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

Ravikash wrote: 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!

Well I dont think the Rubicons come real close to the Adams' but I gotta say they literally turned me around whilst walking through my Professional Audio Dealership when I first heard them. I dont think theres a monitor at that price that gets even close to the clarity in the highs.

And while this may make the bass a bit skimpy, at a listen, it seems to me that bass is much more do-able at mix and getting the 'air' and the highs just so is more a problem for a LOT of people without a sterling mix area.

Most of the mixes I hear done at home studios are a little bass heavy and I'm sure that in a lot of cases this is due to the size of the mix area and monitors that are too large for this area.

Someone tells me they need a minimum of 8" woofers in their system, I envision a couple hundred square foot area with soffitts and bass trapping behind.

Thanks for the help guys. I'm looking for mixing monitors.
But the reason I want 8s is because I wanted something in between a large sound and a small sound, to round things out. First off, of course I want the flattest frequency response I can get. I wanted 8s so they were not too far away from what most average consumer's buy, and also if I play my mix in some fancy smancy studio with damn 12s I won't be lacking, or overdoing the bass end. I picked 8s because there are like a middle ground speaker.

I do appericate your input, and will look into the disadvantages of 8 in woofers.

I can't say I understand or buy your logic here.

A good monitor with 6" woofers will sound plenty big. Also, aiming for what the average consumer has would be something along the lines of headphones or crappy Bose type systems, neither of which would be any good for mixing and certainly don't resemble a monitor with an 8" woofer.

Also, I wouldn't consider most facilities that have 12" monitors to be fancy. In fact, I'd consider most of them to be ghetto. Very few monitors have 12" woofers built in and even fewer that are in production today. JBLs of yesteryear contained 12s and a few soffit mount speakers contain 12s. (Caveat- there are, of course, exceptions to this rule. However, I assure you that none of these exceptions fall within 10x the cost of a $500 pair of monitors.)

The vast majority of professional monitors will either be a 2 way based around a 6, 7 or 8" woofer or a pair of woofers in that same size range. A full range system can be obtained using 6 or 7" woofers and unless you have one hell of a control room, 8" woofers would likely be overkill and muddy at best.

I would far from consider 8" woofers to be middle ground. 5" woofers, yes. 6", maybe. Beyond that, we get into "bigger than average" and if a manufacturer must resort to woofer size to obtain low usable frequencies, they are likely doing something wrong. (Again, exceptions apply - notably Dynaudio BM15s, MeyerSound HD1, and K&H O300, O410...)

Cheers-
J.