The Process of Choosing Loudspeakers in Recording Studios

David Frangioni has worked in hundreds of studios as both the installer and engineer/producer/technologist for artists such as Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne, Ricky Martin, Ringo Starr, Sting, Bryan Adams, The Stones, Pat Metheny, Kiss and dozens more. David will discuss his approach to choosing loudspeakers for a recording studio or reference quality playback room, incl. sizing the right speaker, how many pairs of speakers do you need for a studio? Surround or stereo? Specific brand and type? Acoustics and speakers and much more.

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[doublet]

Great video Gene. Lots of knowledge. It took me back to my studio days.

[adamjj]

Great session guys! Another speaker that I have and heard was supposed to be prominent in the industry is the Mackie HR824.

[markfischer]

Lots of problems with high fidelity. So many a different approach is needed. After a disastrous experience with quadraphonic sound in 1974 I gave up on this industry. I threw my 13 year old audiophile hat in the trash, put on my engineer's hat and took it as an engineering challenge. I love hard problems especially when I solve them. One of my great pleasures in life. I have heard and enjoyed live and recorded music virtually all of my life. I think I began attending orchestral concerts when I was about five years old. So the challenge was what characteristics of live sound make it so different from recorded sound and still does. My main interest is in classical music, also jazz, some pop mostly from the 1950s backwards and a few other assorted genres. I demand nothing but perfection. What is perfection? Not accuracy but convincibility. Not by using my imagination but what I actually hear. I used the standard tolls of analysis I learned in Engineering school (a very tough and comprehensive school) so there is no magic, no secrets, nothing out of the ordinary for engineers. I applied what I learned faithfully and to my surprise I succeeded.

One problem you face if you are going to tackle this task is that no two recordings have exactly the same spectral balance so one size fits all doesn't work. Gene, if nobody else knows I'm sure you know what G(j*omega) means. And in this case it means that the first thing you have to do with a recorded signal is to normalize it to get flat response from the microphone to the sound that comes out of your speakers and first reaches your ears. This doesn't mean just equalization for a room but for each recording as well. How can you do that? Through equalization by memory of what the real thing sounds like.

Bass is another big problem. Assuming there is bass content in a recording and your system is capable of reproducing it, one look at the Fletcher Munson curves reveals a lot of knowledge most people don't look at. One is that all of the equal subjective loudness curves versus actual loudness at bass frequencies are squashed together compared to higher frequencies. This means that the bass level has to be set carefully for each recording to keep its relative perceived loudness in balance with the rest of the range.

Now for the biggie. The main difference between hi fi sound and real musical sounds stems from the fact that sound fields are vector fields which means that each sound reaching your ears has a direction of arrival. That's not just the first sound but every reflection which is ordinarily most of what you hear especially at a concert venue. But as soon as sound hits a microphone the electrical output is a scalar losing all dimensions of direction, it has only amplitude versus time. It isn't converted back into a vector until it comes out of your loudspeakers. Not only don't the microphones placed close to the source hear what you would hear in the audience but the vectors of sound produced by speakers are entirely different even when played AB real versus recorded in the same room. Loudspeakers don't propagate sound the same way musical instruments do. The resemblance between them is enormous. Because headphones turn sound when your head moves they are the equivalent of scalars. That is why they don't work even with binaural recordings. If you research how the direction of sound is detected by the human brain it will probably tell you that sound off to one side arrives at one ear earlier, a little louder, and that HRTF is a factor. Binaural recordings played through headphones meets all of those criteria but doesn't work. Those are the wrong answer. Edgar Choueri figured it out and can fix it in only one plane, the horizontal plane. I could have told him how nearly 50 years ago.

So for me the problem boils down to mathematically modeling sound fields, figuring out how to analyze them and measure them, and how to engineer what I want from what the record company gave me. It is not easy and the paradigm of the conceptual functional block diagram in a 2 channel stereo system is the same today as it was in 1958. Multichannel systems of various types for me will invariably fail. The only process that comes close IMO is Wave Field Synthesis. Its main problem is in its measurement technique. If what you measure and what you hear don't correlate then you are measuring the wrong thing.

