Changed monitors and the Kemper sounds bad...what are your favorites?

Hi Chris,

The JBL LSR 305 are great for the price but have rear firing ports which may be an issue if you place them too close to the wall or corners.

But as cheap as they are I would try a set. I picked them up when my Blue Sky's died, I use them with the Blue Sky sub and they are nice. Mids are not as forward as the Blue Sky but they are very sweet sounding.

I have Sonodyne also and prefer the JBL.

Quote from deadpan

Hi Chris,

The JBL LSR 305 are great for the price but have rear firing ports which may be an issue if you place them too close to the wall or corners.

But as cheap as they are I would try a set. I picked them up when my Blue Sky's died, I use them with the Blue Sky sub and they are nice. Mids are not as forward as the Blue Sky but they are very sweet sounding.

I have Sonodyne also and prefer the JBL.

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I have these and find them pleasant to the ear, though not extremely accurate.. I honestly prefer playing through my DXR's (I have both a DXR8 and DXR10).

Quote from chrismilne

(actually wanted the HR824 but those were out of my range all)

I own two sets of the mk I version. Bought the second set 2nd hand. They are very good, i love them with the Profiler.

Quote from deadpan

Hi Chris,

The JBL LSR 305 are great for the price but have rear firing ports which may be an issue if you place them too close to the wall or corners.

But as cheap as they are I would try a set. I picked them up when my Blue Sky's died, I use them with the Blue Sky sub and they are nice. Mids are not as forward as the Blue Sky but they are very sweet sounding.

I have Sonodyne also and prefer the JBL.

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I'm using these and they are honest when it comes to the essence of the Kemper.

JBL 305 is what I have - Great sound for a great price !!! I once went for an upgrade , but after A/B comparisson with another brand Kept my money and my JBL's -

I use mk1 hr624s and find them pretty good. Not sure why the 8” would sound worse. I wonder what’s going on there.

JBL 305 here too. Great bang for your buck.

I have Adam A7X and they sound fantastic to me. Having said that, when I tested the Kemper and Helix in the demo room at my local guitar shop it was a set of 4" Mackies that they had set up and they sounded great too.

Just thinking outside the box; I wonder if the problem might be your room. You may already know all of this so forgive me if that's the case.

The move from 4" to 8" woofer will give a lot more bottom end power. However, if the room has no bass trapping, an unfortunate set of dimensions and a less than ideal listening position, you could be getting some pretty extreme comb filtering form the extra bass and low mids. It's truly amazing how much the room impacts the sound and how much worse it can get by introducing frequencies that weren't there or were under represented in the first place. It's counter intuitive but one of the worst things you can do in some rooms is add a sub woofer. In some cases, where the listening position corresponds with a trough from cancellation, adding more bass can result in less bass being heard in the room :-0

Try playing moving around the room (i.e out of the traditional listening sweet spot for your monitors and see how the sound changes). You could also confirm whether the room is the problem by playing a sine wave from your DAW's tone generator. Start around 40hz and gradually move up each time. While the tone is playing move around the room and listen to the change in volume. If you happen to have a DB meter use that too. Before I started treating my room there were points where certain low and low mid frequencies had +/- 30db spikes from room modes. In those circumstances I could have been using £40,000 ATC monitors and it would still have sounded like crap

I use Genelec 8020b and those are very very good!

Quote from Wheresthedug

I have Adam A7X and they sound fantastic to me. Having said that, when I tested the Kemper and Helix in the demo room at my local guitar shop it was a set of 4" Mackies that they had set up and they sounded great too.

Just thinking outside the box; I wonder if the problem might be your room. You may already know all of this so forgive me if that's the case.

The move from 4" to 8" woofer will give a lot more bottom end power. However, if the room has no bass trapping, an unfortunate set of dimensions and a less than ideal listening position, you could be getting some pretty extreme comb filtering form the extra bass and low mids. It's truly amazing how much the room impacts the sound and how much worse it can get by introducing frequencies that weren't there or were under represented in the first place. It's counter intuitive but one of the worst things you can do in some rooms is add a sub woofer. In some cases, where the listening position corresponds with a trough from cancellation, adding more bass can result in less bass being heard in the room :-0

Try playing moving around the room (i.e out of the traditional listening sweet spot for your monitors and see how the sound changes). You could also confirm whether the room is the problem by playing a sine wave from your DAW's tone generator. Start around 40hz and gradually move up each time. While the tone is playing move around the room and listen to the change in volume. If you happen to have a DB meter use that too. Before I started treating my room there were points where certain low and low mid frequencies had +/- 30db spikes from room modes. In those circumstances I could have been using £40,000 ATC monitors and it would still have sounded like crap

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This is so true! I also use Adams A7x and they sound very good with the Kemper. I’ve added a SVT sub that is calibrated using a db meter. At the listening spot the freq response is very flat. The investments I made in acoustical treatments are the best I did in my studio! Especially low to mid low freqs can be very difficult to handle (40-150 hz) in a small room. My studio is 4x5 meters and in all the corners I have huge bass traps to control low energy. So if you have a problematic acoustical small room bigger speakers (more low energy) will sound worse.......

@rolandeventide i have more Rckwool in my room the Jewsons :-). Floor to ceiling superchunks in the front corners. All the other corners also have as much trapping as I could squeeze in. What a difference it made. The good news is that Rockwool or OC in the US is fairly cheap stuff so you don’t need to spend a fortune to make a big difference.

Quote from chrismilne

I haven't done any treatment as i'm in a temp space, but maybe i'll start looking in to building my own panels that i can hang and use again later.

That’s what I did. But you can do even less than that. As the corners are the biggest bagng for your buck. Just buy a few bales of rockwool. Don’t even open them. Just stack them in the corner and cover them with something to make them look a little nicer but when you move you can just pick up the bales and off you go

Quote from jiims79

I use Genelec 8020b and those are very very good!

I own 2 x DXR10s, and like the poster above, now use the brilliant Genelec 8020s.

I also own the 8010s too, which may work better in a really small room...

I cannot praise the Genelecs enough; transformed my Kemper experience.

I used to use KRK's but have a pair of DXR10's which I dig! If I had a smaller room I'd go for the A7x - get some lows in there.

Changed monitors and the Kemper sounds bad...

This sentence is strange, its like saying :

<sup><sub>Changed monitors and my guitar sounds bad...

Or I had monitors and the Kemper sounded so good Then I changed monitors and damn the Kemper sound so bad</sub></sup>

In fact the truth is
^{_{Changed monitors and they sound bad...}}

If you can afford 'em, Event Opal.

I`ve got a pair of older Event TR10s. Not beastly loud, warm but not deceptively so. I`d love a pair of Focal but my celebrity endorsement value just doesn`t have that kind of swing (nor my bank account)