Barefoot MM27s: HOLY #!&%@?.

[Matthew Murray]

Okay, I haven't gotten much sleep here. The barefoots arrived early yesterday afternoon and I've pretty much been mixing around on them since they were set up. Went to a show, got back, and couldn't help myself, I had to keep messing with them. Got maybe two hours sleep. Just woke up now. Back to listening to them again.

These things are ridiculous. I'm in heaven. Over the course of my short mixing life I've mixed on a lot of mid-end monitors (event asp8's, mackies, and a pair of genelecs a couple of times) and this is an entirely different experience. Also once worked with a pair of S3A's at a friend's studio and could have sworn they were the be all end all, but this is, once again, something special. I didn't really believe every ounce of hype I'd been hearing about these, but all that others have said is pretty much true from what I can tell.

These things seem to be honest in every way. I've never heard my own material sound so shitty. I could hear mistakes that I hadn't yet picked out, just like people said I would. I fixed some of them, and rushed out into the night to hear them in my car. Suddenly they sounded right, whereas before a lot of them had sounded pretty muddy and out of balance. There's something about mixing on these that really does help you translate fully, even to the car test.

What really stunned me and my bass player (who was also blown away) was how solid everything sounded. Tight I guess is a word. Switching between the Barefoots and my shoddy little pair of crappy-on-purpose monitors showed us the extent of the difference, that's for sure, though I guess it's not really a fair fight

Kicks especially have been special so far... I can hear a lot more of what's going on in the bottom end, and in such detail that I can finally shape the sonic properties of kick drums, for instance, with confidence, rather than simply raise them up or down, or EQ with my fingers crossed.

I know it's still early, but I'm freakin' excited. I think these things will likely improve my mixes more than any other piece I've purchased yet. I'll come back and give a more experienced review after I've spent a few weeks on them, but right now the verdict from my camp is a simple "wow". We're all floored by these things. Mr. Barefoot, you make goooood speakers.

[jdjustice]

lucky bastard....

just kidding... that's awesome and i wish i could afford a pair!! a step up in monitoring has always been revelatory for me and i want to step up to the Barefoots too!!

[Matthew Murray]

I can't imagine anyone regretting such a decision

[Mike Caffrey]

I can.

The scenario would be someone saving up money to get the pair of monitors that will change everything. Then buying them and installing and nothing's changed because the fundamental problem was the room not the monitors.

Room tuning is more than putting some panels on the walls based on the dimensions. It's speaker, console and furniture placement to.

I've seen posts here where people say they have a good sounding room. My room tuning changed the room by only 3 1x1 pieces of foam. The rest was all monitor placement and console placement and that made a big difference.

It would not be hard to get a bad sound out of great monitors through placement.

[Tetness]

Glad you're hapy, Matthew.