In this session, Ken 'hiwatt' Marshall shares a few ideas on Subwoofers, and how to effectively calibrate one in your studio! Today we confirm that your own ear is quite possibly the single most accurate measuring tool available!
He's a fantastic engineer. His support of, and sharing of hard-earned knowledge and wisdom with his viewers/fans, is, in my opinion, even more fantastic. Ken's a delightful person. i'd buy the doughnuts and coffee (at Timmy's, of course) each week just to have Storytime with Ken.
Honestly, the advice to "just use your ears 4head" REALLY helped! My bass was booming before and now it actually sounds like an extension of my monitors like it's supposed to.
Wooohooo it's Kenday and the 26th anniversary my wife and my first date! Cheers and Happy Valentine's day everyone! Thank you HiWatt for the positivity and that Bass!
OMG!!! I've been using the SAME model SPL meter as Ken's for YEARS now! For both Studio and Live Gig work. It does a great job. Us old gearheads keep a good piece of tech in our kit for as long as possible (until it eventually dies, but in the mean time, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it..."). Great video, as always, Ken! Thank you SO much for all your work and amazing knowledge! ;)
Ben: I suggest you try it again, Luke. This time, let go of your conscious self and act on instinct. Luke: But, with the blast shield down, I can't even see. How am I supposed to fight? Ben: Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them. Stretch out with your feelings. Ken: Trust your ears. They are the best tool for leveling that you have. Me: But, the instruction manual for my fancy studio sub says that there's just one way to properly calibrate the output for the mix. Ken: use the manual for a jump-off starting position. Rely on your ears to tell you what you need to hear. Trust your instincts. Me, with boosted confidence: i think it sounds good. a secondary playback on another system *still* has it sounding good. I'm happy that it's good. Thanks, Ken.
I'm an Engineer , DJ, and Record Producer. And your spot on. Nothing works better than your ears. I use technology for my starting point and then I let my ears take over. I didn't like the 80Hz cut off point either. I set my JBL Sub to Xtended Frequency which gave it a range of 20HZ and it sounds great. And I like to echo your point. The Subwoofer should NEVER over power your Near Fields. Actually at low playing levels you shouldn't even know its on but can tell when its turned off. Great Video.
I've always done stereo monitoring on near-fields, never had a sub. Low freq management has always plagued my mixes, i have that same issue you talked about with car playback. Thank you for the tips, i am going to try a sub out.
very good information, I have presonus eris 3.5 which goes down to 80hz, and a subwoofer from Fluid Audio which goes from 50-200 hz, but the subwoofer seemed boomy at 80hz crossover, so I put it as low at possible, at 50 hz and volume at -6db and it sounds way better, more unified and way clearer, my room is 33 cubic meters, so I calibrated the presonus to 40db spl, and subwoofer at 30 db, and it sounds extremely good.
My neighbors seem to feel the opposite of what you're saying in this video. They crank that sub to the point of, no matter what they're listening to, and no matter how low the volume, they still shake my apartment with that low end. And what you said about people relying on that subwoofer too much is true now. The stereo in my apartment is old. Over 20 years old. It sounds beautiful when I play my music CD's, tapes, and records that I purchased back then. Then, sometime in the 2000's, I noticed that production seemed to have changed and everything I purchased and ran through the stereo sounded like crap. The stuff, however sounds good in my wife's new car that has a new stereo in it. But if I play any CD that I purchased back in the day in it, the car stereo makes it sound like crap. It shoves so much bass in there on ALL of it's settings that you can't make out any detail in the old mixes. Everything now seems all about that bass.
another advice i can give is to double check your mixes masters on headphones/diff. pair of speakers and ofc analyzer if youre using a single subwoofer because the cutoff will also remove the low frequencies from the side information of your speakers. Instead of having to deal with unwanted surprises later on.
I'm fortunate enough to have access to a really nice RTA and SPL analyzer from work. So this is great info on proper usage and what I'm aiming for when I calibrate. If I could ask, where are you playing the pink noise from? Just a WAV file?
