Event Opal monitors review by Freemasons – part one
| Posted in Music Technology
How better to review Event Opal active studio monitors than to ask one of the UK’s most successful producers for his opinion? That producer is James Wiltshire of Freemasons, and this is the first part of his exclusive review:
Although talking to yourself may often be considered the first sign of madness, taking yourself to one side and ‘having a word’ is another event entirely. As our own worse critics, we often find it incredibly hard to come to terms with the fact that we got something wrong, and even worse – it’s going to cost us one way or another to put it right. Philosophy aside, this is exactly what happened to us whilst working over the course of this year. The realisation crept up slowly, and I personally did everything I could to ignore it. But eventually the truth became glaringly obvious while I was standing in the control room of mastering house Massive Masters, listening on a full range Genelec monitoring system to the pigs ear of a bass end that I’d managed to screw up on, of all things, a pop mix. We were working on completely the wrong set of studio monitors, and they had to go – fast.
As much as I loved the little active midsize monitors that we’d been using for over 18 months, when I went online to check their specs I was really cross with myself for buying anything that started serious roll-off at 50HZ. As Freemasons, we make club music, where bass-end production has gone through the roof / basement in recent years.
And here’s the thing with digital mixing: unless you are incredibly lucky and chance on the correct bass sound combo, you are going to need to hear exactly what’s going on in the bottom octave when you mix in a DAW. Digital simply does not give the same benefit of the doubt as analogue when it comes to mixing bass cycles. As a result, I was finding that every now and again I’d get something seriously wrong. My decision to buy some Event Opal monitors was inching closer…
Now okay, I knew about the standing wave in our room. Our KRK Egro room corrector had really helped on that front, and some careful treatment had solved no end of problems. Most of our mixes were sounding good. But as we all know, ‘good’ just isn’t good enough.
Now I was finally realising my mistake – my audio unit addiction had seen me spend thousands of pounds on software, but I’d spent only hundreds of pounds on the studio monitors! I felt like an absolute imbecile! It’s like building yourself a home cinema and then using VHS.
So I did something I’ve never done before – I purchased a pair of Event Opal monitors blind, without hearing so much as a peep out of them. There are good reason for this seemingly frivolous gamble. Firstly, I’ve heard nothing but praise from reviewers, industry friends and retailers (including some people who I really trust ). Secondly, they go down to about 35HZ quite effortlessly, and have so much latent power behind them that you know in normal working conditions they will sound really controlled. Finally, just like Beyonce, you know they’re good looking, but the more carefully you study them, the more attractive they become. It’s like wearing beer goggles in reverse.
But did they work? I’ll tell you tomorrow.
Tomorrow, read part two of James Wiltshire’s exclusive review of Event Opal active studio monitors
About Barney Jameson
A contributor, editor and in some cases creator of more music and pro audio magazines than he cares to remember, Barney Jameson is a veteran of writing about gear, and a pretty keen singer songwriter to boot.
Having started his musical education reading old copies of the Melody Maker while riding the tube to University in the mid-nineties, Barney once sang in a band called Sugarstone, troubling record company chequebooks not quite enough to make it a career option. Instead, he achieved his goal of starting a music magazine of his own when he founded Playmusic in the early noughties. Later on, having exploited VIP access to as many festivals as possible, he wrote about the pro audio industry throughout Europe and the Middle East, travelling to far-flung destinations such as Dubai, Doha and Muscat (nice mountains).
As the latest addition to the DV247 team, Barney has big plans. But when he’s not plotting online domination of the musical instrument world, he keeps himself busy writing songs on a battered old acoustic guitar and playing them to audiences in his home town.
Tags: Event monitors, freemasons, James Wiltshire, recording studio monitors