Mornats

The room's almost square rather than rectangular. Good idea about swapping the speakers over. If that doesn't make a difference then know it's not their position that's causing it. I've tried the HS7s in their current position and have moved them incrementally out from the wall until they were around 2 feet from the wall and there was no noticeable difference in the bass response. They probably are too close, but as I can't move them out further it's more convenient to have them up against the wall. I'd knock over the speaker on the right every time I came into or left the room otherwise. It seems odd that my hi-fi speakers are positioned in what I'd thought would be the worst position whilst the monitors are in the best yet the sound doesn't reflect that! When I get the chance I'll swap their positions and will report back.

I've been reading up a bit on acoustic treatment for rooms to help me mix properly on speakers. I know that I need bass traps galore at the very least plus other bits of treatment. At the moment I'm renting a flat so can't install anything and don't really have the space to put massive bass traps all over anyway as my music room is my living room. So I'll have to save all that for if/when I get a dedicated or better room that I can customise Anyway, the purpose of this post is to mention something I've found quite interesting. When I'm playing music on my Yamaha HS7 monitors (the white ones in the pic below) there's very little bass when you're listening in the sweet spot in front of them. The bass disappears almost completely when you move back into the room and get around halfway in. Then if you sit at the back of the room you get the bass at a level I'd expect. So, it's a rubbish room that obviously needs treatment as the bass is being cancelled out quite a lot. However, check out the black Tannoy speakers on my computer desk. When playing music through these the bass is fine. It's fine everywhere in the room. No change, good volume, everything you'd want. So what's the difference? Well, those Tannoys used to be owned by the Tannoy sales rep I got them from 25+ years ago. He'd bi-wired them and "custom sealed" them. I wasn't entirely sure what he'd meant by that but I've realised that he'd turned ported speakers into non-ported speakers. Nothing comes out of the bass ports at the back. The Yamaha's however, have bass pumping out of their bass ports. I remember reading in Mike Senior's Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio that he says never get ported small monitors, always go for un-ported. So I reckon my problem with bass is due to having ported monitors. So I wonder if using un-ported monitors would give me the better bass performance that I'm getting from my Tannoys? It's an interesting observation at least and my recent discovery of what "custom sealed" means has answered the question of why my hi-fi never seems to have the same acoustic issues as my monitoring system! Pic of my messy living room:

I've had a play on one of those and it was really interesting. I'd never have thought it would replace a more traditional keyboard though. Also, I'm sticking with trumpet buttons as it makes me smile

Glad you liked it. The urge to resolve the "melody" was eating away at me all through the recording but I'm glad I held out until the end. It's a lovely collection of instruments to work with too.

I've been rather prolific of late so in between January and February's composition challenge I've knocked out another two tracks. Bleak was made with Orchestral Swarm (The Tidal Orchestra), Albion V Tundra, Sound Dust Cloud Viola 2, 8Dio Clocks, Spitfire Audio Soft Piano, Tundra Atmos, Izotope Trash, Izotope Ozone, Izotope Neutron, RC 24 reverb, Replika XT, Reaper. Dark Cluster was made with Albion V Tundra, Scoring Guitars, Project Alpha, Ethera Soundscapes, Reaktor Steampipe, Paris Sampling Motion, Massive, Maschine, Reaper, Neutron, Ozone.

Yeah it's a great one! So, after studying the pic I'm thinking of a solo cello mimicking the left hand on the piano with a viola (not sure if it's a viola or a violin in the pic but I'm going with viola) mimicking the right hand of the piano. The violin and the trumpet should be performing a duet but not overlapping as the guy's only got one pair of hands. No wait, he's got some contraption hooked up to the trumpet button things (don't laugh, I can't think of the word) so that means they can play at the same time. Right, all that machinery is going to create some whirring, clanking and ticking. I think I'm set

I've recorded 3 minutes of silence for this one.

Well done, I loved that one

This one's an incredibly enjoyable month! Loved them all really and it was hard to pick my faves.