[heinzr]

Thanks for the very insightful conversation. As for the 1960s and 1970s to 1990s recordings, I personally have never! heard a remastering or remix or anything that conveys the emotions of the piece better than the original. Most of the time it is supposedly technically better but the atmosphere is gone, sometimes even the timing and tension between the musicians is gone. The only exceptions are perhaps the recordings that Rudy van Gelder had personally remixed.
It's not the "getting used“ to the old sound. Sometimes I discover on Tidal 1960s jazz recordings that I do not know yet. Fortunately, all remasterings and often the original mix is offered. Even with songs unknown to me, the original mix wins.
I'm very curious if David Frangioni will be right and future remasterings will be done for the first time that I might like it.

[josephfranzen]

Audioholics; always providing a wide array of accurate, interesting and factual data backed my empirical sources

[danlah]

Love hearing the stories and knowledge this guy has even though I’ll never even be a hobbyist

[markphilpot]

Short of having unlimited funds for doing so, the Genelec 8050B as a personal choice. Granted it isn’t an inexpensive choice, but it is an accurate monitor and is internally amped. I don’t care for this ordinarily, but it uses Class A/B amps as opposed to Class D. If you get a chance to try them, you can assess it yourself. Opinions vary with personal taste. Your ears are the final judge and what you use to find what makes you happy. Listening is fun!

[garykarczewski]

This is great! I am building a home recording studio now! Sheet rock is on target for March 11th. I will reach out for some suggestions.

[C--A]

A relatively new studio monitor speaker company that is making big waves in the last couple of years is Ex Machina Soundworks from New York.

Getting similar hype in the recording industry that Perlisten are getting in home theater/music listening. Would be cool if Audioholics could get a pair to measure and listen to.

[Adream-lfmw]

“A dedicated audiophile, David performs countless A/B tests with Monster and other supposedely high-end cables and the result is always the same, Monster wins everytime.” “ The sonic benefits of Monster are Outstanding.” David Frangioni 6:31 mark of tonights episode produced by Audioholics!!! Somewhere Noel Lee is smiling and Hugo is shaking his head.

[haknys]

Adam audio is top of the line in the studio business. They mix movies and concerts on them. But expensive for the higher end models.

[TheCanyonhopper]

The subject of subjectivity. NS10, valves and vinyl, can those have the perfect sinad or spinorama?

[johnsears]

Audiophile or Audio-Fooled? How Good Are Your ears ? Rick Beato recording music is a different animal the Yamaha monitors are used at one listening point if you really want to understand look up Rick Beato vid

[cristiantolbaru]

Knowing that production studios are using flawed Yamaha speakers for near field only because they know how it's sounding is kinda sad. Why not use Genelec coax instead for a neutral representation and the benefits of coax designs in the near field?

[AllboroLCD]

It shouldnt be much or a "process" IMHO. You need stuidio monitors? Scour the web for a good working set of Altec 604-E drivers/crossovers. Done! If you need brand new, hit up Great Plains Audio for a new re-production pair.

[garykarczewski]

One question for David. I am building a home studio mostly for hobby not for income but do pursue quality recordings. I have invested in proper construction, isolation of sound transfer and room treatments as well as dedicated electrical circuits. I am at the point of finishing up the dry wall and have numerous speaker wires laid out for 5.1.4 for mixing solution per Atmos mixing. That being said what is your thoughts of using in wall speakers for the surrounds and larger front mains?

[drdelewded]

I know what NS10s sound like... shit... and fatiguing
We scuttled the NS10s out of all our suites back in the 90s

[bmill]

Yahama speakers aren't accurate leading to Toole's circle of confusion. The music and audio industries are plagued by speakers that aren't accurate. Stereophile (and ex Stereophile YouTubers and other HiFi magazines push terrible measuring speakers every month). I'm listening to accurate speakers for the first time in my life - the upgrade in musical enjoyment is phenomenal.

What model are the Genelecs? At least they're accurate.