Monitor speaker Systems

I can remember, back in the “good old days” when cutting rooms had pretty average monitor speakers in an untreated room, and later, Studio monitor style speakers in treated rooms. Given the importance of the cutting stage, where, cutting engineers would often apply eq to the master, monitoring accuracy should have arguably been more important here, than even the recording studio itself. In fact, what the cutting engineer sometimes did, was pretty well the modern day equivalent of “mastering”. And, all on speaker systems that maybe didn’t “reveal as much as they could”, even in their day. So, if you accept that “audio monitoring” and the ability to hear what’s really going on is probably the one single most important thing when “mastering” or “cutting” you naturally end up doing a awful lot of listening to an awful lot of systems !!. Precisely what we did !. At “Criminal” we ended up with a system which is a mixture of “pro” and “hi-fi” products, well and truly tweaked and honed to an nicely optimised system. Each component going through individual tests and tweaks, as well as the whole system working together optimised to perfection. We rather like the sound, and agree with the technical principals, of, single point source driver “satellites” and a separate “sub”. The issues of a sub “not integrating well or easily” being issues of room acoustic, and NOT a speaker design flaw, so, acoustic treatment of the listening room to control bass making it “start and stop” as the music intended was fundamental. We opted for Anthony Gallo satellites, along with their (sadly no longer available) passive sub. This gave us complete control over amplification choice, something you don’t get with an active powered sub !. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Our natural instinct for amplification was valve. With their inherent “large soundstage”, excellent detail recovery and extended frequency response, they really do tend to “tell you like it is” !. We chose different amps employing different valve types for High and Low frequency ranges, matching “level and weight” from KT88’s with bass, and “detail” from EL84’s with top end. Further, the valves themselves are not “issued with the amp” little numbers, but cryogenically treated units costing as much as the whole amp again, just for a valve set !. xxxxxxxxxxxx Cryogenic treatment relieves all the stresses in the valve’s components, put there, as a by-product of the manufacture process. Getting rid of those stresses, at molecular level, increases the conductivity to the point where there is a real “night and day” sound quality improvement. And, rather than using an analog cross over to split the low and high frequency signal portions, we use a speaker management unit, which does the filtering in the digital domain, and is therefore free of any analog filter induced “side effects”. Additional to the Anthony Gallo speakers, we employ “supertweeters”. These extend the high frequency range up to around 35Khz, allowing every detail of harmonics to be experienced. I say “experienced” as of course we can’t officially hear that far up !. Actually, Anthony Gallo do make a speaker with a ribbon super tweeter as part of the unit, but, again, we prefer to be in control of, exactly which supertweeter to use, and how it’s driven. We ended up with “retro fit” supertweeters made by Tannoy. The very same people to be one of, if not THE first to introduce supertweeters to Hi-Fi speakers, currently even employing them in sub £500 bookshelf speakers !!. Both, the Anthony Gallo satellites, and the Tannoy supertweeters are further mounted on our own design of “quadratic residue” diffuser, to minimise what would other wise be a hard reflection from their mounting surface: what would have years ago been called “desk splash” when desks were actually great lumps of metal between the engineer and his monitors. For all that work and “optimisation” we get monitoring with enough “image” ability, that on well recorded/produced music, we experience a “phantom rear”. That is, where the image extends far beyond the actual physical speaker positions and rather lovingly “wraps the music all around you”. And all this for a mere 68 watts (total !!!) of power. As is our way, we do of course “cheat” now and again, and also reference on, what could only be described as an “ugly” PA system in a “bit of a barn” of a room. This though, gives us a superb real life, very high level representation of the real world, particularly a “club & venue” like real world.