Mackie MR8 vs KRK Rockit8

Hi guys, finally the time has come for me to buy monitors. Ive made a research, and according to my financial status ive ended up with Mackie MR8 and KRK Rockit8. The money is not huge but for me is not little either. Before i do anything i wanted to consult you people. Which pairs would you choose? Would it depend on the room or the genres im going to be working on? Id appreciate it if you could give some advice.

if you live in the US then mackie

  On 5/4/2011 at 1:18 PM, soundwave said:

if you live in the US then mackie

why?

mackie is wacky, profit with Rockit

judging from your use of "made a research" I'd guess you are either German or Dutch. ;)

I've got some Rokit 6's and they are great. No complaints at all.

haha why German or Dutch? European yes, but neither German nor Dutch, im actually not a wealthy person at all :) I was just thinking, since im giving money, better add a little more and get something that i wont have to change in a few years, when hopefully i will be more experienced in making music. there are a lot of experienced people here so an advice of an expert would be appreciated.

I'm not experience with a lot of speakers at all, but I can tell you that the best way you can find out what you need is to inform your ears how they sound by going out to the store and listen to the speakers you pre-picked, and probably some other types you didn't think about as well.. Ask a store, any store that sells them will gladly help you. Bring music you know back to front and have a listen.. Take your time! Probably take into account the room acoustics yes, the room you will be listening in will probably be bigger then the one you are in now.

I've got the small KRK and I'm very happy with them...

i keep seeing this topic and thinking it's about merkurs.

thanks guys, im taking your suggestions into consideration. i guess ill have to listen myself, i just hope shops will have these monitors for demonstration and not ask me to prepay the monitors i choose in case they dont have them.

I was also thinking about ordering from http://www.thomann.de (great price) but i fear they might get damaged on the way, or if there is a problem with the monitors i have to be calling Germany, checking the guarantee and stuff like that.

im kind of curious how anyone becomes an authority in monitors. there are so many kinds, and i couldn't name a brick and mortar store within 500 miles that i could go to and actually spend time with many different sorts. even if you CAN do that, do you do it once or twice a year, to keep up with models?

what i did was buy what a friend had, someone whose opinion i trusted. they've been fantastic....

Genelec 8040.

i was not looking for something specific initially, i just asked a guy who is a teacher at acoustics school what he would suggest i get for around 500 euro. ive been collecting this money especially for this reason. he said mackie mr5/mr8 and also told me there are a pair of ALESIS M1 ACTIV MK2 for a cheaper price. i dont know if im exaggerating with the choice of Mackie MR8 or KRK Rockit8. thats why ive asked you guys for an opinion and what you think about it.

I heard the KRK 8's in Digital Village about 2 years ago and thought they were sick. Personally I'm not gonna bother getting any monitors though now as my old Akai hi fi speakers are very good quality and I just can't justify spending £500 when I've already got speakers which are pretty decent.

ya mollekula. the 8's really bump. I've got the krk 6's and they sound great but not so much thumpy thumpy. Which is probably good considering my room has a nasty standing wave in the mid lows. booourns.

  On 5/6/2011 at 11:01 AM, hahathhat said:

im kind of curious how anyone becomes an authority in monitors. there are so many kinds, and i couldn't name a brick and mortar store within 500 miles that i could go to and actually spend time with many different sorts. even if you CAN do that, do you do it once or twice a year, to keep up with models?

good point

  On 5/19/2011 at 3:16 PM, Promo said:

Personally I'm not gonna bother getting any monitors though now as my old Akai hi fi speakers are very good quality and I just can't justify spending £500 when I've already got speakers which are pretty decent.

Im glad you mentioned Hi-Fi speakers vs Monitors. I also have a pair of good Hi-end speakers, and with a small sub that a have added i dont have any complaints. But when i asked some people their opinion on using speakers instead of monitors, i was told by everybody that i will never achieve a correct mix by using speakers, simply because the sound that comes from them does not correspond to what im going to be writing on my pc. thats when i started looking for monitors. what is your opinion about this matter then, Hi-Fi speakers vs Studio Monitors?

i'm sold on these rockits i think, when i can afford them i probably will get them. not crazy expensive at all

  On 5/24/2011 at 11:03 PM, mollekula said:

  On 5/19/2011 at 3:16 PM, Promo said:

Personally I'm not gonna bother getting any monitors though now as my old Akai hi fi speakers are very good quality and I just can't justify spending £500 when I've already got speakers which are pretty decent.

Im glad you mentioned Hi-Fi speakers vs Monitors. I also have a pair of good Hi-end speakers, and with a small sub that a have added i dont have any complaints. But when i asked some people their opinion on using speakers instead of monitors, i was told by everybody that i will never achieve a correct mix by using speakers, simply because the sound that comes from them does not correspond to what im going to be writing on my pc. thats when i started looking for monitors. what is your opinion about this matter then, Hi-Fi speakers vs Studio Monitors?

of course you can make a good mix with bad speakers. maybe not as uber detailed or refined, maybe a bit more work to get it right, but a good sound for sure.. it's just a matter of knowing your speakers. knowing your speakers in relation to other speakers. listen to your tunes on headphones, in friends houses etc.

