# Anyone using 8" monitors at home as "nearfields" ?



## passsacaglia (Feb 2, 2017)

Just by curiosity, any of you guys using 6,5" and above say 8" monitors as your 
nearfield main monitors?

Seen some guys making tutorials on youtube on "How to" and the FACT Magazine's Agains the Clock videos of artist having 8" monitors as their nearfields. Or, at least big 6.5" inches.

Myself I have a pair of Focal alpha 50's for my home studio monitors, super duper satisfied with everything.
But wondered, in the future if I would like to hear a little bit more of the low end, go for a pair of let's say LRS308's, Focal Alpha 80s, M3-8's etc... and still sit relatively close to them just like you would with a pair of smaller monitors ... thinking of the stereo image etc and the magic triangle.  I love listening to deep, warm low end and great mid+clarity. 

Cheers!


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## passsacaglia (Feb 2, 2017)

ps @synthpunk , thought of you and J-Chim seeing all those hardware synths and the barefoots haha!


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## synthpunk (Feb 2, 2017)

It is hard to get the best of both worlds in one affordable package. Once you hear the big Barefoot's you're pretty Blown Away but at a price of course. Will be interesting to see the reviews on the new series that just came out that list for 3500.

Dynaudio Bm-15a work well for me, but the Bm-6a some say has a little more detail.


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## passsacaglia (Feb 2, 2017)

Great! Ha yeah, listened to those ones...one day...

I mean, if it's a good average pair I was thinking of paying 800-1k/pair or like 550-600 a piece.

Curious about the size. I mean, I was thinking of a pair of Mackie XR-6 or 8 series (36 Hz – 22 kHz) ,Focal Alpha 80 (35Hz-22kHz), JBL LRS308's (37Hz-24kHz), M Audio M3-8's (38 Hz – 22 kHz) or Samson Resolv SE8 (40Hz-27kHz, looks like a beast)... or the APS Klasik (some say better than the Neumann's, goes down to 35Hz)
the CMS only goes to 6,5" and goes down to 40...
But either a 6,5" with a low end like 36Hz or so or an 8" with about the same low end frequencies.

If 6.5" is the "maximum" one should use as nearfields or if someone uses 8" as their main nearfields and how that experience is. For a typical home studio setup let's say 16m2 (square meters). Any standards?


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## anobi (Feb 2, 2017)

I've got a pair of Alpha 65's and I've been happy with the low end on these. I'm using them in my living room which is quite huge and untreated but I still feel that Alpha 80's would be a bit overkill.


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## gsilbers (Feb 2, 2017)

There are some small format monitors that go down to 40hz so as nearfields they are ok.

HEre is a interview question from bob katz about nearfields

http://vi-control.net/community/thr...itoring-is-like-wearing-big-headphones.19601/


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## chimuelo (Feb 2, 2017)

I actually use Aspen Pittman Spacestation 3.
It's a bi amped Stereo cabinet in a single enclosure.
Designed to replace Stereo cabinets.
It's an 8 inch Emminence with a 6.5 inch side firing mid range and a 1 inch tweeter.

I tried it as a monitoring rig while recording and didn't need to use BX Digital mono maker or any treatment this thing just works for Stage studio and even HTPC/HDMI when I have small get togethers where we want a theater IMAX type of experience.

It throws audio using the CPS Patent.
But for really big stages I add a 12" sub.

If you're in LA send the man an email and go see his Tube Studio too.
Really great guy.
You won't believe how versatile the cabinet is.
I was about 8 feet away in my living room which is 36 x 40. You can hear everything but just can't close your eyes and say the cabinet is here, it just surrounds you.

Playback on the 24 driver Roxanne IEMs was close enough to the cabinets Mix I had to A/B it a few times to try and find discrepancies.

The guy is cutting edge.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 2, 2017)

Until you get to really big enclosures, I find the concept of anything-fields somewhat fuzzy. Speakers sound right at a certain distance, and that depends on a number of things (including your preference).

But it's true that you can hear a lot of detail sitting relatively close to speakers, and 8" isn't unusual at all for NFMs. The Tannoy System 8 NFM IIs I used to have were quite common in their day, for instance.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 2, 2017)

Bob Katz is always interesting. I've thought for a long time that what he says about dynamics is true: a lot of small speakers sound like the music is coming from a box - because it is. They compress the dynamics, and my guess is that it's because the small cabinets don't have enough room to respond properly.

That's why I like my UREI 809As so much. They have obvious flaws, but they don't sound like boxes, and the bass sounds overwhelmingly right.

But the Blue Sky System One (sealed 6.5s + sub) are very good too, and very different.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Feb 2, 2017)

Bigger isn't necessarily better and doesn't necessarily go lower. There are a number of high end 3 way monitors that don't go as low as smaller 2 ways. The cabinet and DSP have a huge impact on the frequency response and how low it can go.

You mentioned the LSR 308 - from what I've heard, the 305 sound better. I have mine about 1.7m away and they've got enough power for that (and go surprisingly low) so unless you're working at an even larger distance I probably wouldn't go for the 308.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 3, 2017)

Gerard, most NFMs don't go below about 60Hz. We used to get reader's tapes to critique for a column when I was at Recording magazine, and one of the most common problems was vocal pops - which are 55Hz. Same with piano hammer thuds.

But of course it's true that bigger doesn't necessarily go lower. Speaker design is always a trade-off.

My big UREI 809As (12" in a little under 2' x 1.5' enclosures) are only rated down to 50Hz, although they do have some useful response at 40Hz.


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## synthpunk (Feb 3, 2017)

Used the same monitors for years as well Nick. Passed them on to a new home after getting the Dynaudio.

The low end of the big Barefoot's can take your breath away. I would call them at Midfield monitor.

If you want something that goes deeper the Mackie HR824 mk1 can certainly do that with the passive woofer inside.









Nick Batzdorf said:


> Until you get to really big enclosures, I find the concept of anything-fields somewhat fuzzy. Speakers sound right at a certain distance, and that depends on a number of things (including your preference).
> 
> But it's true that you can hear a lot of detail sitting relatively close to speakers, and 8" isn't unusual at all for NFMs. The Tannoy System 8 NFM IIs I used to have were quite common in their day, for instance.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Feb 3, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Gerard, most NFMs don't go below about 60Hz. We used to get reader's tapes to critique for a column when I was at Recording magazine, and one of the most common problems was vocal pops - which are 55Hz. Same with piano hammer thuds.
> 
> But of course it's true that bigger doesn't necessarily go lower. Speaker design is always a trade-off.
> 
> My big UREI 809As (12" in a little under 2' x 1.5' enclosures) are only rated down to 50Hz, although they do have some useful response at 40Hz.



Well with the right cabinet and DSP design you can get even a 3" woofer to go down to 20Hz. It's a matter of how much power you want to lose to being able to reproduce those frequencies since they'll make you hit your maximum excursion so quickly. There's a great article about it from Audio Express Magazine called "The DSP Assisted Reflex System - Squeeze More Bass From Every Reflex Design." In my case I'm getting my 7" Dynaudios (rated down to 42Hz at +/- 3dB) down below 30Hz but I do need to be careful to avoid hitting their limits in certain bass-heavy situations. At the same time, I've worked on 3-ways with 15" woofers that only went down the same amount (although they obviously have a lot more headroom down there).


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## Jack Weaver (Feb 3, 2017)

Kinda like both - 6.5 to 8 inch nearfields and and larger midfields. 

Here's my temporary studio - for the next 2 or 3 months. 

The nearfields (Amphions Two18's) have a dual 12" subwoof that I can switch in or out of the circuit and change the cutoff frequency with my monitor controller. Don't really need a subwoof with the midfield ATC 150's because they have a 15" woof. You see three of them in this picture as they are the L,C,R of my surround system. 





The cell phone picture of course distorts the depth of field a bit. 

.


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## ctsai89 (Feb 3, 2017)

8 inches are stil nearfields though. 10 inch would be identified as mid field (like the krk rokit 10)


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## erica-grace (Feb 3, 2017)

Jack Weaver said:


> Here's my temporary studio - for the next 2 or 3 months.



Nice! 

What keyboard controller is that?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 3, 2017)

Gerhard wrote:



> In my case I'm getting my 7" Dynaudios (rated down to 42Hz at +/- 3dB) down below 30Hz



Did you modify them, use EQ, or are you just saying they have useful response that low? You can certainly get a tiny speaker to vibrate back and forth that slowly - headphones do! - but as you say, the output is very low.

My only point is that speakers like, say, NS-10Ms often start rolling off at maybe 80Hz. That's going to miss vocal pops at 55Hz, in fact I've seen engineers feel for pops by putting their hands on NS-10 cones.

And that's not at all saying NS-10s aren't also a very useful reference, because they absolutely are.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 3, 2017)

ctsal89:



> 8 inches are stil nearfields though. 10 inch would be identified as mid field (like the krk rokit 10)



Sorry to go on and on about this, but that's the manufacturer identifying them. If you like the sound of your 8" speakers 10' away or your 10" speakers 4' away, it's perfectly legal!


