Monitors.

Thanks for the infos. I definitely want to upgrade from the HS8 so they are more like a fallback if I do not find anything better.

I get that the BM15A are huge but that just makes me want them more. I can't shake the feeling that small speakers can not do bass well which is probably more a psychological thing that I have. Some guy on GS mentioned that Bob Katz said BM15A are the smallest speakers you can accurately hear bass on without a sub, so that is a big endorsement, right?

Too bad that the Funkyjunk shop here has neither HS8 or the Dynaudio so it is not really possible to go and compare.

_{...they're so good...}

  On 8/20/2019 at 3:04 PM, thawkins said:

I get that the BM15A are huge but that just makes me want them more. I can't shake the feeling that small speakers can not do bass well which is probably more a psychological thing that I have. Some guy on GS mentioned that Bob Katz said BM15A are the smallest speakers you can accurately hear bass on without a sub, so that is a big endorsement, right?

Yes! In mastering situations! ...mastering  room, golden ears... and afaik he was only talking about the low end

If you need to hear accurately below 40-45 hz you either need an expensive sub or high quality huge speakers which then has to cost a lot of money bc if they’re accurate in the sub region they’re probably accurate in the rest of the spectrum and such speakers will cost at leeeeeeeeast 3k euros and im not sure that the bm15a are such speakers; I’ve heard the and they didn’t sound like they are.

Better buy high quality smaller speakers that are accurate above 60-70 hz which you can trust and use headphones for the subrange (6-36;) 

  On 8/20/2019 at 3:27 PM, Squee said:

_{...they're so good...}

You do dub and bassy stuff with the BM15A, right? Going to keep this in mind...

  On 8/20/2019 at 4:42 PM, thawkins said:

You do dub and bassy stuff with the BM15A, right? Going to keep this in mind...

Exactly - and I use them for sound design, tv mixes, commercials, and so on.

If you know that yagya’s rigning was produced on dynaudio bm6a + headphones then you can be sure that the bm15a are good enough for anything. We’re usually fooled by anal gearslutz reviews but basically any speaker at that price point is good enough. The rest is taste 

  On 8/20/2019 at 4:45 PM, Squee said:

Exactly - and I use them for sound design, tv mixes, commercials, and so on.

That's nice to hear, except now I get the frets because I am just a dude who makes fart noises at home, nobody's paying me and I am afraid all these nice monitors will be wasted on me because I will forever fail to actually know the real quality of the things.

On the other hand my significant other told me the Neumanns look like crap so now I am deciding between really seriously blowing $$$ on the Amphions and BM15A. And it actually seems it is possible to exploit Brexit and get stuff for relatively cheaps from UK.

  On 8/22/2019 at 9:59 AM, thawkins said:

That's nice to hear, except now I get the frets because I am just a dude who makes fart noises at home, nobody's paying me and I am afraid all these nice monitors will be wasted on me because I will forever fail to actually know the real quality of the things.

On the other hand my significant other told me the Neumanns look like crap so now I am deciding between really seriously blowing $$$ on the Amphions and BM15A. And it actually seems it is possible to exploit Brexit and get stuff for relatively cheaps from UK.

Do it! 

Also, I literally JUST TODAY did some sound design for Dynaudio. So if I wasn’t biased before...

  On 8/22/2019 at 4:51 PM, Squee said:

Do it! 

Also, I literally JUST TODAY did some sound design for Dynaudio. So if I wasn’t biased before...

I notice the BM-15A is described as a near-mid field monitor and the Amphions are only near-field. I guess this means that I should prefer the Dynaudio if it turns out that my listening spot is not close enough. I am pretty sure I will use the monitors for general purpose everyday listening as well so near-mid makes more sense.

  On 8/23/2019 at 1:40 PM, thawkins said:

I notice the BM-15A is described as a near-mid field monitor and the Amphions are only near-field. I guess this means that I should prefer the Dynaudio if it turns out that my listening spot is not close enough. I am pretty sure I will use the monitors for general purpose everyday listening as well so near-mid makes more sense.

Correct.
But why don't you look into the new Dynaudio Core monitors? Specifically, the Core 7. According to what people say they sound pretty damn fine.

Once again, considering your budget, I'd strongly advice sorting out demo pairs of the monitors you consider... and produce / mix with them for a couple of weeks.

Are there monitor sets that can be build into your car? I like how music sounds in my car over the studio,  but reakon there are much better setups then the speakers I have now.

Dynaudio make car speakers

  On 8/23/2019 at 8:09 PM, Nil said:

Once again, considering your budget, I'd strongly advice sorting out demo pairs of the monitors you consider... and produce / mix with them for a couple of weeks.

This is such an alien thought for me because who the hell would lend a person like me a pair of 3k eur speakers.

I have almost always bought my gear with the assumption that I will make it work for me somehow. I had the HS8-s precisely because it's "close" to NS-10 and they are popular on Thomann. Stepping up from that I figured I just have to get - like @xox pointed out - something-anything at that price point and it will be good enough for me.

If you buy them from Thomann you can try them out for 30 days and get your money back if you don't like them.

