Skol303

A kidney, perhaps? We are each granted one spare, after all

Don’t mean to stoke the fires of GAS here… but I heard a pair of these monitors in use the other day and my goodness, they sounded amazing! Clarity like I’ve never heard before. Unity Audio The Pebble Currently discounted at Gear4Music to £979… which is a lot more than most would want to pay (myself included), but is damn good value for a pair of sealed cabinet monitors that usually retail at around £1500. Gah!!!!

Well done Bleat! And everyone else too... some close runners-up this month. We'll start February's challenge once I've received the choice of picture from Bleat (PM incoming).

It's still the "will of the people" though, right? (sailing close to the wind there, I know...)

^ This above +1 Those readings don't look good for storing gear down there. A dehumidifier would be your first step: try to get a commercial one, rather than a smaller domestic unit (you can pick them up for around £300-£500 new). If that doesn't solve it, you'll need to install some kind of vent from the cellar up to the surface. A fair amount of "faff" involved in that, but perhaps worth it for having a nice little underground bass room in which to survive the apocalypse

Generally true. Heat and cold aren't an issue in the UK, but extremes of heat can cause problems with wooden instruments and electronica gear. For example, it's inadvisable to leave a guitar on the rear parcel shelf of a car on a hot summer's day; or install a rack unit full of tube gear directly in front of a radiator. Common sense obviously prevails in such instances Cold, however, is certainly not a problem. As mentioned above, it's humidity that's the killer.

You’ll struggle to find any definitive temperatures/ humidity measurements for safe storage; but the general consensus for instruments and audio gear is... Cold: no problem Hot: not ideal Humid: very bad!

^ Thats great, I like it! A little too late for adding to this month's voting thread, but thanks for sharing the track here - and make sure you're around for the next one (PS: I'm generally happy to keep 'last orders' for entries open throughout the day after the deadline... but don't tell everyone or they'll all be at it).

Thanks for the nice feedback! The monthly composition challenge typically receives a woeful number of votes in comparison to the usual threads about P-bass colours, string choices, cats and what have you... so we're grateful for every crumb of support we can muster. Cheers

VOTING THREAD IS UP Not mushroom this month with so many entries

Voting has now started on January's Composition Challenge. Firstly thanks to November's winner, Mornats, for choosing this month's inspirational image. Secondly, thanks to everyone who took part. We have a bumper crop of thirteen entries! Well done guys Please vote for your top THREE favourites: 1) fleabag 'Feed Your Head' 2) Leonard Smalls 'Free Form Funghi Freakz (FFFF Baby)' 3) lurksalot 'Buckley Nights' 4) Mornats 'The Mushroom Dance' 5) DJpullchord 'Monday 06:49 PM' 6) Doctor J 'View With A Shroom' 7) lowdown 'Psilocybin Experience' 8) Bastav 'Similar Shapes' 9) Skol303 'Amanita' 10) Bleat 'Where The Wild Mushrooms Grow' 11) SH73 'Bass Groove M (mshr`ms) Re' 12) MoonBassAlpha 'Grotto To Risotto' 13) Dad3353 'Hell's Bells ...' Voting ends at midnight on Thursday 1st February.

Hey guys I’m currently traveling but will post the voting thread later this evening or tomorrow morning. I’ll add a day on to the voting period to compensate for the late start

I’m generalizing but most pro studio main monitors are sealed boxes. Bass reflex ports are typically used on smaller nearfield monitors that struggle to put out low frequency information; but again I’m generalising as there are some very high end ported speakers on the market. But yeah, the main monitors found in pro studios - the speakers they use to make their clients’ trousers flap! - are nearly always sealed because they’re large units that don’t require ports to bolster the bass.

Acoustic treatment works. No snake oil there; just physics

Yes. Edge diffraction is eliminated. As is cancellation reflection from the wall behind the monitor. Acoustical loading is increased so the monitor doesn’t have to work as hard at lower frequencies. There’s good reason why every professional mixing studio uses soffit mounting for its main monitors

Quick addition to say that this is actually the current thinking for treating small mix rooms. Bass trap the bejesus out of them; literally do everything you can to annihilate the low end with trapping (and in doing so aim to flatten the low-Hz room modes at your listing spot); and then dial in the missing low end using a subwoofer positioned elsewhere in the room. Ok, I'll shut up now

Haha! Indeed Yes, I think it goes without saying that all such advice needs to be applied in context and with a good dollop of common sense. The key point I suppose is that for years the advice from the acoustic (and hifi) communities was to leave a healthy distance between speakers and the wall behind them to avoid room mode issues. More recently the thinking (and also the design/manufacture) has switched towards placing speakers close to the wall, avoiding the Grand Canyon of a null that typically forms in most domestic rooms due to rear wall reflection (60-100Hz bass 'suck out'). Needless to say the best option of all is of course mounting speakers inside the wall so they're flush with the surface, but I don't suppose many of us have the flexibility at home to do just that (although I have been thinking about some DIY soffit mounting...). But anyway. It is certainly another whole world of GAS and geekery.

Good point. My speakers are sealed which perhaps makes them a little easier to place in relation to the wall. I guess rear-ported units would be a little more tricky, but even then the consensus amongst acoustic treatment people is that any issues caused by wall proximity are much easier to fix than issues caused by SBIR. Useful advice here from the folks ate Genelic: "To avoid the cancellation, push the monitor close enough to the wall. Typically the distance of the monitor front to the wall should be less than 0.6 meters. This ensures that the low frequency output is not reduced. The monitor needs a minimum clearance of 0.05 m to the wall to ensure full output from the rear bass re ex port." Bear in mind I'm coming at this from the point of view of creating a mix room with a flat(ish) frequency response; rather than from a hifi perspective. Although I'd assume that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, so to speak Interesting tip about adjusting the angle of the setup, so it's not square with the room. Makes very good sense. My own space is a converted garage (5.3 x 2.1 x 2.7 L/W/H) and with narrow walls this might not be so applicable, but I can see how it would work well in a room with more regular proportions.

It’s a slippery slope mate! And a whole new world of GAS Quick tip on speaker placement that I’ve learnt very recently (taking advice from acoustic gurus on another forum...). And that is: place them as close to the wall as possible. I’d always assumed this was a bad idea - leading to ‘excited room modes’ and too much bass response. Turns out that advice has been proved wrong in everything but the most spacious listening rooms. In 99% of typical home-sized rooms, you want the speakers tight up against the front wall to reduce the nulls caused by surface boundary reflections. Useful page here for anyone interested: http://arqen.com/acoustics-101/speaker-placement-boundary-interference/ I’ve since moved my monitors much closer to the wall and it’s helped to even out the frequency response in my room. Definitely worthwhile if you have the opportunity: whether for mixing or leisurely listening. PS: you can attenuate the resulting bass boost very easily with EQ; but you can’t fix nulls caused by room modes and reflections with EQ. That is all. As you were.

...I'd just like to say, given it's the start of the year, how damn good the music has gotten in these monthly challenges (my own notwithstanding). Seriously. It blows me away each month. Have a listen at how we all sounded a few years ago and it's even more impressive how far we've come (yeah I need to fix all the links on that page, I know...). Well done all. Sterling work

Me too!

Well, gentlemen, if we're having a willy-swinging contest then I'm currently at 22,005