Woo-hoo! New speakers!

These speakers are specially constructed for sound engineering. Unlike ordinary speakers which are usually engineered to have more ‘colour’ for one’s listening pleasure – for instance, perhaps more bass, or warmer tones, and so on – near-field monitor speakers, as they are called, are best neutral and should clearly project the sounds within the mix. By being neutral it means that there’s not too much bass or too much treble (higher frequencies) so that you can do your mixing accurately, like you know how much bass or treble to put, and how you ought to pan (meaning, place a particular instrument or voice to the left, centre or right).

What I like about the Yamaha MSP5 Studio is its small size, its clarity of sound and that the bass woofers are in front, facing you. It means that I can estimate the strength of my bass. If the woofers are at the back, they will hit a reflective surface and bounce back and hence you might add more bass than you should because you might feel that the bass just doesn’t get to you.

In addition I purchase a Shure KSM109 condenser microphone for recording purposes – to record my acoustic upright piano, to record voices as well as sound effects. We buy a microphone stand too – but forget to purchase the mic cables. Darn. So my boss gives me one of his spare cables. Thanks boss!

So I have to re-arrange my desk again to accommodate the new speakers, which are slightly larger than my old ones. And they have to be solidly positioned on the rack – they are pretty heavy, about 8.8kg each. Now the 20-inch screen goes to the back, on the parapet next to the window. The laptop remains. The Mbox 2 takes the empty lot where the 20-inch screen leaves. What I’m happy with is that the equipment are all spaced out, not as crammed as before, where it’s even difficult to slot a CD into the disc drive of the laptop, or to reach for the rear USB port to switch drives!