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Neumann KH420: https://en-de.neumann.com/kh-420
Focal Trio 11 Be: https://www.focal.com/ca/en/monitoring-speakers/sm6/trio11-be
I’ve just moved into a new space and I’ll be building a fresh music studio from the ground up. This gives me the chance to change a lot of things I didn’t like about my previous studio, primarily the monitoring system.
My studio has a hard front wall with the monitors flush mounted. This is really the gold standard when it comes to acoustics, but it limits the style of monitors you can use. You have to use front-ported designs that have squared corners to simplify the mounting process.
I’ve never been happy with the low end in my past rooms, which was coming from a Genelec 7060 BPM sub. Despite a ton of acoustic tuning and being in a great room, it lacked bass definition and clarity. The bass was always muddy and indistinct to my ears.
Now I’ve decided to opt for larger 3-way mains that have enough bass extension that I don’t need a sub. I’ve narrowed my search down to the Neumann KH420 and the Focal Trio 11 Be. For the past 2 months I’ve had both sets on loan from Long & McQuade, our local retailer, and I’ve had a chance to listen to them extensively.
My speakers are mounted flush in a hard front wall. That’s really the gold standard when it comes to acoustics. Why you ask? Because bass energy is omnidirectional and radiates backwards, hitting the front wall and rejoining the monitor drive (direct) signal a few milliseconds later. The further the speakers are from the wall boundary, the worse it gets. You get horrible constructive and destructive interference that causes peaks and nulls that totally ruin your bass response.
Acoustic treatment and room EQ cannot easily solve this problem either. Even if you use corrective EQ to change the monitor drive signal, you still get a bounce off the front wall and it still rejoins the direct signal. It’s still causing the same issue, just coloured by the EQ now. Acoustic treatment can’t easily solve this either because the issues are in the bass range, which requires very thick absorption to improve. 6 inches / 15 cm of rock wool treatment would be needed to even start to address this.
So my monitors are flush mounted for this reason, and that’s how you see it in nearly all professional studios. Just look at the Noisia rooms and Skrillex NEST compound, both designed by Northward. You’ll see this design with the monitors flush mounted in the front wall.
In this video I’ll reveal which monitors I chose and why. Smash that play button and join me to learn which monitor won the day!
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