Quested Monitors

general questions, comments and ideas about recording, audio, music, etc.
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soundguy
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Quested Monitors

Post by soundguy » Sun May 18, 2003 9:27 pm

I know this is probably the wrong place, but what the hell-

anyone ever compare the powered quested monitors vs. the unpowered series? Upgrading my monitors for the next record, looking for opinions.

dave

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by soundguy » Mon May 19, 2003 9:12 pm

just got a pair of VS2108's in here.

Frightening is not a powerful enough word to describe...

I wish I had done this three years ago.

dave

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by markpar » Mon May 19, 2003 11:31 pm

Just out of curiousity, how much did those set you back? What's the driver configuration?

-mark

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by DeafinONEear » Tue May 20, 2003 12:17 am

http://www.quested.com/MainProductS1.html


I love how they say the VS3208's are suitable for project studio work.

yeah, if you're Archie Rockafeller!

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by soundguy » Tue May 20, 2003 8:54 am

I think the street price is about $3600 ish.

Funny, I had them set up about 3 feet from the board, and now I have to change my whole damn control room, I found it best to be about 7 or 8 feet back, which is great, Im going deaf from having a damn speaker in my face for 16 hours a day. If my control room was one foot smaller, Id have a problem, word to the wise, and these were the small ones...

Listened to a bunch of records last night and with a pair of speakers like these, it just seems so damn easy to mix. Cant wait to get this next record going, 5 days to go.

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by bblackwood » Tue May 20, 2003 10:19 am

Those are great monitors. At my old place, I had a pair of the VH3208's. Cut a lot of good records on those. If I were a tracking/mixing guy, Questeds would be a no-brainer, imo.
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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by Professor » Tue May 20, 2003 11:38 am

Congrats on the monitors, it is always a wonderful thing stepping up to the high-end, isn't it?
I had checked out the Questeds and really considered them hard since they are a fantastic sounding speaker. They are very close to a PMC, have a little more character than Genelec (which are exceedingly dull and boring speakers to my ears), and blow crap like ADAMs right out of the water. I personally have always had a hard time with silk tweeters - I've listened to B&W for so long that I just can't stand silk tweeters. Give me aluminum, titanium or my favorite, ceramic and I am quite happy.
As for the powered vs. unpowered that is always a tough question. Some folks do powered well and some folks don't. When you get separates, you have the ability to match a nice high-power, high-current amp to the speakers and it is easier to trade up amps or speakers at any time. The draw back of course is that you have to work to match the amp and speakers. Of course you already know all of that - I guess it's more for the browsers.
Either way give us all some feedback of how the high end is treating you. Also, are you running them with a sub or not?

-Jeremy

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by soundguy » Wed May 21, 2003 11:15 am

I start my first session on sunday, so I'll let ya know. The high end is the smoothest I have hear on any speaker, ever. I listened for a few hours to some CD's to jst get a feel for them, and the one thing I consistently hear on many many many records is the attack and release of the vocal compressors, shit I've never ever ever heard on stuff before. Thats how detailed the top is, and its not frustrating to hear either. As for a sub, my control room is pretty small, all things considered and the bass response of these is amazing, if you NEED a sub with these, you've got to be monitoring in a warehouse or something. Very immense bottom. But then again, I'm not realy a sub kind of guy, I dont even have one hooked up to my stereo. But there is really no bass lacking from these monitors, at least not to my taste.

All in all, Im pretty shocked that Ive neevr really heard anyone talk about these, seems like everyone in the know has a pair, but most folks dont know them at all. For what they are, they arent SO expensive, and I ruined my hearing on cheap crap monitoring for many many years which I regret more than anything in this world. If actually hearin what you are recording isnt worth the investment, if you are a semi pro and find yourself in front of monitors for more than 40 hours a week, the investment of protecting your hearing is so worth saving for these. The one thing that will suck is having to use other speakers at a different studio, and these are just big enough to not want to take em with you...

