12/18/2023 0 Comments Sound reference systemsThat's been true of several Axiom speakers as well as a couple of models from other Canadian speaker manufacturers.Ībout 20 years ago, the CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the federally subsidized state radio/TV broadcasting system in Canada ) made a concerted effort to use scientifically controlled testing to find a tonally accurate speaker for control-room monitoring of live concert and music broadcasts. Occasionally, a high-quality speaker designed for consumer audio actually makes its way into a recording studio and becomes a reference. For some time in the 1980s the Yamaha NS-10, a small two-way bookshelf speaker, was a common sight in many studios, usually with a piece of Kleenex scotch-taped to its tweeters to lessen its elevated treble output. Studio monitoring references seem to go in and out of fashion. For the engineer who used an Auratone, it was his reference. Engineers use it to check the mix of a pop or rock recording to see how it will sound on a truly low-fidelity speaker. The Auratone was, and is, used to simulate the playback quality of a typical boombox or mediocre car radio. For example, I remember the first time I saw a tiny speaker called an Auratone, perched on either side of a recording console in a big Toronto studio. There are also some brands of studio monitor speakers like Urei that are unknown to consumers because the company never built speakers aimed at the hi-fi audiophile market. or European recording studios, the reference was more often than not a speaker from Tannoy, Spendor, Rogers or Kef. If you've played or listened to a Stratocaster, then I figure you likely know and appreciate when a good speaker accurately reproduces it. I have never accommodated the distorted electric guitar sound (I never understood the reverence for Jimmy Hendrix's playing). But if you grow up listening to a lot of rock n' roll, you may know that sound really well and it may be useful for you to make accurate judgments of speaker sound quality. With a few exceptions, I don't generally use rock music to test speakers, partly because I grew up mostly listening to classical, jazz and acoustic music and vocals. But what may be a reference for you just may not work for me.ĭuring many years of double-blind speaker tests, various rock, pop, jazz, and classical recordings were tried out to see which material was more useful in spotting typical loudspeaker coloration and distortion. It turned out that the classical recordings were more reliable for quickly differentiating good from bad speakers, partly because a large orchestra with chorus covers such a wide range of musical frequencies and harmonics. Those artists are fairly safe territory because they are unlikely to offend and the recordings are, by general consensus, well engineered. Apart from advocating a few albums by some famous artists of wide general appeal (Norah Jones, Alison Krauss and Union Station, James Taylor and Diana Krall, to cite a few examples), I tend to be wary of suggesting specific CDs because there is such wide variance in musical taste. The issue of reference becomes especially thorny when you refer to a particular disc or recording. Such speakers were not the most tonally accurate, but they could withstand the rigors of 24-hour mixing sessions at extremely loud levels without damage, one of the standards that any studio monitor has to meet. In bygone days in North American studios, those were often big JBLs like the L112. The term reference monitor usually applied to a large bass-reflex speaker commonly found in lots of studios, often wall-mounted and facing the recording console. One record label and more than a few brands of speakers and electronics have made the word part of their company names, the connotation being that their products may be used as a benchmark of sound quality.īut what exactly is a reference? Should it not reference the sound of live music? Historically, in audio circles, the word has its roots in recording studios. What may be a reference to one person may not be to someone else. In certain contexts, reference may even be attached to an entire audio or home theater system, the implication being that reference equipment is about as good as it's possible to get, or that the sound quality cannot be bettered with existing technology.īut it's also a term that's become somewhat debased through casual usage. Audiophiles and home theater enthusiasts regularly use the word reference to describe the qualities of a loudspeaker or an A/V component without thinking too much about the term.
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