Awesome video!!! I totally want to use this method for setting up my sub. Just one question about that band passed pink noise. Where does one get those files? Any chance they might be on Spotify or elsewhere on RU-vid....?
Great video. One thing perhaps you can clarify: when you test the subwoofer for 85 db with the pink noise between 35 - 70 hz; when you say relative to the monitors, what do you mean exactly? I assume its not at the listening position where you tested the monitors, as I will never get the subwoofer to 85 db there. Am I testing for 85 db under the desk at the distance from the wall to which the monitors sit? Silly question perhaps but I am curious.
Sadly, I don't have a sub. :( ......... Regardless, I'm watching this simply cuz you're awesome! :D In fact, all I've got is cheap "white van" speakers with 10" cones (2.5" port), 4.5" mids, and 2.5" tweeters. Liquid cooled (oohh fancy lol). They also have a two band passive EQ of sorts. And my amp is pretty cheap too. Aiwa cassette/aux/radio/CD changer combo unit. They can reproduce down to at least 35hz, cuz that's where I can start hearing 'em (and can't hear above ~14.5Khz, but that's just my ears). ..... IMHO my system actually sounds fairly decent. They're maybe a bit filtered or muddy sounding in the mids, but the bass is fairly tight and the highs pretty crisp. I can play them louder than I'm willing to listen to them. They can THUMP! I've also got a pair of AKG K240 headphones which sound pretty decent. Still, I long for a set of decent studio monitors. Someday .... someday ....
@@SogoTX LOL sure. Yeah. Except I'm on a fixed income on the low end of poverty .... So it's unlikely my speakers will ever get upgraded. I'll buy new synths and/or effects before I buy new speakers. LOL
@@artao5 hey, if it's any consolation, i remember reading an interview with C.Key with regard to the Doubting Thomas project, and i believe he said that together with Goettel, they monitored on a single mono speaker while tracking. Who can say what happened later in the production process, but to track an otherworldly masterpiece like Father Don't Cry on a single speaker? that's a standard of DIY that most of us will never be able to achieve. I believe that if you're here, you have both the knowledge and guts to make it work, with what you have. just an instinct, of course. brap on
No worries, you'll get there. Many of us were once in your shoes, and in fact some of us still are. Good news is... technology advances at a rapid rate and the costs generally go down, down, down (except for vintage analog synths, LoL). I think I paid $50 for my first hardware sequencer back in the mid-90s, and it was only two tracks! Now, you've got cheap DAWs with unlimited tracks! Also, never underestimate the power of a restricted canvas of sounds and gear. Being forced to do creative things with what you have makes for exciting experiments. Cheers!
Your mix room is at least 50% of the sound. Fix that first. Also try to get some music gigs and spend any music income on upgrades ( though "upgrade" is slang term used somewhere for you guess what ).
When your monitor speakers go 123 your subwoofer is supposed to go 123 as well but you guys have no idea how to make your subwoofer do 123 when your monitor speaker does 123
If one cuts out the subwoofer with a low-pass cut-off filter at 40 (or 50) Hz, and sets the total C-weighted (which is not flat) sound pressure level to match with the output of the near field monitors: (1) all the energy in the effective subwoofer range is 30 - 40 (or 50) Hz equals the energy in the nearfield monitors 500 - 1000 Hz. The range between 40 (or 50) Hz to 80 Hz has theoretically no sound energy, hence the level adjustment is incorrect. The lowest end is practically too loud, because of the gap between 40-80 Hz. (2) The C-weighting filter cuts off very low frequency sound. Not much, but some: about 5 dB at 25-35 Hz. Thus, the sub is (even) "louder"; louder than the sound level meter indicates. Conclusion, he clearly doesn't know what he is doing. Maybe that's why he shaking his head negatively constantly during his explanation.
You are getting a cancellation at the subs high frequency crossover point to your mains because you dont have phase set properly. This can reduce output by 9db or so at the listening position. You cannot set this by ear. You havent calibrated anything but gross level with filtered pink joise. Not even response. This is not calibrating anything unfortunately.
