Hey all,
I finally bit the bullet and got a monitoring system with some pretty deep low end. I just took delivery of a pair of JBL LSR308, Mk II monitors from Guitar Sinner (although after how they took care of me, I hesitate to call them 'Sinner').

JBL recently released the MKII version of these monitors, and when they did Guitar Center changed the 1st generation price of each from $249/ea to $149/ea. I jumped on the deal last weekend.

On Monday this past week, order was cancelled by GC as the store that had them in inventory sold them locally. Phone-sales-dude from GC worked with me to get me the Mk II for the same price.

Looks like the 1st gen are still available for $149.99/ea at B&H Photo.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=lsr308&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search=

At least one reviewer says the 1st generation are better than the Mk II. All I know is that it's difficult to find any semi-pro monitors with this much engineering in them for $300/pair. GC has their house-brand Sterling Audio for this price, but I listened back-to-back in store and the JBLs have significantly more midrange. It's like the Sterling had a built-in-smiley face scoop.

Full Compass has them at $200/ea.

Killer deal. That's what we paid for our KRK rockit5's and you got 8" woofers.

yes. I had been shopping used. Last weekend before I bought these, I found a set of Mackie HR824 1st gen for 300 on Craigslist in great shape visually. By the time the seller responded to my Craigslist e-mail, he had sold them already.

Had a line on two different sets of original Tannoy Reveal, one had a home theatre sub with it, for $200, but those are getting pretty old and I'd probably be replacing drivers.

These are nice and shiny.

Soon as the wife wakes up from sunday PM nap, I will be pinking my room.

For now, I'm using some Harbor Freight 10" pneumatic wheels for isolation, where I removed the center steel parts - so it's just inner tubes inside of the tires. Working quite well I must say. (I refuse to pay for isolation - I'm a noise and vibration engineer by trade and went to Harbor Freight yesterday to MacGyver what I could repurpose for isolation)

I can vouch for the LSR series, great monitors! I have the 4328s.

That's what I have in my studio. Great speakers. I swear by JBL. They make a great product. I just bought the JBL EON ONE for my live shows.

It's starting to shape up. Here's the desk setup now. Removed the top deck and put everything on the desk. Monitors on my Harbor Freight Pneumatic Tire isolators. View of my only outboard gear with the EQ corrections after pinking the room with a measurement mic and 1/3 octave analysis.

Starting to shape up by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr

The rack by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr


With that piano black gloss finish, these monitors are going to collect dust like PigPen in an abandoned haunted house. I'm going to try my hand at sewing some dust covers for them and the keyboard. I'll post back here if they do or do not turn out nicely.

Looks great! My LSRs had come with their own measurement mic and software and that really helped tune them to the room. I then spent a little more to get a high quality room measurement software, Sonarworks, and that fined tuned my room sound even more. Love the final sound I can mix now.

I dig the isolators, looks a lot classier than the phone books stacked on cinder blocks I used for years.

Cheers
Kent

Getting them dialed in. Borrowed a dbx measurement mic and did several passes at pinking the room tonight. The room I record and mix in has a Murphy Bed. When it's open, it's a whole bunch of absorption and diffusion. When it's closed, it's mostly just some diffusion.

I EQ'ed the left and right monitor separately.

For those interested, here's the process I went through to pink the room:

1. I found an uncompressed, uncorrelated pink noise .wav file on the internet. Loaded that into my DAW.
Pink Noise and third octave analysis setup in DAW by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr

2. I set up the dbx measurement mic right at my listening position - moved my chair out of the way to get it placed at the apex of my listening position
Pinking the room by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr

3. Set the toe-in on the monitors - this is a shot looking down on the desk with a printed off 30/60/90 triangle.
Getting the toe in right by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr

4. Grabbed the excellent 'Spectrum Analyzer' VSTi which uses digital filters rather than FFTs to give 1/3 octave levels (I could go into a dissertation why you want a digital filter implementation of the band filters instead of FFT, but I'll save you the time and math)

5. Made sure that the uncorrelated pink noise file was in fact pink noise. In this picture the bars are the 1/3 octave instantaneous levels when I did the window grab, the top line is a 3s peak hold, and the bottom line is the average level of the 1/3 octave filters. I'm shooting to match that flat average with my equalizing.
Pink Noise File through the third octave analyzer by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr

6. Put another instance of the analyzer in my measurement mic track (track 2 in the DAW picture shot), and then pulled the track volume to zero. Also had to set the mic track volume on my Focusrite scarlett control to zero so that I wouldn't get feedback when doing the eq adjusting.
Here is the un-eq'ed result prior to setting the graphic eq. Actually not too bad to start off with.
Bed out closet open vocal gobo in place no eq applied by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr

7. Panned hard left on the pink noise file.

8. Tweaked my 31 band EQ for the left side to try to get it as flat as possible

9. Repeated step 8 for the right channel.

10. set the pan to center, and grabbed an average of the mic channel. Then took a picture of the graphic EQ settings for future reference.
Bed put away closet open vocal gobo in place by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr


Final EQ setting with the bed put away by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr

11. Went and listened to some of my favorite music for awhile.
Came here and typed this post after shooting the pix over to Flickr.

Some of the items that you might wonder about in the photo titles: I do not have a vocal booth, but something pretty danged close. This basement finished bedroom has a closet with sliding doors. I open one up and right there is a shelf loaded with pillows and blankets and what not. I also have a gobo I made with some acoustic foam on it which I set at an angle to the open closet door. It makes for a very dead recording space (if I remember to kill my monitors!) here's a couple shots of that.
Gobo and stuff in closet by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr


Gobo and stuff in closet by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr