I knew there was something that drew me to this house when I bought it 
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Looks nice Pam. Those isolation pads work wonders.
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This is crazy.
So I have known for a long time that my current monitors, a pair of JBL 305P mkII, punch way above their weight. They are like these stealth sweet spot outstanding value monitors. But I thought I would upgrade them to Yamaha HS7’s because those are also known to be batting way higher than their price would indicate, and I thought that they would be a bass and low mids improvement over my 305P’s.
But I literally cannot hear the difference between them. The HS7 has a bit more definition and clarity in the highs… but not really very much. Check this out:
The frequency response is nearly identical between these. As far as I can tell they sound close enough to be dopplegangers. And yet the Yamaha has another 1.5" of speaker diameter. And while it’s true they have more headroom at 95W vs 80 each, my monitors never get above 50% anyway.
I’ve always thought the Yamahas sounded a bit too high-mids biased. This is desirable for mixing vocals for sure but really I expected a lot more of an upgrade there; they just sound the same to me in phones.
Compare to the difference here:
That’s a much bigger and more obvious difference. You don’t even need 'phones to hear it. The JBL just sounds way better to me in low mids and bass response when reproducing the original track. The speaker sizes are the same (both are 6.5").
The JBLs cost much less and reproduce the reference tracks better. That makes the upgrade path clear for me.
But does that really mean they are better monitors? Well, not necessarily. If your day job is mixing music with lots of vocals and high mids to highs, the Yamahas are better. And that’s the majority of popular music, so it’s clear why Yamaha voiced them that way.
The other interesting thing is the frequency response for all three speakers is really, really similar; still, the 306P stands out.
I’ve listened to tons of other comparisons and the same plays out every time. Closest to the 306P is the Kali LP6, and I think the 306P edges it out. The Adam T7V does sound a bit close to it to me too, however it didn’t beat it.
And that’s despite the Adam having another half inch of speaker.
I am rapidly becoming a JBL fanboy.
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Wouldn’t it be weird if they didn’t sound the same at all? 
Nice comparison. Only thing that is kinda hard to tell is how well you can hear the low end in the room, but that is more about speaker size. Seems to me that would be the only reason to upgrade or get a woofer?
Seems you struck a good deal with those JBL’s!
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The funny thing is with most of the comparisons you can tell the difference, despite the frequency responses being similar.
- These are all good monitors with a quite flat response.
- The Yamahas have waaaay more clarity and punch in the mids, high mids, and highs than any other speaker in this price range for a given size; like, so much that they might actually drive you crazy. They are also a bit lacking in the lows, size for size. They definitely bring out the most detail in the mids. Due to this they would make very good monitors but less good for music listening.
- The KRK’s have the most boomy and punchy lows, almost like a regular speaker, which is good for listening but not great for monitoring.
- The JBLs are a good mix of the two, size for size.
- The Kali and Adams are as well, and are pretty great sounding for the price too, though I think the JBLs edge them out.
- You can tell the difference easily between each of them next to the next size up or down in the same line.
So yeah, IMO it’s totally weird that the sub-$200 5" JBL’s sound exactly the same to me as the $350 6.5" Yamahas 
Yeah, choice is clear for me to upgrade. JBL 306P mkII for sure.
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Ha, I used my KRK for music too! As monitors they were okay, but indeed too boomy for my taste. The Adams I got after was the complete opposite.
Did you also looked at Neumann or Genelec for comparisons?
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Out of price range 
Oh sure, twist my arm, give me a Genelec
The T7v looks like a great choice. As good as the JBL more or less. I liked the JBL a bit more but it was close enough to not matter. Same with the Kali’s.
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Haha sorry, I meant did you compare those “premium” brands to hear if there is a big difference between the ones you mentioned? To me the JBL 6" seems like a minor upgrade, while I wonder if there are more worthwhile upgrades out there.
Most gear that is produced these days are all pretty good imo, I mean you won’t have much of a business if you produce shitty gear, right? Makes me wonder if you are paying that much extra for the brand or actual quality.