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Feb 3, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Gerhard wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Naturally they go pretty low but I used the bass extension setting in Reference 3 which really holds them up down low. You can see the graph in my previous post. I can get a decent amount out (perhaps because I don't run them all that loud so there's some room before they hit the max excursion or get hit by the built-in limiting) but they start flapping uncontrollably and producing harmonic distortion if I push them with certain films that put a lot of content down there (Alan Meyerson had to replace woofers on his B&W 802's several times for films like Dark Knight and eventually had to switch to the big ATC's to handle it and still extends them with an additional sub so I can't expect to get all of that bass in here at a similar distance). For music it's fine.

Strangely enough, when I tried extending my speakers with a 10" sub, the sub actually rolled off much sooner than the Dynaudios so I got a lot less bass and it suffered from the same amount of uncontrollably flapping. I believe it has to do with well engineered DSP in the Dynaudios. Without it, frequencies only slightly below where the speaker should have been cut off cause a crazy amount of distortion.


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## heisenberg (Feb 3, 2017)

erica-grace said:


> What keyboard controller is that?



Looks like one of the Doepfer LMK series controllers.


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## passsacaglia (Feb 4, 2017)

Busy week filled with cold.
Wooh, great inputs everyone! I believe so too. The thing is that, I do not hate my Alpha 50 nearfields, they have plenty of "bass" and punch, but one would always wanna feel more.
Feels like, for the price the Alpha 65's as well as 80's could be great (better) choices compared to what I have now.
Next ones would perhaps be a pair of the new Mackie XR series and the XR824.

Amphions or Barefoots or Solo6's or twins would be nice but, a little above my budget.
Will stay subscribed and see what this leads to  Nice temporary studio btw Jack!

ps. about the 305 vs 308's, thx Gerard! In that case I like the sound of my Alpha 50's better than my experience with the 305's. 

Thx for the great advice from All of you guys.


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## Jack Weaver (Feb 4, 2017)

erica-grace said:


> What keyboard controller is that?


Yes, heisenberg is correct. It's a LMK 2. However with a name like that I understand how you can be 'uncertain' about that. 



Nick Batzdorf said:


> Sorry to go on and on about this, but that's the manufacturer identifying them. If you like the sound of your 8" speakers 10' away or your 10" speakers 4' away, it's perfectly legal!


Nick gives sage advice here. Manufacturerspeak necessitates that products are defined within narrow constraints of public understandability. They define their products as 'nearfield' or 'midfield' as a way of making it understood to many. It's not really meant to limit your usage to any certain context.
The only thing is that before buying you either have to try out the speakers or depend on 'reliable' feedback from those you might trust.

.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 4, 2017)

Jack, you are the Champion Sage.

Gerhard:



> Strangely enough, when I tried extending my speakers with a 10" sub, the sub actually rolled off much sooner than the Dynaudios



That's not a surprise. Unless you get lucky - as a friend (who's an amazing engineer) did with an $89 Costco sub with his NS-10s! - the whole thing has to be designed to work as a system. When it goes wrong, you get all the problems people associate with subs.

I used to think subs themselves didn't make a lot of difference, because it's all rumble range stuff. But I was wrong. The one that's part of my Blue Sky System One starts higher than most - the crossover is centered at 120Hz if I remember right. You really don't hear the transition. The 6.5s are also sealed cabinets, which I've had speaker designers tell me makes their job easier.

But just adding a sub to a speaker system won't automatically do good things.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Feb 4, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Jack, you are the Champion Sage.
> 
> Gerhard:
> 
> ...



To be clear, I didn't mean rolling off in the crossover. The crossover was fine as I was doing it digitally and could adjust it however I wanted to make it smooth. You couldn't hear the transition and whether it was 2.0 or 2.1 based on the transition.

I meant roll off in bass of the sub. It started to fall at 40Hz and was down close to -12dB by 30Hz. The Dynaudios on their own hold flat 30Hz - 40Hz and then drop off steeply after that. I was crossing over at 60Hz and so down to 40Hz there was no difference but then below that there would be a lot less bass when the sub was engaged. I tried putting the sub all over the room and couldn't get it much better so I assume it was the sub itself.