Funky junk has used BM15A for what seems to be 1300 EUR. I think this is a sign. I hope it's not a case of the things being broken in some weird messed up way. I already have my laptop that I go spend $$$ on crap breaking every year...

You know, I think I can make good music on some $80 Sony bookshelf speakers. 

  On 8/29/2019 at 5:58 PM, sheatheman said:

You know, I think I can make good music on some $80 Sony bookshelf speakers. 

I think I can too, but I feel it's like a tradeoff: you can make good stuff on cheap speakers, but then you need to work harder and spend more time to listen how the result sounds on other systems (especially large PA ones which you do not really get to experiment on too often).

Currently I am at a time in my life where I have more money than time to invest in getting to know my speakers, and I want to start taking my music out to be played on gigs so I am going a different route. I am going to assume that if I get good monitors and listen to music that I like, and then make my own stuff so that it sort of "fits" in compared to my inspirations, then I can be confident that whenever I get the chance to play my stuff on a larger PA, it will sort of still sound like it should in my mind's eye.

  On 8/29/2019 at 5:58 PM, sheatheman said:

You know, I think I can make good music on some $80 Sony bookshelf speakers. 

Sure, you can compose good music on a $2 speaker meant for Raspberry Pi mini computer. But when it comes to electronic music, part of the composition is the sound design and mix. If the kick isn't as punchy as you thought it was it's gonna fail miserably. And if you want your stuff played on the radio or at festivals or clubs or whatever then you'll need to know what you're doing to the mix. 

  On 8/30/2019 at 11:33 AM, thawkins said:

I think I can too, but I feel it's like a tradeoff: you can make good stuff on cheap speakers, but then you need to work harder and spend more time to listen how the result sounds on other systems (especially large PA ones which you do not really get to experiment on too often).

Currently I am at a time in my life where I have more money than time to invest in getting to know my speakers, and I want to start taking my music out to be played on gigs so I am going a different route. I am going to assume that if I get good monitors and listen to music that I like, and then make my own stuff so that it sort of "fits" in compared to my inspirations, then I can be confident that whenever I get the chance to play my stuff on a larger PA, it will sort of still sound like it should in my mind's eye.

Expand  

Can't remember if we talked about this, but is your room treated in any way?

  On 8/30/2019 at 11:47 AM, Squee said:

Can't remember if we talked about this, but is your room treated in any way?

Not yet, and I am not sure if it can be treated much at all. But I am looking in to what to do and this time I almost have a dedicated music room so it may be possible to throw up a bunch of damping things.

  On 8/30/2019 at 3:27 PM, thawkins said:

Not yet, and I am not sure if it can be treated much at all. But I am looking in to what to do and this time I almost have a dedicated music room so it may be possible to throw up a bunch of damping things.

Build them yourself. It's easy! Buying them is WAY too expensive. And if you buy Soundworks Reference afterwards you're good to go.

  On 8/30/2019 at 3:44 PM, Squee said:

Build them yourself. It's easy! Buying them is WAY too expensive. And if you buy Soundworks Reference afterwards you're good to go.

Yeah I remember reading about this somewhere (here?) and I want to give this a shot. I just hope I don't need to buy a fancy measurement microphone for that. It's this thing right? https://www.sonarworks.com/reference

I only say that after making stuff on $300 speakers for many years (haha).

but seriously, I’m not doing super technical stuff. I know after many years that my em1 sounds amazing straight into a system. Plain sounds sound amazing through a big system. The more effects and processing you do, the worse it has the potential to sound

Definitely oversimplifying things, but I made the choice to be very subtle in production techniques, and all my mixes sound so much better now. I’d rather stand out in compositional ideas than be a Michael Bay trailer. 

Of course I would love some $1000 monitors, but it’s not gonna happen for several years. Might as well learn how to be as good as I can on a zero dollar budget. 

  On 8/30/2019 at 4:03 PM, thawkins said:

Yeah I remember reading about this somewhere (here?) and I want to give this a shot. I just hope I don't need to buy a fancy measurement microphone for that. It's this thing right? https://www.sonarworks.com/reference

If you want the best result you're gonna want the mic that they offer - or any other kind of measurement microphone. You can buy cheaper ones from Thomann, but I don't have any experience with those.
You can use the microphone for impulse responses afterwards

But yeah, I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread.
I've used it ever since I moved into my new studio and I can't fucking live without it. It does amazing things to your setup. I don't even have to test my mixes on other monitors anymore because I know I can trust what I'm doing now. I still test commercials on regular TVs just to make sure my mixes are able to compete with other tv commercials.

  On 8/30/2019 at 4:45 PM, sheatheman said:

Might as well learn how to be as good as I can on a zero dollar budget. 

Oh, absolutely! I don't disagree with that. And once you decide to buy a better setup you'll be fucking amazed at how much you've missed out on  

I am not sure if I want to drop 500 EUR more on the monitoring setup but probably will consider this in the future as the speakers I feel ought to be a quality piece of the whole setup. The sound can come from a $5 beat up kids toy put through a free VST for all I care.