Updates are coming to community-recommended similar items...

Yes! Here in Brazil I always see V8s in the studios, the producers tend to use them a lot here. Maybe they are the best monitors from KRK, but I'm still going with Adams

Up!! Frequency response graphics are undoubtedly a great parameter for choosing the right equipment.

l preference. And also remembering that if there is no treatment in your studio, the monitors will not be used correctly..

there's a lot of mythology about how much treatment you'll find in the average commercial control room or post room.... the fact is that apart from some very swanky places that are big enough for film work or mastering labs, high end ones, that are treated for a fairly narrow sweet spot in a purpose built room, even places with bass traps, diffusers etc are kinda thrown together. If an actual acoustician is involved they make compromises for a wide 'sweet spot' to acomodate the client and help the engineer hear when he's wandering around setting up hardware controls. Those needs limit what can be done anyway. The level of treatment is having most effect when the sofit mounted speakers are blasting to impress the client. If you're working alone the first rule is don't turn the volume up much. Only to make sure your bass isn't louder than you think it is or isn't overcompressed where instead of getting exponentially louder as you turn up it actually never gets any louder as you turn up ;-) even then just for a sec to get relative levels. If you mix low you don't hear the amplification working, you avoid ear fatigue and you don't run much risk of creating nulls, standing waves or just driving the room resonance. These are best practices everywhere you go. If you don't have an SPL meter then download an app, there are a few for free that are very good. Even a nice commercial facility tends to have a sound in the control room. A good balance engineer avoids mixing into the room whether its at home or in a swanky commercial space. Oddly, one of the best studios left in Philly where I live (the city, not the studio) has a highly treated control room for tracking where the rare neve desk is and a few choice pieces of gear.... then past the machine room where the studer and ampex machiens live there's a spare vocal booth that's half closet and then the post room. The post room ahs a gorgeous SSL G and all the really good outboard like bluestripe 1176es etc. This room isn't very treated if at all. Magical things come out of there. The less you know what you're doing the more treatment you need. I've been back there with the owner (grammy winner, not name droping) and he monitors hella low and knows his space. I think he's using a pair of NS10s and a pair of questeds or something like that.

I think a lot of places make the treatment colorful, put up pointless wood panneling etc just to impress the client, its heping but not that much. especially in a boxy control room. If your room is boxy and you're worried the first thing to do if tis already carpeted is to consider getting the ceiling out of the equation, this is the only time auralex is worth a damn. Corner traps and diffusers can be made from cheap materials at the hardware store. Really the drywall and shape are most to blame and that's hard to change. Its the rare studio that has a non perpendicular control room with a slanted ceiling like a mastering lab.... go look up peerless mastering or the lodge and look at the shape of those rooms... that's treatment. Everything else is a bandaid. Others will disagree.... but take a look at some studios of old, the mom and pop labels like motown in berry gordy's basement or sun? you going to tell me those records weren't good?

edit: I also want to point out that deadening your room is a bad idea too.... if you've ever been in the dead room somewhere its pretty creepy and its going to really throw you off. Building broad traps, diffusers, putting down tick carpet and auralexing the hell out of your side walls and ceiling will probably be too far towards dead without solving the problem of decoupling your floor and decorelating the walls which is another story entirely, an architectural story.... great for recording a really dry signal but not where you want to make a balance, my young friend. Make peace with you speakers and space, then develop best practices to work effectively in them. Know your tools, whatever they are, from the recorder (DAW whatever) to the compressors and equalizers you have at your disposal, really understand those problem solving tools.... and then have fun and stop worrying.

Up!! Frequency response graphics are undoubtedly a great parameter for choosing the right equipment.

no no, schematics, published response curves, particularly for, say, speakers, are often misleading ;-) in other equipment, for example compressors? some of the coolest units have pretty miserable THD specs but they sound awesome. My favorite stereo EQ right now goes all the way up to 40k which no one can hear, maybe dogs, right? None of the source idea artists sends me has info up there anyway as hardly any consumer grade gear passes signal above 20k even if you have good converters and are running at 192k sample rate.... that great bandwidth spec is limited in usefulness by the people you work for and the rest of the gear in your own studio.

but for alternatives a schematic comparison is worth a thousand words.