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## mc_deli (Feb 5, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> *Naturally they go pretty low but I used the bass extension setting in Reference 3 which really holds them up down low.* You can see the graph in my previous post. I can get a decent amount out (perhaps because I don't run them all that loud so there's some room before they hit the max excursion or get hit by the built-in limiting) but they start flapping uncontrollably and producing harmonic distortion if I push them with certain films that put a lot of content down there (Alan Meyerson had to replace woofers on his B&W 802's several times for films like Dark Knight and eventually had to switch to the big ATC's to handle it and still extends them with an additional sub so I can't expect to get all of that bass in here at a similar distance). For music it's fine.
> 
> Strangely enough, when I tried extending my speakers with a 10" sub, the sub actually rolled off much sooner than the Dynaudios so I got a lot less bass and it suffered from the same amount of uncontrollably flapping. I believe it has to do with well engineered DSP in the Dynaudios. Without it, frequencies only slightly below where the speaker should have been cut off cause a crazy amount of distortion.



My bold. I promised no more SW posts but ah! Just think this could cause confusion.

By "bass extension" you mean the "max low frequency" setting, right?
(This is where you can choose either e.g. "neutral" correction so the software will only try to correct down to @40Hz, or extended - looks like to about 25Hz or aggressive, which seems to be to 15Hz. The idea here is that you don't want Ref3 to be trying to add loads of sub bass if your system can't reproduce it.)
Or do you mean you are using a "bass tilt" or custom EQ curve as a "target" curve in Ref3?

...on the other point about your sub mismatch. With out knowing the sub and its features, could you have had a phase problem? I have a KRK 10-s and it has a phase switch, level and crossover. If I understand most subs have this - seems really odd you could not get response under 30Hz even in the weirdest room...


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Feb 5, 2017)

mc_deli said:


> My bold. I promised no more SW posts but ah! Just think this could cause confusion.
> 
> By "bass extension" you mean the "max low frequency" setting, right?
> (This is where you can choose either e.g. "neutral" correction so the software will only try to correct down to @40Hz, or extended - looks like to about 25Hz or aggressive, which seems to be to 15Hz. The idea here is that you don't want Ref3 to be trying to add loads of sub bass if your system can't reproduce it.)
> ...



Ya, I mean the max low frequency which I have at "extended." On the graph it only adds about 3Hz more than the "natural." Based on measurements it actually doesn't change the frequency at which the Dynaudios drop off (I'm fairly certain that it's because of the DSP stopping anything lower). What the setting does do is change the level of 28Hz-40Hz, holding it higher up. I found the aggressive to be too much both for the speaker to handle and from a balance perspective. I'm not sure how "smart" Reference is so with monitors that don't use DSP you might run into more issues.

I'm using a Presonus Temblor T10 which the specs show down to 20Hz but there are many similar (10") subs that only show going down to 30Hz so I'm not sure how much they fudged the specs.

When I was moving it around the room to try to get a better response, I was using only the sub so there weren't any phase problems. In the picture I attached you can see how drastic it was. It was from an early test with the Dynaudios engaged but you can see that if I brought the sub level down so that 50Hz would be more even, 30Hz would be very low.


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## mc_deli (Feb 5, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Ya, I mean the max low frequency which I have at "extended." On the graph it only adds about 3Hz more than the "natural." Based on measurements it actually doesn't change the frequency at which the Dynaudios drop off (I'm fairly certain that it's because of the DSP stopping anything lower). What the setting does do is change the level of 28Hz-40Hz, holding it higher up. I found the aggressive to be too much both for the speaker to handle and from a balance perspective. I'm not sure how "smart" Reference is so with monitors that don't use DSP you might run into more issues.
> 
> I'm using a Presonus Temblor T10 which the specs show down to 20Hz but there are many similar (10") subs that only show going down to 30Hz so I'm not sure how much they fudged the specs.
> 
> When I was moving it around the room to try to get a better response, I was using only the sub so there weren't any phase problems. In the picture I attached you can see how drastic it was. It was from an early test with the Dynaudios engaged but you can see that if I brought the sub level down so that 50Hz would be more even, 30Hz would be very low.



Must confess, I don't understand most of your post and, having come this far, on a quiet Sunday night, I want to!

- it only adds about 3Hz more than the "natural." - you mean the correction only goes down 3Hz lower than "natural", right?
- The DSP - the Dynaudios have their own DSP, sorry, you don't state which model, bit difficult to follow... what is the DSP?
- I found the aggressive to be too much both for the speaker to handle - if you switch on the "limits" "curve" you can see how the bass roll off of of the Ref3 correction changes based on the neutral/expanded/aggressive setting. Surely the idea here is to match this roll off point (I see it as a HPF) to your system, comparing how that setting changes the correction curve... expanded looks about right if you have a sub or system that goes down to @30Hz (this could be better documented) - do we understand this the same?
- I'm not sure how "smart" Reference is so with monitors that don't use DSP you might run into more issues. - surely the other way round. If you have some kind of active DSP tech with the monitors (or as software) if that makes adjustments based on the frequency components of your playback, surely there's no way a correction system like Ref3 can keep correcting on the fly... (again could be documented)... and I don't know how your DSP software works... maybe I have had one too many glasses but I don't follow...


