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anonymous 10 December 2011

Hye, I'm just wondering, is it suitable to use a home theater system as the speaker and monitor for my home studio?

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audiokid Sat, 12/10/2011 - 21:22

my guess, because of the lack of information and being posted in the home recording forum, we're not talking about anything of any substantial quality. I can't imagine anything available in the home theatre market being wise for mixing. So, from a pro audio perspective, my answer is still no. But for fun or playing around, which I think this is what the OP is really doing here, yes, have fun.

RemyRAD Sun, 12/11/2011 - 02:03

Typical home surround sound speakers systems actually make for lousy monitoring. For one thing, their sound is too highly tailored. Generally not enough power. Subwoofers can cause considerable audio confusion in comparison to a full range speaker. It can be however considered an alternate monitor just to get a feel on how it's going to sound on most home systems of similar types. It shouldn't be used as a reference. Neither should headphones. An inexpensive pair of KRK self powered monitors can be had for under $300 and that's what you should be monitoring upon. To accomplish everything properly in this business, you need to have some of the right tools as opposed to some of the right fools who are generally recording in your home studio. And in the process of recording and mixing, I can assure you, trying to mix in stereo certainly can have tons of AURAL confusion leading to disappointing results. I mean you can drive your car while naked but it's not a good idea. Especially when a trucker passes you and sees you playing with your other stick shift.

I don't always wear underwear
Mx. Remy Ann David

bouldersound Mon, 12/12/2011 - 16:42

The term "home theater" is so vague that it easily encompasses systems far better and far worse than typical home studio monitors.

My surround receiver in stereo mode with a stereo signal is just a stereo amp without any noticeable tonal bias. Same in 5.1 mode with a 5.1 signal. But playing a stereo signal using ProLogic to convert it into surround sounds pretty bad. The stupid surround "effects" fortunately can be bypassed, which isn't true of all surround systems. So it really depends on what system you have and how you set it up.

Cucco Wed, 01/04/2012 - 12:14

Threads like this do make me laugh...

CraigCyril -
I think a blanket statement like that is a little crazy. No, not all home theaters have a great sound. In fact, the vast majority of them do not.

To all others - some home theater speakers have a great sound for monitoring. SOME. You also must ensure that you properly place them within a proper room. Putting a pair of essentially farfield speakers close to your head - yeah, dumb move. However, some speakers such as PMC, ProAc, Dynaudio, Focal and others do have a broad range of speakers that are well-positioned to be accurate monitors. Pair that with even a modest home receiver and you can have a system that does double duty.

However, bear in mind that near-field monitors by design are supposed to be close to you. You hear subtleties and nuances on nearfields that you don't hear on farfields. Also, bear in mind that you don't hear the same kind of imaging and macro dynamics on nearfields as you do on farfields.

Personally, I monitor and mix on nearfields and check final balance and/or master on farfields. My farfields are Focals and they are by definition "music/home theater speakers." And they sound damn fine. ;-)

J.

RemyRAD Wed, 01/04/2012 - 14:14

Anything and everything can be used as secondary references. Your primary reference should be as described in the previous post to this one. As Jeremy has eloquently explained. I generally utilize midfield sized monitors in a more near field setup in this tight Remote Truck. I also utilize the same JBL monitors 4310/4311/4312's & KRK's at home on my consumer stereo amplifiers/receivers. And because of the difference in the different environments & amplifiers I still have a baseline reference in them. Despite the difference in the surrounding acoustics (I'm not referring to surround sound at all). 5.1/7.1/10.2 along with Dolby DTS & Pro Logic and their associated enhancement features make it nearly impossible to tell what the F**K you are actually listening to. All of those surround features and spatial enhancements are great for TV & movies but make life nearly impossible in relationship to music mixes. Surroundsound is just another marketing dimension to quadraphonic's which thankfully died a cold and cruel death as it should. 5.1 was created to get you to purchase more equipment from the companies that would have gone out of business had they not offered that. So a sucker is born every minute. Especially since human beings only have 2 listening apparatuses which equates to stereo and not surround. Surround is the guy sitting behind you who won't shut up and the other baby who won't stop fussing. And you want to hear that? I don't want to hear that and that's real surround sound. I also don't need to be surrounded by the performers. I like sitting in the audience listening to a real performance, in stereo. And that's my criteria for recording & mixing. Stereo. Maybe even LCR (left, center, right) would be as far as I want to go since that's the way I already see my sound. The rest is just ambience behind you from the hall strewn with distracting noises which I can live without. So 5.1 surround is just another marketing ploy that people are not being given a choice about anymore. So do you know what lemmings are?

Not a lemming here or is that not lemmings to be heard?
Mx. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD Wed, 01/04/2012 - 17:12

I remember when we had CBS-QS, Sansui-SQ matrixed quadraphonic bull crap. The only one that was actually for real, was the RCA-CD4 system. Do you remember that? While the CBS & Sansui/DynaCo. Systems were similar to MS matrix thing, the RCA was true 4 channel. What they did was utilize a 19 kHz carrier wave. This 19 kHz carrier wave was not audible to most. It was then utilized as a subcarrier to matrix 2 additional discrete channels. Of course as the phonograph cartridge started to wear out and you started to wear out your vinyl, you would also be wiping off the 19 kHz carrier. The QS-SQ system didn't care about that. So CD4 died. SQ & QS has been reborn as surroundsound enhancements to stereo recordings. You know, MS style encoding with a frequency weighted dynamic structure included, no extra charge. Oh and bad reverb chips to make good music sound really crummy BUT IN SURROUND. Which I guess makes it better like digital is better than analog. Like lead can be turned into gold. Well it can if you've got a soldering iron in your hand and an old Neve to restore.

It's been 16 years since I recapped the Neve. OMG not again.
Mx. Remy Ann David

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