isolation pads

jobbanaught · Post by **jobbanaught** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 7:50 pm

twisted-space wrote:If you have the space, proper speaker stands would be you best option.
Having them on your desk will give you all sorts of unpredictable reflections and resonances. Stands would also allow you to get the monitors at the correct height.

If you get stands then proper ones, my 5kg lightweight things sucked in decoupling the monitors from the room before i got the pads.

goomba · Post by **goomba** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 11:45 pm

i dont have room for stands. My room is quite small.. the isolation pads that i have found on ebay go for around 40 us.

twisted-space · Post by **twisted-space** » Mon Jul 26, 2010 11:57 am

goomba wrote:i dont have room for stands. My room is quite small.

Then I'm afraid you probably don't want HS80M's. You (ideally) should match the monitor to your room. A pair of 8" drivers in a small room is likely to cause all sorts of problems and foam wont help solve them.
Is your room treated at all? If not see if you can return the HS80's and get something smaller (e.g. HS50M's) and spend the balance on stands and some room treatment.

goomba · Post by **goomba** » Tue Jul 27, 2010 3:06 am

no my room is not treated at all im going to sell the hs80m's if i can not return them

jobbanaught · Post by **jobbanaught** » Tue Jul 27, 2010 2:15 pm

goomba wrote:no my room is not treated at all im going to sell the hs80m's if i can not return them

Uh, dont be so quick

I had HS80 in a small room (4x3m), and it worked ok. Depends hugely on the size ratio of the walls, the furniture you have and so on. Just walk around your room, if the bass sounds (nearly) equally loud around the room, just go for it. A/B with a set of decent cans and find out for yourself. Trust your ears, if it sounds ok than it is ok.

damagedgoods · Post by **damagedgoods** » Tue Jul 27, 2010 7:38 pm

twisted-space wrote:
goomba wrote:i dont have room for stands. My room is quite small.
Then I'm afraid you probably don't want HS80M's. You (ideally) should match the monitor to your room. A pair of 8" drivers in a small room is likely to cause all sorts of problems and foam wont help solve them.
Is your room treated at all? If not see if you can return the HS80's and get something smaller (e.g. HS50M's) and spend the balance on stands and some room treatment.

I don't agree, tbh. If your space has a shitty bass response, it has a shitty bass response whether you have monitors with lots of low end or none at all. Using smaller speakers won't improve your room acoustics.

twisted-space · Post by **twisted-space** » Thu Jul 29, 2010 12:18 pm

damagedgoods wrote:I don't agree, tbh. If your space has a shitty bass response, it has a shitty bass response whether you have monitors with lots of low end or none at all. Using smaller speakers won't improve your room acoustics.

The idea is that a monitor that produces less low freq will exite the low freq problems in your room less.

EG. if your room has a 35 Hz resonance and your monitors go down to 30Hz, they will be hitting that 35Hz problem, If you use monitors that only go down to 40Hz they wont exite that resonant peak.

It's not about improving the rooms sound, it's more about working around it. Genelec have loads of info on their site about matching monitors to rooms, and while it's aimed at their own monitors it's useful reading for everyone. There is also sh*t loads of info on gearslutz.

damagedgoods · Post by **damagedgoods** » Thu Jul 29, 2010 12:28 pm

twisted-space wrote:
damagedgoods wrote:I don't agree, tbh. If your space has a shitty bass response, it has a shitty bass response whether you have monitors with lots of low end or none at all. Using smaller speakers won't improve your room acoustics.

The idea is that a monitor that produces less low freq will exite the low freq problems in your room less.

EG. if your room has a 35 Hz resonance and your monitors go down to 30Hz, they will be hitting that 35Hz problem, If you use monitors that only go down to 40Hz they wont exite that resonant peak.

It's not about improving the rooms sound, it's more about working around it. Genelec have loads of info on their site about matching monitors to rooms, and while it's aimed at their own monitors it's useful reading for everyone. There is also sh*t loads of info on gearslutz.

True, but then you don't hear any 35 Hz. The response of a room is more or less linear - ie, the same regardless of (sound) volume - so just because your monitors attenuate quite a lot at 35 Hz doesn't mean you won't get weird resonances, it just means they'll be quieter.

IMHO, there's a difference between matching monitors to the room for mixing bands, and picking monitors for producing bass-heavy music. If you're mixing a rock band you can roll off the really low frequencies without too much consequence, or at least, there's not so much information content in the really low-end. If you're making dubstep or dub techno, you're gonna wanna know what's going on below 60Hz. Given the choice between being able to hear what's going on with a really uneven response, or not being able to hear it at all, I'd pick the former, but I know a lot of people who would rather use smaller monitors so the messy low frequencies won't distract them. Either way, it's more or less the same problem - the solution is sort out your room.