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Yeah that’s a good question.
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One thing I am sure of is that before stepping out of this price tier of monitors, my room could use a lot of acoustic treatment.
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Noize London educated me in Valhalla reverbs and he has some nice online guides. I am sure you know all this stuff @howard , this video is a nice guide for someone who is getting started with studio monitors. It has a few nice pointers about acoustic treatment!
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A friend of mine has a pair of Focals (a 8k USD the pair) in a treated room and oh boy, the sound is indeed something completely different to these hobby setups.
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My current space is amazingly bad. Like, you couldn’t design it worse. It’s all right angles with no plants or drapes; my desk has the monitors about 15cm from a wall, and a meter behind me is a big bureau with a big flat pane of glass
Room treatment makes a huge difference.
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Did you try some room correction software? I am using ARC by IK, but Sonarworks and DBX has also a good alternatives. The one time purchase of a calibrated microphone hurts a bit, but I lend that mic constantly in a local Facebook group and was able to make the money back in little over a month.
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Nope, haven’t tried. I should look in to it.
To me this is no different than speakers on a hi-fi system.
It has to sound good to YOU, regardless of specs or price.
It also has to sound good in the room.
The room is always the tough part.
I’m actually once again doing a small room reconfigure cause the spot I’m in when I practice sax sounds better if I turn 180 the other way.
You mix very very very well.
Why change your setup?
Put a moving blanket over the glass pane, sound better/worse? If you notice a difference start experimenting with that stuff and save your upgrade money for something else.
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Why thank you
Basically I want to play around with the next size up in speakers. I won’t be going larger but I want to see if I can get more bass definition without raising the volume. The amusing answer so far is, with the HS7 I definitely wouldn’t
You can definitely hear the difference here though:
Then again, in their written review they liked the 305P more 
I may not swap anything, mostly exploring for now. The real answer would be to get a sub, but I can’t without selling this place and moving.
You know you are getting too deep in to looking at monitors when you start recognizing problems in the acoustics of the reviewers’ rooms.
Like in this review:
if you look at the frequency response graph from it:
The speakers are very close to the same, but a couple things immediately jump out.
Notice those bass peaks between 35 and 100Hz, and how they are the same for both? That’s weird; these are different monitors from two different brands. The reason for this is likely room acoustics. What we are seeing there is a bass resonance in the guy’s room at those frequencies; maybe from proximity to a wall or something. There’s similar patterns at 150, 250, and 400-600Hz. These could be harmonics of the first defect or other defects in the room acoustics. I checked all his other videos across many speakers and they all have the same defect visible, so it’s definitely environmental. I think you can really only trust this guy’s graphs over about 600Hz. See how the differences start to come out around there?
There could also be issues with his pink noise generator I guess.
It’s still a useful graph though. That dip at 1500Hz on the 306P is an actual problem with the monitors - that’s the crossover frequency for the woofer/tweeter amps. The fact that there’s a dip probably means something like the crossover circuit filters are too steep or something. The Kali’s here (and also my 305P’s) have no such dip. I’ve seen this in other graphs for the 306P too.
Basically this means that my 305’s are better monitors than the larger 306’s.
@DaveT this is fascinating stuff. You must love doing this as a day job
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It’s true that I do love my day job because of how fascinating this is. I agree with your entire analysis. The crossover has a spec of 1.425 KHz. All kinds of reasons exist why crossover is difficult to get right. I can usually hear that one pretty easily on clean vocals. I’d put on Norah Jones - Come Away With Me to detect problems there if I didn’t have measurement tools available.
Now, back to editing a DSP file. Where DAWs use a one-big-mixer model where you can have plugin inserts, DSP black boxes are input/output centric where mixers are one of the plugins you can put on the canvas between the I and the O. More like giant multi-effect pedals.
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It’s really amazing how much positioning matters. Moving around in my room I can get much, much higher bass response than I do in the sweet spot for both monitors at about 1m away. Really illustrates how subs can infuriate neighbors even at low levels.