A famous Brazilian producer, said in an interview that subs are very deceptive, because that sound will never be heard that way in a headphone of a person who is listening to the music on spotify. So, that's what you said, there is no point in having the equipment if you dont know how to use it according to your needs. Russ (rapper), produces his own sounds, and always emphasizes that the most important thing is that the music is good, there is no point in having thousands of equipments if you dont know how to use them. He took the equipment with him on the road during his tours and has already made several multi-platinum hits in hotel rooms (obviously untreated) using only macbook pro, tlm 103, ua apollo duo and a ath m50x. So there is no point in having the best monitors on the market, if you dont have the experience to get the best out of them.

He took the equipment with him on the road during his tours and has already made several multi-platinum hits in hotel rooms (obviously untreated) using only macbook pro, tlm 103, ua apollo duo and a ath m50x. So there is no point in having the best monitors on the market, if you dont have the experience to get the best out of them.

Ah the 103, the hip hop mic of choice back when it came out. I would try to convince rappers to try one of the other mics at the studio we worked at but they usually had to hear that one first and become disenchanted to give an AKG or Audio Technica 40 series a shot, let alone a re20 or sm7 but man those guys were not into broadcast mics at the time, now maybe.... gotta learn with your own ears. The 103 excels at a very specific vocal timbre, like a less versatile 87. I prefer not to EQ a vocal much so there's a lot of positioning but also just picking a mic that's going to capture the good bits so you're not dickering with the midrange so much.

I still discourage headphone mixing, I have 2 pairs of m50Xes and also the 40s from the early 2000s and those are great but deceptive headphones, you're better with semi opens like the k240 or something, still less of a good idea than low level monitors in an untreated room... but sure, overall agreement here.

I've been at this for a long time and I make equally good mixes in my home to ones I do in a nice control room... I know my setup really well (even with it growing like a weed) now that its been covid for over a year and I'm faster setting things up here even if its nice to have even more outboard and maybe a real EMT plate or something... really I have what I need with spares of everything for outboard, if not a bunch of fancy pants varimus and what have you. If I'm not getting on with a set of speakers for a particular project I have 3 pairs wired up to choose from and if I really need to I can change a pair out for another pair from the closet. I never get rid of monitors when I buy new ones and suggest that everyone should have a collection.

I never get rid of monitors when I buy new ones and suggest that everyone should have a collection.

My closet is already full, Jim. Homes must be larger in Philly.

https://tenor.com/vVNQ.gif

My closet is already full, Jim. Homes must be larger in Philly.

https://tenor.com/vVNQ.gif

that looks a lot like my walk in... very difficult to walk into right now

Wow this thread lol

1. From here on out they'll be known as Alternatives.
2. They're moving further down the item page, as a proper section.
3. The alternative items will show a price range when possible, so you can quickly scan what costs what when considering alternative gear.
4. We'll be adding the ability to add a YouTube video to support the claim that one item is an alternative to another. For instance if I wanted to claim that the Strymon Sunset is a high-end, similar sounding alternative to the Ibanez TS808 Reissue Tube Screamer, I could submit this video along with it. The video will then be able to be played alongside the item "card." I'm personally pretty stoked about this, since there are so many useful shootout and vs. videos out there!
5. Alternatives will be upvotable, so there is some sense of what people agree with more and that will rise to the top.
6. Like gear submitted to pro artists, these will be editable by everyone, and they will have versioning to keep track of changes (and so there's a paper trail).

Step 6 is now live. Steps 4 and 5 are coming very soon.

Wow this thread lol

I tried to put it back on track once but after I started the derail I couldn't get control of the train....

1. Like gear submitted to pro artists, these will be editable by everyone, and they will have versioning to keep track of changes (and so there's a paper trail).

Step 6 is now live. Steps 4 and 5 are coming very soon.

step 6 should help with the whole 'dunlop hendrix branded gear' thing people are periodically on about

Videos are here for the recommended alternatives!

• You can see I added a couple to some of the alternatives to the Pro-Co RAT.
• And here's an alternative to the Elektron Digitone.

What's cool is you can use YouTube's "t=" parameter to start the video at a certain time. Useful, because many comparison and shootout videos deal with lots of gear.

Let me know what you think!