I got the powered ones just because I couldnt afford a bryston and the passives. I still dont know how I feel about powered speakers, but for now, Im pretty happy.

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by Professor » Wed May 21, 2003 12:03 pm

I know that after spending $3600 on new speakers, the last thing you want to do is spend more - but you should see if you can borrow a sub at some point just to hear the difference, even in a small room. It is really even more of an eye opener. I listened to the PMC AML-1 actives for quite a while and found that to be the smoothest top I've ever heard on silk domes, I almost didn't believe they were silk except that they didn't extend beyond 20kHz. When I heard them with a Velodyne sub, it was amazing.
The catch really is trying to cram that much audio info into a 2-way speaker. The 8-inch woofer has to try to reproduce the sub-bass you are feeding it in the 20-50 range and still continue up to the crossover point at maybe 300 or 500? Then the tweeter has to take it from there on to 20kHz. The fact that the Quested can do it so well is a testament to just how good it is. In my control room (which is big and was paid for by a grant to the University) I have all JBL LSR speakers. The nears are the LSR 28p which are quite similar to the Quested in arrangement 1" & 8" self-powered though the materials are different - titanium tweeter and carbon composite woofer. Then the main speakers are a combination of the self powered LSR 12p 12" subwoofer and the LSR 32 passive three-way on a Bryston mono-block. The total configuration is two 12" drivers one acting as sub and the other as low-mid, one 5" kevlar upper midrange and a 1" titanium tweeter - times two for left and right mains. The difference kicking from the small to the large is staggering - as I would hope considering the difference in power and surface area. But the really noticeable shift is in the way the two way sueezes the bass information into a smaller driver and the way the four-way opens that up. At first people think they are hearing more bass from the two-way because it pushes the sub-bass info drops and the low-mid bass bumps up and we hear better in that range - it is not an intentional design, it is just a physical result of trying to cram the proverbial 10 pounds of shit into the 5 pound bag.
Again, I know I'm preaching to the choir relative to Dave, but for the browsers who are looking for info on speakers it's important to note the difference between two-way, three-way and larger speaker configurations. With my students, I typically equate this to the EQ knobs though obviously it's a bit different - but treble and bass knobs get you started and may do a really good job, adding a mid-range is better, sweepable mids are better still and four bands are even better still.
Of course the best thing to do with any speaker is exactly what Dave is doing - listen to it. And not just to recordings you are working on but listen to commercial releases, live concerts, your own sessions, rock, classical, jazz, everything you can find. When your ears get used to hearing commercial CDs on your new speakers and you match your recordings to that sound, you know you are getting closer to the commercial sound.

-Jeremy

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by soundguy » Wed May 21, 2003 12:22 pm

jeremy-

Im actually really ignorant when it comes to speakers. Ive always just used whatevr I could afford and dealt with it and really wished I had gotten my act together on this a long long time ago. The one queston that I have about speakers is in regards to the room and the size of the speakers. I had to pretty much totally reconfigure my control room to accomodate these monitors, I foun that the sweet spot was pretty far away, much farther away than placing them on the meter bridge, where most nearfields go... I dont think my control room could accomodate a speaker thats any bigger than these, or at least one that *sounded* any bigger. I suppose there is no formula and in the end, what sounds good is good, but I was definitley a little suprised to see where these sounded best.

Really makes me think about the whole idea about nearfileds in the first place, which I never gave much thought to until now. I dont ever listen to music sitting two feet away from a speaker, it sorta doest make any sense to mix music sitting that close to a speaker. sure, you can hear detail, etc, but stereo imaging definitly changes as you move further away. If your mixes translate standing on your head, you shoudl mix that way, but it just seems so much more logical to be mixing from a listening perspective that you'll actually be utilizing in the real world. While not exactly the same idea, in so far as perspective is concerned, is there *really* that much of a difference between mixing on headphones and mixing with your head practically between a pair of monitors if you usually listen to music sitting 8 feet away? this is a whole other conversation, I hijacked my own thread.