  On 5/25/2011 at 12:39 PM, a missing sense said:

of course you can make a good mix with bad speakers. maybe not as uber detailed or refined, maybe a bit more work to get it right, but a good sound for sure.. it's just a matter of knowing your speakers. knowing your speakers in relation to other speakers. listen to your tunes on headphones, in friends houses etc.

Wow!!! thats totally opposite of what ive been told. Actually its putting me to thoughts now, if what you say is correct and a good mix CAN be achieved on speakers and not monitors im going to save 500 evro (for now at least). In this case how would i know that the lows that i write on tracks correspond to the lows that i want tracks to have. as i said i have a small sub and i dont know how misleading that can be for me to judge if the low frequencies are not too weak or not too bumpy and distorting. Please leave some comments guys, if speakers would be ok to achieve a near pro sounding level id rather mix with my speakers and give 100 euro for Sennheiser HD280 Pro headphones to be able to make corrections to the mix.

  On 5/25/2011 at 3:05 PM, mollekula said:

  On 5/25/2011 at 12:39 PM, a missing sense said:

of course you can make a good mix with bad speakers. maybe not as uber detailed or refined, maybe a bit more work to get it right, but a good sound for sure.. it's just a matter of knowing your speakers. knowing your speakers in relation to other speakers. listen to your tunes on headphones, in friends houses etc.

 

Wow!!! thats totally opposite of what ive been told. Actually its putting me to thoughts now, if what you say is correct and a good mix CAN be achieved on speakers and not monitors im going to save 500 evro (for now at least). In this case how would i know that the lows that i write on tracks correspond to the lows that i want tracks to have. as i said i have a small sub and i dont know how misleading that can be for me to judge if the low frequencies are not too weak or not too bumpy and distorting. Please leave some comments guys, if speakers would be ok to achieve a near pro sounding level id rather mix with my speakers and give 100 euro for Sennheiser HD280 Pro headphones to be able to make corrections to the mix.

well my experience is this, cheap speakers are cheap. the clarity is less, you can hear less details, the speaker sounds very different if you turn it down low then if you turn it up very high. but in the end, you listen to a lot of pro sounding mixes on them so you sort of know how a good mix sounds. now to get to a good sounding mix takes more work on cheap speakers, and the details are not as clear, but in the end you should be able to produce something very decent. probably something you wouldn't produce on high quality speakers too. I dunno if that's a bad thing or a good thing, just saying.

probably if you get some decent headphones that will get you pretty far too. I used to mix on these old sennheisers that had really bad bass, they started to clip if I put too much bass in them, so that was a nice indication hehe. then I got new AKG headphones, good brand good headphones, and I was a little lost for a while. but trust me, the clarity of good equipment, the solidity of the sound is awesome if you can afford it. And if you can afford only one piece of gear right now and might want to buy a synth or something else, just get the speakers.

I read this review recently and it gets pretty interesting where they write about the types of nearfield speakers:

http://www.moozek.com/2008/01/09/super-review-yamaha-hs50m-the-new-ns-10m/

  Quote

Today, there are 2 types of nearfield monitors:

a) The “Genelec-type” that, thanks to new technologies, reproduce the kind of sound you hear from the mains, in a big studio. This is the type Yamaha tried to make with the MSP series.

Pros: flat response, so you can hear everything, the good and the bad. Great for mastering.

Cons: they are so defined and flat, that some people feel everything sounds good on them, especially before you get used to it. That makes them great Hi-Fi speakers.

b) What I call the Ugly Truth type (or If-It-Sounds-Good-Here-Sounds-Good-On-Anything type). This is merely theoretical, as only some speakers can do that, while others linger between the a and b types. These are the simple nearfield speakers designed to sound like mixing monitors - not like a Hi-Fi speakers. The Yamaha HS series belongs here.

Pros: They tend to make it easier to achieve a great mix.

Cons: They won’t impress the client, because frankly they don’t sound too great.

man, get some monitors. you'll love the sound and you'll love how you'll start mixing and producing in general.

any of those 2 models are good. you can also try yamaha hs80m (i have the smaller version and i love it, best mids i've ever heard, though they lack some of the deep end..)

  On 5/25/2011 at 3:05 PM, mollekula said:

Wow!!! thats totally opposite of what ive been told. Actually its putting me to thoughts now, if what you say is correct and a good mix CAN be achieved on speakers and not monitors im going to save 500 evro (for now at least). In this case how would i know that the lows that i write on tracks correspond to the lows that i want tracks to have. as i said i have a small sub and i dont know how misleading that can be for me to judge if the low frequencies are not too weak or not too bumpy and distorting. Please leave some comments guys, if speakers would be ok to achieve a near pro sounding level id rather mix with my speakers and give 100 euro for Sennheiser HD280 Pro Shure SRH440 headphones to be able to make corrections to the mix.

Fixed. Get these, they're better and cheaper.

Also i think if you don't have much money now then get the headphones and mix with them and check your mixes on your hi-fi. Monitoring headphones have a relatively flat response and give much more details than monitors for the same price would. If your speakers are at least somehow decent you can check for problems in space and bass on them since you can't hear those things properly on headphones. Well, at least that's what I do.