Well, I'm finally done and I've made a choice. The past months have been much more complicated than I ever dreamed they would be - most of it having nothing to do with fidelity. I've learned a lot and I'm really glad it's finally over. But, the good news is that, at the end, I have an excellent studio monitor setup that I can do reliable mixing with and whose mixes translate very well. It's been much harder than expected, but the result has made it worth it. Just.


As you may recall, my idea was to cause, as much as possible, all three sets of monitors to be flat in my space and then to compare them to each other. I reasoned that the three would each interface with the space differently since they are physically different - and that turned out to be correct. I intended to do this by playing pink noise through them, while 'listening' to the result at my mixing position with an SM81, and then adjusting the result such that what the mic 'heard' matched what the pink noise looked like before it was output. My plan was to calibrate the adjustment using Voxengo Span and the parametrics built into SAC. This simply didn't work. The problem was mostly the parametrics. No matter what I did I still ended up with a 'lumpy' result rather than the flat line I intended.


The first monitors I attempted to do this with were the Adams, which I had leaned toward in the beginning. It quickly became apparent that, besides an inability to achieve 'flatness', I had an additional problem: Adam S3Hs are mid field monitors. They were much too loud for my space. I was going deaf trying to use parametrics to adjust that pink. I couldn't give them a fair listen anyway because at cruising volume for the monitors I had to wear ear protection. I finally abandoned the Adams because it had become obvious that it would be impossible for them to be my ideal monitors in that space.


That left the Genelecs and the Focals. By this point, rather than just taking Genelecs word that GLM had made them flat (or - nearly so, according to GLM's graphic of it's adjusted output result) I had measured it using Span and my SM81. The resut wasn't perfect, but it was at least close. Considering how relatively far from that my result had been after literally hours of adjustment for the Adams using Span, the SM81, and parametric equalizers, I decided to change my plan for setting up the Focals.


I had read about Sonarworks Reference 4, a software solution that is, at first glance, similar in theory to GLM. You use the reference microphone it comes equipped with to enable Reference 4 to do a series of measurements of your environment, then it creates a profile of adjustment that causes sound in the vicinity of your listening position to be relatively flat there. I bought a copy.


But, unlike GLM, Reference 4 does not adjust for your mixing position, but rather for the general area surrounding it. You do a series of thirty-some measurements in which Ref. 4 plays a sound through your monitors and asks you to move the reference microphone until it tells you it is satisfied with the resulting position. If you don't arrive there fast enough for Ref. 4 - it ends the test and you have to start over. While this is going on there is a graphic of the location of the mic that Ref. 4 believes it is going for on the screen to help you with the general position. For whatever reason, in my space the graphical location was not always anywhere close to where the mic had to be before Ref. 4 was satisfied with it's location and would complete that stage of the test. For instance, in some cases the graphic indicated that it wanted the mic somewhere close to the left speaker, but it wasn't satisfied until the mic was right of center.


I found this very confusing and consulted Sonarworks technical support for help. Sonarworks is located in Latvia. The work day in Latvia does not correspond well temporally with the workday in Kansas. So, I would send an email one day, and the next morning there would be a polite email from Sonarworks waiting for me with questions. I would answer them and email it off, and Sonarworks would receive it and respond long after I had gone to sleep that night. They had difficulty understanding my issue as well and day after day passed without much change in the situation. Meanwhile my trial month with Sweetwater with the loudspeakers was draining away. The breakthrough came when Sweetwater suggested I ignore the graphic and move the microphone until it was satisfied with it's position. After days I was finally able to complete the setup and listen to the result.


It sounded good. Really good actually. And according to Ref. 4's graphic of the result of it's treatment of the speakers and room, I had nearly achieved flatness. But, particularly since I now own a reference mic (the one that came with Reference 4...) I thought that I'd double check using my previous pink/mic/Span test. I did it against just the right speaker since my pink is mono. That result is still very good - but not as good as the Sonarworks graphic led me to expect. I contacted them to understand why. They told me that their graphic is an average for the entire, rather large, space that they test in. You do the 37 measurements and some are right next to the speakers and some are six or eight feet in front of them. What their graphic represents is the average over that entire space. So, OK - that's fair. Of course, what I'm really interested in is how close it is in one spot - my mixing position. And that's what GLC is capable of measuring for. So, how close did it get? Here's a screen shot I took that demonstrates it.


https://imgur.com/Bnr8d90


What you're seeing is Ref 4's claim on the left, the Voxengo Span for the original pink on the top right, and the Voxengo Span for the result through the reference mic below it. Span has been set to smooth to a third of an octave. I used Paint to draw a red line at the same point for both Span measurements to make it easier to see. As a result of the combination of my treatment of the room and Reference 4: with the exception of the large bump at 38 Hz, I think that's pretty good. I don't know for sure, but I expect that that low frequency bump is as a result of the Focal's 11" passive radiator pointing toward the ceiling (which has no accoustic treatment at all - it's just dry wall). I would have to keep an eye on that, but 38 Hz is really low anyway.


My original intent was to A-B the speakers in realtime. But, I couldn't do that. The Focals are on stands behind my desk and the Genelecs were on the desk itself. And, I discovered early on in testing the Adams, according to Span, the Genelecs being there at all, relatively in the same field, changed the measurable acoustic result. So, I stopped doing that.