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by Professor » Wed May 21, 2003 12:52 pm

Yep, you hijacked you own thread - but then that is the whole fun of these boards. I would say that there is very little difference between mixing on headphones and mixing on nearfields. There is a little since headphones won't cause phase cancelations the same way and tiny headphone drivers with no crossover point will have different response characteristics, but otherwise you really get very similar imaging. I guess my LSR 28 pair is more of a mid-field and will be more so once I get all of the installation squared away and push the console a little closer to the wall - I will have about a 3-3.5 foot equalateral triangle for the small speakers and a 7.5 foot triangle for the mains (actually a 7.5 foot circle since it's a 5.1 setup as well).
As for placement, the old standby comes into play - if it sounds good than that is the right spot. I am in a Russ Berger designed room now so distances are a little different because of the considerable acoustical treatments - for example the mains are seated on four foot high, three foo square concrete pillars recessed into a front wall that has several inches of absorbtion material under a cloth facade. When we are talking little rooms, especially with parallel walls then there is definitely no 'right way'.
I installed high-end home audio for a while and we sold some dramatically different products - for speakers we installed B&W, Linn, Meridian and Magneplanar among others. B&W speakers are very directional and really need a lot of tweaking to get them into the perfect triangle alignment before they disappear and then if you sit off center the image swings to the side. They sound fantastic but placement is tough. Meridian speakers sound alot like Genelec and I don't like either, but they are very accurate and the large Meridians use side firing bass drivers. It almost doesn't matter which way they point, though good placement really brings them together well. Linn speakers sound their best pushed right up against the wall which is very unusual but it did augment the bass. Magneplanars are ribbon speakers that are 3" thick and stand several feet tall - they disperse in a wide figure 8 pattern. You could almost toss them anywhere and they would sound good, and when you get up and walk around the room, it would feel like you were stepping around musicians on the stage.
So I am not surprised that your speaker change has necessitated a room rearrangement that is a good sign that you're listening the right way. You're in NYC man, go visit Sound by Singer and check out his shop. I've never been there, but I know what he sells and I think you will end up staying for days. What you will find most interesting is that each different set of speakers does respond differently to the room - but not as easily predictable as just based on size. I would venture to say that you could have purchsed a bigger or smaller Quested, and would have placed them in the same location - or at least pretty close.
It's a crazy thing this sound business, and we tend to spend so much time obsessing about microphones and their placement and we forget about speakers. Transducers are the single most critical part of a recording chain. Mics & placement on one end and speakers and placement on the other. That is where the vibrating air changes to electricity and back again to air - who would argue that the microphone is the more important than the preamp, console, recorder or processor?
Wow there I go waxing philosophical again - I think it's time for lunch.

-Jeremy

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by joel hamilton » Sat May 24, 2003 7:22 am

I mixed a record on the big ones, the ones with 4 10" speakers and a dome and a tweeter in the middle. I thought they were weird, but kinda cool. I think the smaller ones are cooler. The big ones seem to be really expensive (even by high end standards) for what you get as compared to the smaller ones in the quested series. Just my 2 cents.

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Re: Quested Monitors

Post by juanmaclean666 » Sat May 24, 2003 11:34 am

I posted about this the other day, but that is the price range I am looking to spend soon on monitors. The studio I work at in New York has these SA monitors that have ruined me at home with my collection of nearfields. It's just so easy to mix, to eq, to balance stuff. Listening out of ns-10'ish nearfields just seems impossible now. Is that how it is with those Quested, 'cause it sounds like you are having a similair reaction. How is the low end detail on those things, that is often my biggest complaint, the murkiness of low mid's and the smudge of the low end? How about distortion (may be impossible to tell which is the amp and which is the speaker)?
I'm also checking out the Dynaudio M (I forget which number, the one's designed to sit on a console top), and looking into the SA near/midfields. Did you try out a lot of speakers. I'm not interested in Genelecs.
Juan

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