boost the low-end through a resonance effect. Consequently, the roll-off starts at a much lower frequency (say 75Hz), but then plummets like a brick, with a greater phase shift.

At 50Hz, the sealed cabinet will actually have a stronger output than the reflex cabinet because its roll-off us much slower from a higher start, whereas the reflex starts lower but is much steeper.

So, to the casual listener, the ported cabinet will sound like it has much more powerful bass than the sealed cabinet. And often the manufacturer will abuse the port to make it sound even punchier and deeper (even though it's uncontrolled and resonant), just to make it sound even more impressive.

But the resonance characteristics of a badly designed ported cabinet causes major problems to critical listeners because it smears transients over time, and that makes it very difficult to be able to tell the difference between a bass guitar and a kickdrum, makes it hard to hear low frequency EQ changes, and generally makes mixing choices very difficult — just because you can't hear the detail.

In the worst cases, you get a 'one note bass' where it doesn't matter what note the bass is playing, or how the kick drum is tuned, you just hear the resonant frequency of the reflex port!

But — and this is important — these are reflex cabinet design faults (and usually intentional ones to make a small speaker sound bigger and more capable than it really is), not an inherent problem in all reflex speakers.

So, what Mike was really saying was to avoid cheap, badly designed, overblown ported speakers with small cabinets where the port is being abused to generate an unrealistic amount of bass.

A sealed cabinet of similar dimensions would produce a weaker and less impressive bass output, although it would actually give more really deep bass and would definitely be a lot more informative and easier to work with.

Thankfully, today, there are good, very capable small reflex cabinets from manufacturers who know how to do it properly, often with the benefit of DSP management of the drivers to extract amazing performance from small boxes. These are coming down in price, too, and the Neumann KH80 is one of them

[Tackemon]

Thanks again for all of the explanations.

I own some cheap PreSonus ported monitors and the matching sub, but I bought them a while back for getting sound out of my amp modeler hardware when playing guitar and for some casual music listening, not for mixing. I imagine that's the tier of product Mike is referring to and wanting to set expectations that they aren't really appropriate for serious mixing.