Thread: Looking For Budget Monitors

yamaha HS80M

M Audio Bx8's (Have a pair..love them)
Behringer Truth 2031

I think the question is what do you want to do with them. Monitors are a very personal thing. What someone likes might not be the same for you. Do a search on this forum as this topic has been covered extensively. FWIW, I recently picked up a pair of Yamaha HS80M's and love them. I also did a good amount of research and testing and knew that they were what I wanted. Go to your local music store and bring some material you're very used to and test out the various monitors they have. That's a good start.

+1 to what Lambchop said.

I don't see these mentioned here very often, but I'll put in a word for Samson Rubicons. The Samson Rubicon R8a are active monitors with 8" speakers and a ribbon tweeter. A pair will set you back about $500.

I have Rubicon R5a's and think they are great - although the 5" speakers lack the bass punch of the 6a and 8a. I find them very clean and accurate.

Steve

Originally Posted by Ravikash

I definetly want 8s, no bigger or smaller really.

What's the motivation behind this statement?

8" woofers are very hard to integrate into a 2 way monitor effectively and many manufacturers do a poor job of it. Also, the surface area of a 6" or 7" woofer properly ported (or transmission lined) can do just as much or more than an average 8" woofer.

The problem with most 8" woofers with a standard tweeter is that the woofer is forced to work above its optimal excursion frequency or the tweeter is forced too low. When a woofer is pushed too high, it beams - meaning it gets very forward or directional in the upper frequencies. When the tweeter gets too low, it breaks up, distorts and gets very hot (to the point of overheating.)

Most manufacturers push the tweeter lower rather than pushing the woofer higher and by doing so, it gets very hot, so they use major heatsinks on the back of their tweeters. This addresses the heat, but not the distortion. This explains why the upper mid-range of many budget monitors sounds very strained or forward.

The ribbon-tweeter monitors seem to overcome this (and with the Adams, quite well) but using a larger surface area with their ribbons allowing for lower frequencies to come out of the tweeter with wide dispersion to avoid the beaming issues and they are seriously cooler (temperature-wise) than traditional dome tweeters. I'm not sure how the Rubicons stack up to the Adams, but if they come even remotely close, they're likely a good value in a large-woofer-two-way design.

Cheers-
J.

Wow, great chunk of info there!
Makes me glad I am using a 5 inch cone.

Should be glad using what you like and what makes you mix good. Not cause in theory there is something that does not work the way something else does.

Thanks tips!