HAVE YOU GOT THE RIGHT SPEAKERS FOR 2021!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Welcome back. I'm Streaky. Happy new year to you, 2021. So, exciting times ahead. Although we are in full lockdown in the UK, as I'm sure you well know, so makes things a little bit more tricksy for us. But I wanted to give you a video today that I shared with a private email group that I have. If you want to join it, go to streaky.com. I send videos out all the time that are just more detailed and a little bit more long form than I do on here. And, they're not as edited up and things like that. So, today I'm going to show you one of those. I think you're going to get a lot from it. It's great. It went down really well with my newsletter gang. Let's get on with it.

First thing I'll say is that when it comes to buying a set of speakers or using a set of speakers, their speakers have really dependent on the room that they're in. Now, if you've got a massive set of speakers, like these big keys here, they're not going to work in a small room. When I'm in a small room, two meters by three meters, something like that. Because what happens is, as soon as you start cranking up the volume a little bit, the bass starts taking over. The reflection start going, and your room fills up with sound and you’ll hear the room more than you'll hear the actual speaker. Ideally, what you want is a speaker that is the right size of your room. So that as you turn it up, if you can just hear the speaker, you're not hearing the reflections from the walls and all the bass build up and everything else.

So keep in mind, the size of your room compared to the speaker you've got. It's really tempting to, even if you see a cheap pair of massive speakers, oh yeah, they're going to look great and they're going to make my room look cool. But really, you're not going to be able to hear what's going on and you'd be better off with a really good set of headphones. So, I've got a couple of speakers here, give you some suggestions. So these keys are brilliant speakers. They work in a different way. And these, you can just have the top section. So these are good in a midsize room, but they are expensive. So pretty much no point unless you've got your room all treated and sounding nice. Now these Adams speakers, these aren't massive money. These are about £500 pair, something like that.

These are pretty decent size. These are eight inches. But as I say about the size of the room is that these are eight inches. I think they do a seven. I think they do a five. I'm not just saying Adams. You can get whatever maybe you want. Neumann are really good. There’re loads of different speakers. I would always try and go for a three-way speaker or I would go with a two-way speaker and a sub. Now, the reason I say this is, this is the sound for the mid-range is going to drive this. Now, if you've got a lot of bass going on in your music, the bass is going to be driving this and the mid-range is going to be driving this. So it kind of moving all over the place. If you have a sub on the floor, then the sub is going to be dealing with the bass stuff.

This is only dealing with the medium middle frequencies. So this can just react and do its own thing. It's not going to get taken over by the bass. You're going to get a cleaner sound. It's going to come at you a lot cleaner. And then the tweeters really are just personal preference, whichever you like. There’re loads of different types of tweeters. But one thing I would suggest also whilst I'm here is to get yourself good set of stands. Now I see a lot of people putting their speakers on top of desks. I see a lot of people putting speakers in different corners and things. Really what you want to do is if you can bring your desk forward a bit and just put some stands behind the desk. So the speakers are in the right place, at the right height to your head.

So you need to have the speakers so that your ear is in between the tweeter and the mid. If you've got a three-way that's down here, you want to be around here. So use your common sense there. I want to be here, obviously, not this close, so that I'm in the middle, then I'm going to hear exactly what frequencies are. So get some stands that are the right height for the height of where you’re sitting. That's a good tip. But also moving on to these smaller NS10s, you've got the stand for isolation is really good. So once you've got your stand set up behind the desk, these are ISO, these are called pucks. And these are from ISOAcoustics. These are pucks where you can get loads of different types of isolation from stand.

Now, the reason I say this is because if this is connected to this, and then this is connected to the floor, in the same way that if you haven't got a stand and you're just connecting it flat to the desk like this, all the resonances that come from the speaker. So as soon as it starts playing the bass, and as soon as it starts doing stuff, they're going to come from, go through the desk. So the desk becomes part of the speaker. So, all starts shaking around. When you've got some isolation on there, this isolation is going to stop it. Even if you've got spikes, that's even the work, that's the minimalist thing you can do. But these specially made and get some foam ones as well. These ones are probably the better ones and these just move around so that this is separate to this.

So the speaker is just doing what the speaker was made to do when they built the speaker. The resonance is in the casing completely are correct. And it's not using this as all your desk, or if you've got them in the walls, I've had some in the walls before there and the whole wall becomes the speaker, which is not ideal. So basically, let me just sum up, get a speaker that fits the size of your room, super important. Then make sure that you've got them on a sturdy stand, or if they're on a desk, make sure that the desk, they're isolated from the desk. So they've got some isolation between the desk and the speaker. That's mega important. And then check the height of your speaker too so that you've got your where you’re sitting the speaker, you’re in between it. That way, you're going to hear exactly what's going on for your speaker.

The main takeaway is get the right speaker for your room. If you've got a room that's too small, it's all about also cranking up the volume. Most of the time you'd want to keep it low because then the room doesn't get involved as I said at the front of this video. So really try and get your levels right so you're quiet. If you're in a big room, you can pump it up more, but then you're going to need bigger speakers too, to be able to get that volume. Get the right speakers for the right size of your room. If you need a sub, because you're only getting two-ways, so even on these NS10s, I'd have a sub because then you can still hear the low frequencies and these are just dealing with the high frequencies. Then it's down to taste and budget, whichever you want. That's my top tips to you for buying speakers, listening to speakers and speaker placement of how you're going to get them sounding right.

I hope you enjoyed that. If you want somebody to review your room, if you want to upload some pictures, then go to my private Facebook group that you can see in the link below. In there, you'll see the other mastering guys and mixed guys are in there, sharing their rooms and putting them up there. And we critique them. I critique them, everyone critiques them and says what they think could do more improvements and make them have a much better environment to work in. Because if you can't hear what you're doing, there's no point in doing it. So go to that private Facebook group, that's below. If you want to join my newsletter, go to streaky.com. So click the next video. It is a basic mastering tutorial by me. If you are a beginner and you want to know exactly what mastering is and how to get the ball rolling, mastering your own tracks or other people's, watch this next video. I'll see you on the next one. Thanks for watching.