The best I could accomplish was to mark the footprint of the GLC'd Genelecs on the desk and move them there when I was ready to test - and off the desk when I was testing the Focals. This was easy to do since the Genelecs weigh next to nothing compared to the Focals. I definitely would not want to take the Focals on tour with me to mix in hotel rooms. But, I could easily imagine it with the Genelecs.


I arranged some tracks to do a test mix with the two remaining loudspeaker sets. I deliberately arranged for there to be problems to overcome in them. My plan was to create mixes with each and then take them to other systems to see how well they translated. I will reveal at this point that I was hoping that the Focals would win, but I was afraid that they would not. This was because while both sets of speakers sounded great, the Focals have a much better extreme low end and feel better to me. Once they finally broke in, I really like listening to them. I don't absolutely need that from studio monitors. But... it is a nice bonus. Still, there seemed to me to be a certain precision in the sound of the GLC-mediated Genelecs - nothing I could put my finger on exactly, but evident none the less - that I didn't get from the Focals. I worried that my Focal mixes wouldn't translate as well.


I setup two identical projects in SAC/SAW, one for each monitor set, and mixed first one, then the other. Then I took the results to my stereo upstairs and to my car. The Focal mix was pretty much what I expected and hoped for on both my living room stereo and the Burmester in my car. But, the Genelecs were slightly bright on both - not a lot, but noticeable just the same. Of course, due to my difficulties with Ref. 4, I had spent much more time with the Focals than the Genelecs during the previous weeks. So, I did a second mix with the Genelecs with the result of the first mix in mind and then listened again. Second time the relative brightness was solved - but now the lead was slightly too loud.


If I'd had time, I would have set the Genelecs up using Reference 4, rather than GLC, just to see whether that made a difference. If I had, it's possible that would have solved the issue. But, due to all the problems I had getting a working test together, I was running out of time before I had to send two of the speaker sets back to Sweetwater. At this point, I'd been at it about a month. And, the bottom line was that the speaker set that I liked the best also translated. Also, the low end on the Focals is fantastic by comparison to the Genelcs - at least in my space. Ultimately, I had what I wanted, which was new monitors that I could create mixes with that translated very well to the real world - and, as a bonus, thrilled me every time I listened to them. So - I chose the Focals.


In a semi-perfect world, that would have been the end of the story. I'd have boxed up the damaged one and swapped it out with a brand new, unopened, speaker from Sweetwater and mixed happily ever after. It was mid-September and I had made my choice. As you may recall from way back at the very beginning, I did this at that time in order to save money. Sweetwater was having a sale and I could save money by buying them during the sale. In order to save an additional amount, I agreed to getting open boxes. My reasoning use case was that people like me would have done tests on these monitors for less than a month and then chosen something else and sent them back. And Sweetwater would have checked out the result and caught any obvious damage that had happened to them in the meantime. So, how much could go wrong with a set of speakers during a month?


Well, the first set of Focals had one that had a loud hiss all the time. And the other one didn't come in the original box and no longer had it's driver covers. I complained loudly and Sweetwater apologized, and generously offered to take them back and replace them with brand new ones for my trouble. So, I wrestled the 80 lb boxes up the stairs and sent them back, and got two new boxes which I wrestled down the stairs. One of those still had the giant staples, that Focal uses to seal boxes with when they're new, in them. The other did not and was sealed with plastic tape. When opened, the one without the staples had a tear in it's cloth wrap (as it turns out, high-end monitors apparently all come in soft cloth bags). But, the tear wasn't associated with a problem with the box - so it was odd, but I didn't worry about that right away. But, when I actually examined the speaker later after removing it from the box - it looked as if someone had hit the edge of the speaker with a lead pipe at the spot where the cloth was torn.


Another angry call to Sweetwater resulted in another apology and an offer to replace it. But, since the speaker functioned fine and the damage was only cosmetic, and since I hadn't yet decided that I preferred the Focals over the Genelecs, we decided to wait until I did decide to do the swap if I ended up choosing them.


Fast forward to mid-September and now I was ready to do the swap. And I was no longer willing to take an opened box. I had wrestled enough of those up and down the stairs to know that my original take on open-box deals was flawed - and Sweetwater had offered to give me brand new ones and I was going to hold them to it. These Focal loudspeakers list for $4,295 each and I was paying $2,699 for them. That's about 39% off - which was a better deal than was available for either the Adams or the Genelecs.


It turned out that the reason for the especially great deal was that one of the components in the speakers was from a Focal supplier that was no longer going to produce it. So, Focal was ending this line of speakers and getting rid of their warehouse of them at a discount to their retailers. Like me, a lot of other people have the same opinion about how good they sound and so - at that point there were no longer any new SM9s that Sweetwater had access to to replace it with. My salesman, Ed, sheepishly asked whether I'd take a refurbished one instead. I reluctantly agreed with the stipulation that it arrived to me unopened. Weeks later one arrived, purportedly refurbished, unopened, and directly from France. But, it was sealed with plastic tape, not staples, and the power cable was different than had come with all the others, and the documentation looked as if it had spent a long time scraping around on a warehouse floor.


Was it actually refurbished at all or did it come from that same American warehouse of Focal used returns? I don't know. I don't even know whether my salesman has any way of knowing. The experience certainly took a lot of the shine off my satisfaction, and both Sweetwater's and Focal's reputation, for me. The bottom line, I keep telling myself, is that I got great sounding monitors at a price I would not have paid more than, and would not have even had access to except for the deal I got, and it comes with a factory warranty and it looks fine. That's what ultimately really matters. That's what I keep telling myself.