Back to the sub.. I was amazed in my most recent faffing with concrete blocks, sub, Ref3 etc etc at how little level I had from my sub. On the 10-s there is a level control from -30dB to +6dB and I had it on, like, -27dB to get an almost flat response down to 30Hz... of course specific room etc etc... I was kinda disappointed... "why have this sub if I am barely using it!" but shocked at how the tiniest nudge up totally overloaded everything from 40-80Hz - no surprise - up to the 80Hz crossover... point being, I haven't done this setting up with subs much but it seems to me like it is very easy to just turn up a sub too much 

(I am referencing my results in the other Ref3 thread here http://vi-control.net/community/thr...one-calibration-wow.58189/page-6#post-4051049)


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Feb 5, 2017)

mc_deli said:


> - it only adds about 3Hz more than the "natural." - you mean the correction only goes down 3Hz lower than "natural", right?



Ya, that's correct but it's not just the extension that it changes. It also adds a little bump at frequencies which were already there in "natural."



mc_deli said:


> - The DSP - the Dynaudios have their own DSP, sorry, you don't state which model, bit difficult to follow... what is the DSP?



I'm using the BM5 mk3. There isn't really anything mentioned about the DSP in the specs except that it uses an active DSP crossover. The reason that I think it is using DSP to limit the bass is how steep the cutoff is below 28Hz. It falls off almost instantly. The article I mentioned earlier in this thread talks about how you can get a lot more out of a speaker by carefully cutting it off steeply at a certain frequency with DSP. Essentially, the lower goes, the more uncontrollable and more excursion there is. Without it, you almost instantly hit the speaker's max with almost no energy just a few Hz below that point so the DSP optimizes it to stop it at that point so that you don't get all of that energy which quickly maxes out the speaker and just causes harmonic distortion.



mc_deli said:


> - I found the aggressive to be too much both for the speaker to handle - if you switch on the "limits" "curve" you can see how the bass roll off of of the Ref3 correction changes based on the neutral/expanded/aggressive setting. Surely the idea here is to match this roll off point (I see it as a HPF) to your system, comparing how that setting changes the correction curve... expanded looks about right if you have a sub or system that goes down to @30Hz (this could be better documented) - do we understand this the same?



The aggressive is the only one that really tries to push beyond the limit of the Dynaudios. I use it for the changes it causes above the LF limit it's changing. On a system that doesn't have DSP helping to cut off those unwanted frequencies, Reference could be putting out energy there which would cause a lot of issues and you would get a lot more distortion and hit the speaker's max much earlier just because of a few Hz.



mc_deli said:


> - I'm not sure how "smart" Reference is so with monitors that don't use DSP you might run into more issues. - surely the other way round. If you have some kind of active DSP tech with the monitors (or as software) if that makes adjustments based on the frequency components of your playback, surely there's no way a correction system like Ref3 can keep correcting on the fly... (again could be documented)... and I don't know how your DSP software works... maybe I have had one too many glasses but I don't follow...



You only need one measurement to figure out where the speaker should be cut off to optimize it's performance so I'm just thinking that maybe there's a way that Reference can find that point in the initial measurements and then keep that point in mind while adjusting those bass settings to not push below it. I could see this being very helpful with speakers that don't have DSP. Many people do it themselves with different plugins or hardware devices.

I'd be curious to try EQing my sub and see how much I can improve it and sort of optimize it to focus down below 30Hz.

I'm by no means an expert when it comes to speakers and all of that so I could be wrong. If I'm wrong about something, please point it out!


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## mc_deli (Feb 5, 2017)

Nice one GW. I think we are on the same page


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## wst3 (Feb 6, 2017)

Currently using three sets of monitors here, Urei 809s in the far field, and Presonus Sceptre S6s and JBL LSR305s in the near field. I'm going to get one of the Presonus Tremblors (not sure which one yet, but probably the T-8 since I have heard it, and the T-10 might be a bit much for my current setup. I will be very interested to see how it interacts with the JBLs<G>! JBL also has a "matching" sub-woofer for the LSR3xx family, perhaps I need to consider that?

I didn't think I needed a sub, but a recent project had a ton of military percussion, and I overdid the low end by a lot, so clearly my ears need recalibration, or I need some help.

We will see...


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 6, 2017)

> It also adds a little bump at frequencies which were already there in "natural."



That's why God created the crossover - to avoid that!


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