Installation, Speaker Placement | Alesis Monitor One instruction

CHAPTER 2: INSTALLATION

Like any speaker system, your Monitor Ones will work best when properly positioned in a suitable acoustic environment. Achieving proper speaker placement is usually straightforward, but even with near-field monitors, speaker placement and the acoustics of the listening room itself are too often overlooked and can become significant contributors to an inaccurate and uninspiring monitoring environment.

Please take a moment to read this information carefully. It will help you to get the most use and enjoyment from your new Alesis monitors.

2.0 SPEAKER PLACEMENT

While near-field monitors are more forgiving of the

surrounding room acoustics, it is always prudent to optimize the listening environment whenever possible. First, the user should be aware of the effect that the size of the listening room can have on low frequency response. In general, the smaller the room, the stronger the bottom end will be, although placement within a larger room can also make a difference. This has to do with the way low-frequency waves travel in closed spaces. If you find your monitor system to be either light or heavy on the bottom, try moving them around within your listening room. Also, because the Monitor One's SuperPort tube is located at the rear, position the monitors at least six inches away from anything that would block it.

You should avoid locating your Monitor Ones near reflective surfaces such as glass, tile, large open walls or table tops. Still, many rooms used for recording have these surfaces, so the best way to deal with them is to place the monitors out in the room away from reflective walls, windows and sizable objects.

Even with these reflective surfaces separated from the monitoring position, typical mixing situations usually still have the top surface of the mixing board to deal with. Unfortunately, the board itself can be a major source of reflections and the additional acoustic conduction into the board can affect your monitor's amplitude and phase response. Speaker placement on the console's meter bridge provides for two clear acoustic paths between the speakers and the recording engineer which results in undesirable comb filtering effects and poor imaging. The first path is the direct one, and the second is via a reflection off the mixer main