Let's talk size and distance: Nearfields.

[guittarzzan]

I'm about to plop the money down on some new nearfields and am most likely going for the Tannoy Precision series at this point. I already bought some mixcubes for a/b etc.
Here's my questions:

-Are larger/higher powered monitors less accurate at lower volumes than their smaller versions? Example: Would a 6" version of monitor X give a flatter, more accurate picture of the mix at lower volumes than it's bigger brother which would barely even be getting pushed at that level?

-With my setup, my head is about 3 feet from each monitor. Is an 8 inch woofer design too much for this proximity? I do get up, step back and listen at times to compare, but generally, I'm pretty close to the monitors.

How far do you sit from your nearfields and what size monitors do you use?

Do you usually push your monitors about 50% when mixing or what?

tks

[theblue1]

Interesting question... (Would smaller di- woofers be more accurate at low levels?)


My gut reaction is probably not, at least for practical purposes. But, surely, at some level the greater mass of a bigger cone probably has some sort of tradeoff, I suppose. I'll leave it to the wireheads to talk about damping factors and relative levels.

I'd say a 3 to 4 foot equilateral triangle is probably pretty common for one man sweetspots.

With regard to running monitors at "50%" -- not sure what you mean. If you're talking about powered monitors, I'd think if you're actually drawing 50% of their rated output -- that might be considered as starting to be pushing it, a little. If that's your max, you're probably fine... but if you find yourself, say, pushing a pair of 40 watt speakers at 30 0r 35 watts output -- you're running out of headroom and you may be clipping your power amp on peaks -- not a good thing for the actual loudspeaker drivers.

If, OTOH, you're talking about setting the input trims on powered monitors, I'd say there's a lot of wiggle room. (I have the trims on my Event 20/20bas set around 45 or 50% of their rotary throw -- but they are very loud monitors (140/60w bi-amped per speaker) -- and I feed them off the control room output of my mixer -- controlling feed level to them from there, so that not only are they trimmed down on the speaker, it would be very rare before I got the C.R. send level up above the half-way on its rotary pot. (I don't think it's necessarily a linear enough set of interrelationships to say, then, that I'm running a typical max of 25% -- but that's probably OK enough for ballparking.)

But if I were to open up the trim pots on the back of the speakers all the way and THEN turn my CR send level to a nominal 50% level -- they'd be peeling me off the back wall in the morning.