No worries, so am I

Not sure how much of the thread you managed to get through but I ended up replacing it. I'd had it for 27 years and felt it was time to retire it. I'd gambled that upping my budget a bit from what it was back then, plus the advances made in audio over that time would mean I'd get a better sounding amp. It paid off Interesting to read about positioning speakers against walls. Here's a pic where you can see one of each of my white Yamaha monitors and my black Tannoy hi-fi speakers. Both sets of speakers are 4 inches from the wall. The bass sounds fine from my Tannoys but if you recall my previous comments about them they were sealed by the Tannoy rep I bought them from. So that explains why the bass is better I guess? So in terms of having my Yamahas up against the wall, these are 4 inches from the wall, measured from the centre of the speaker and they're turned away from the wall at an angle - 35 to 40 degrees. Would that be considered up against the wall?

Interesting question as I'm finding that I can mix better on my Cambridge Audio SR20 + Tannoy E11s than I can with my Yamaha HS7s. Could be to do with the placement in the room but I can't do anything meaningful under 200hz with my Yamahas and I miss details on them that I can hear perfectly well on my Audio Technica M50x headphones. It could also be that I listen to other music far more on the CA and AT than I do with the Yamahas.

That's something I'd love to be able to do.

You're all going to get me into trouble with my girlfriend.

Oh it's so annoying the amount of spam accounts I have to report every time I upload a new track. The funniest are the ones with names like Abigail Angel and it's a picture of a bearded muscly bloke. Yeah right Abi, I believe ya.

They'd have to be something special to make me give up my Tannoys but I'll put them on my (future) to-listen list.

Haha, and I've been doing this twice as long as you have

Oops, I had one in my signature but I've not set that up on the new site yet. Here it is:

Just had a look at my Soundcloud account and I've clocked up just over 10,000 plays! Wow! Thanks to everyone who's ever listened, it means a lot

Yeah, it's quite an increase in output power but I rarely got my old amp past 2 on the dial in my flat. This one copes with these lowish volumes really well. It's brilliantly clear. Kinda tempted to take my Tannoy E11s into Richer Sounds and a/b them against some new speakers now. The only thing stopping me is that I'm very attached to them. I've had them for 27 years too and they used to be owned by a Tannoy rep who took them apart, bi-wired them then sealed them. So they're a one-off. Still tempted to see what I may be missing though. If I move out of my flat I'm going to reassess my hi-fi placement and maybe have it more central in a living room with speakers on proper stands. In an ideal world I'd have a nice music room like Skol's too

Absolutely. That's what this is all about.

An update on this. I stuck with my Rotel until recently when the problems started getting worse and more frequent. I've finally retired the amp after 27 years of good service. Well done to Rotel for building a resilient bit of kit! I had lined up the Marantz PM6006 but they were out of stock and Richer Sounds recommend the Cambridge Audio Topaz SR20 which I bought. Installed it today and it's lovely. Sounds better than my Rotel but doesn't have a different sound signature. It just sounds better with more separation of instruments and a much better soundstage on it. I'm really happy with it Interestingly, to continue the brief conversation about DACs from above, the CA has a Wolfson DAC in it (and an optical in) whilst my Asus Xonar Essence soundcard has a Burr Brown DAC. Both are highly regarded from what I can tell. So, I did a bit of A/B testing and found that using the optical out and the DAC in the CA it gave a more digital, clinical but sharper sound whereas using the Burr Brown int he Xonar and going into the amp via RCA leads had a smoother slightly warmer sound with nicer (slightly rounded) highs. So I'm going with the Burr Brown and RCA connection. I hadn't actually expected to hear any difference whatsoever but it's there if you have the ears and interest to look for it.

I've uploaded a tweaked version of mine. My girlfriend commented that it was nice until the percussion came blasting in so I've toned that down somewhat but also compensated by adding in some choir chants. It's had a slight remix too, some mud and overly eager bottom-end removed and some boosting in the higher frequencies has been tamed. Added a bit more compression glue too.

Got mine done. Had major fun with this one and referenced it against Hans Zimmer's Blue Planet 2 soundtrack (which is amazeballs). Featuring Spitfire Audio's Albion V Tundra, Albion One and Orchestral Swarm. Choirs by Soundiron's Olympus and Requiem choirs. The inspiration behind it was imagining a timelapse of the mushrooms sprouting in droves and taking over the log they're growing on. I was hearing the broomstick scene from Disney's Fantasia in my head at the time.

Cheers, I'll try that high end stuff. My ears are useless at 13.5khz upwards so I can't hear my mangling up there. I actually came across that curve whilst listening to my mixes on Poweramp on my phone and I tried one of the eq presets (was just messing with them) and my mix became so much clearer so I copied the curve and saved it as a preset in Neutron.