# Subwoofer essentail or a good idea for mixing?



## Daniel Petras (Aug 25, 2016)

Hi guys,

So far I've been mixing everything on my laptop speakers and a $75.00 pair of headphones. A few weeks ago I got my first short film gig and am currently at the mixing stage. Luckily I'm at my parents house atm and checked my mix on the 5.1 system. To my surprise the low frequencies were out of control, but it was an easy fixed once I had the tools to hear them.

Would a sub-woofer be a good idea to purchase in addition to a pair of studio monitors or would a good pair of monitors be able to pick up those low frequencies I missed only mixing on laptop/headphones? Since I'm interested in scoring for film, is 5.1 something to look into, or should I wait further down the line?

Cheers,
Daniel


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## Saxer (Aug 25, 2016)

Hard to answer in a few words.

Mixing on laptop speakers is like painting in the dark.
Mixing on headphones is not impossible but really hard.
Normally good headphones help to listen to the low frequencies.
Most home hifi systems are far off a linear frequency spectrum.

So at the moment it looks like you are jumping from one extreme unreliable listening environment to the next. If you want to do serious mixing get a good pair of studio monitors. The monitors should be in a good treated room (acoustic-wise). That's the way most people here are working.
A wrong placed and leveled subwoofer does more harm than good. So the need of a subwoofer and a surround system is not wrong but put that at the very end of your list.


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## Daniel Petras (Aug 26, 2016)

I appreciate your input and will be purchasing a pair of studio monitors to start out when I get back to my main city. Although I completely see how listening on a home hifi system is not reliable, it at the very least exposed me to things I wasn't able to hear on my laptop or even headphones that would have otherwise completely destroyed my work. I suppose the difficult part will be trying to figure out how to acoustically treat the small condo that I'm renting...


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Aug 26, 2016)

To add to what Saxer said, in a small room you most likely shouldn't use a sub to extend your speakers. It'll cause far more harm than good. Most decent monitors go down to around 40Hz anyways which I believe is the Dolby spec for theaters. You'd need it for 5.1 but I wouldn't even think about it for mixing at the moment without a proper room. I'd suggest getting a cheap home theatre system for your room to watch films and learn a bit about what they do on those before you think about jumping into it.


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## mc_deli (Aug 26, 2016)

I disagree with some of the generalisations above. 
Whatever you get, measure your system, so you know what you are hearing.
A sub is bad if set up wrong. But a sub can be set up correctly. Any monitors will be bad in a small room if set up wrong or positioned wrong.

But most sensible pro monitors and subs will work if you set them up right, test them and "learn" them. 

(And I am waving a big flag for you towards Sonarworks3 for monitor measurement and calibration. 250€ is a bargain for what it does IMHO.)
(And by sensible I think there's not much under 1k €. I am very happy with the VXT6/10-s combo which came in at about 1k. You will get a lot of tips for the KH120a monitors but with the sub the budget goes way up.)


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## Daniel Petras (Aug 26, 2016)

Thanks all.

I've been looking into how to best set up acoustically in my somewhat small area. I read it's best to set up facing the short wall with the length of the room behind you. Not sure if this poses a problem as I would then have the kitchen right behind me and be facing a large pane of glass towards the balcony. The other option would be to turn 90 degrees but have a much smaller room length to work with Not sure how this would react acoustically, but I'll do some experimenting when I get back.

Thanks mc, I'm going to check out those monitors - I'm thinking I don't want to spend anymore than $600 CAD for the monitors themselves.

Also, Gerhard, glad to see another Calgarian!


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Aug 26, 2016)

+1 for Reference 3 from Sonarworks. It's unbelievable what it can do. I normally have it on the minimal latency mode when working but when you put it on the linear phase mode it's fantastic. 

Check out the $150 USD 5" JBL monitors. They're unbelievably good for the price. I know someone who designs mastering studios and builds speakers (~$10,000 monitors) who says they sound fantastic. Doesn't say that about most speakers. He's not such a big fan of the 8" JBL. I just picked up a pair from Long and McQuade to replace my Rokit 8's which I use as surrounds. I put them up against my Dynaudios which are 4x more expensive and they were pretty similar (especially with Reference 3). The JBL have a bit of a wider soundscape. They also have a really impressive bass response. I don't know how these speakers sound so good for the price!


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## Daniel Petras (Aug 26, 2016)

I really like what I'm reading on the JBL monitors. I might just go ahead and purchase those to start out unless I found something else to sway my decision in the next 10 days.


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## Daniel Petras (Aug 26, 2016)

Gerhard, I'm just curious if you know why he didn't like the 8 inch monitors as much as the 5 inch?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Aug 28, 2016)

I'm not sure but I highly regard his opinion so I'll just take his word for it (not something I normally do!). Unless you really need the extra power or bass extension I'd try the 5. He may have been using his power cables (which are worth more than the speakers) which might not have worked as well on the 8. I'm not sure. 

My studio is set to 79dBSPL @ -20dBFS around 1.5m away and they seem to handle it. Pushing it with something that's really loud and bass heavy like parts of Interstellar but even my Dynaudios come to a screeching halt beyond that.


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## Daniel Petras (Aug 30, 2016)

I was watching some of your stuff on Youtube. How did you go about treating your room when you first started?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Aug 30, 2016)

I read the Master Handbook of Acoustics and a couple of studio design books. After doing all of the basement renovations with all of the soundproofing I just built all of the treatment with a friend who had all of the tools to save money. I believe everything which is around 30 panels, 4 gobos, and 10 diffusors cost somewhere $1000 - $2000. I think both the control room and live room ended up sounding nice. A lot more treatment than many "pro" studios I've visited. If you take care of the bass in the corners and the first reflection points (which you can easily calculate with some trig) you should be pretty good as long as the room isn't terrible. I also had the advantage of choosing the dimensions of the room so I picked one of the suggested dimension ratios.


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## Daniel Petras (Aug 30, 2016)

So is your setup permanent then? I'm hoping to do something temporary or something which I can take apart as I don't plan to live at my current place long term.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Sep 4, 2016)

Ya, at least for the next 2 years and I think I've been in this house for around 4 years


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## Daniel Petras (Sep 7, 2016)

Update:

Just bought the JBL 5s. Soo excited to start working with them!!


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## StevenMcDonald (Sep 13, 2016)

Sonorityscape said:


> Update:
> 
> Just bought the JBL 5s. Soo excited to start working with them!!



Congrats! I bought a pair of those on Friday. I know my room isn't properly treated, but it's such a great difference from the crappy old stereo I was using before. Loving these monitors.


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## Daniel Petras (Sep 13, 2016)

Awesome man! I'm in the same boat as you. Need to treat my room, but also very happy to finally have a better representation of the sound.


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