Volume!?

i have no idea but i could imagine some people going on about harshness in the tops or mids.

top is knida more fatiguing for me

Fuunny question. Are you considering factoring this into a purchase decision?

merry santa

quality....

it's that simple.....

You also can hear Bass responce a lot better and you can hear clean mixes depending on your monitors. I am away from my place now and i told a band that I would work on a mix and I keep having to burn CD's and go out to my car because I am mixing through headphones at the current time. My ears are useless after an hour of two of mixing with headphones. They just wear your ear down quickly and causes hearing damage if you keep doing it.

"Listeners' fatigue" is ANOTHER reason that you don't just rely on a plotted frequency graph. There is really no way that you can quantify something like that. Smooth response has to be discerned by listening to the speaker, not merely trusting the numbers.

Whether there a consensus on monitors that cause ear fatigue or is it completely subjective, is something I am not yet clear on. Of course that plays into the equation when buying a monitor, something that I need to do. After reading several people praising the msp5 I was thinking about buying it. Then I read people complaining about ear fatigue with those and so I am also thinking of trying out the bm5a. I agree that one needs to go and listen to the monitors in order to evaluate them. Still, ear fatigue is something which I will probably not be able to spot while listening at the store.

OJG

you can hear it at the store....

if the speakers sound relaxed ear fatigue is less likely to happen

Will give it a try.

OJG

This is just my opinion, so take it for what it is worth.

If everything in the listening environment is perfect, the differences between "pro" speakers with regard to ear fatigue are probably minimal. However, very few of us have perfect listening environments. The way a particular speakers' dispertion pattern(s), frequency hype/drop, etc. respond to our individual mixing spaces is what really creates ear fatigue.

I bought new monitors about 8 months ago. My room is relatively balanced, and I was able to borrow from friends different brands to audition in my room before I bought. I bought brand "A" because I could spend a lot of time at a moderate volume without significant ear fatigue and my mixes translate with more consistancy. (I mix for film/video.) Yet I used brand "A" monitors in another room and my ears tired quickly. A studio at which I freelance occasionally has two control rooms that are, equipment-wise, close to identical; same console, same monitors, etc, but the dimensions of the two rooms could not be more different. In studio #1 my ears tire quickly, in studio #2 I can work for lengthy periods of time.

So maybe it isn't just a question of which speaker is better, it is also which speaker better matches your mixing environment.

You are right Bob. That explains people's endless opinions about the way monitors sound. We may have ended up with a consensus if we were all listening to the same monitors at the same location. It's like with pipe organ builders; some people say that an organ built by a certain maker is wonderful and others disagree. Two different churches have two different acoustical characteristics that can make the same organ sound very different.

This is also why I may like a certain monitor at the store, bring it home and get an unpleasant surprise, or vote against a monitor in the store that would otherwise sound wonderful in my room. My room is 11' x 11' x 8.25' (ceiling), wall to wall carpet, 3 drywalls and one wall is a closet with wooden doors. I was thinking of trying out the MSP5, HS50M (Yamaha), Dynaudio BM5A, BX5A, BX8A (M-Audio) and Event TR8. The local GC branch here (upstate NY) doesn't stock the MSP5 and the TR8, though they have the others.

OJG