Ableton Forum

Im running out of room on my desk
And am going to put up a shelf.

Would it be better to have the monitors on the desk or shelf.

Ideally, you want some space between the monitors and wall. Usually a foot to 3 feet is preferable, but not always possible.
Also, the most important part of monitor placement(to me) is what they are sitting on. If they are on a shelf, they are most likely going to loose bass through the shelf supports and into the wall. If the shelf is very solid, connected to the wall in such a way that it won't transmit bass through its supports and the monitors are 'isolated' from the shelf with concrete or foam, it might not be bad.
Stands would be the aim, but again, not always best for the room.
Ideally, we want to form and equilateral triangle between the monitors and our head.
You can place your monitors on different surfaces to find out how much this will affect your situation.
Later.

pablohoney wrote:Im running out of room on my desk
And am going to put up a shelf.

Would it be better to have the monitors on the desk or shelf.

pablohoney is right on the money. ive got some experience in positioning certain monitors in really horrible situations, but every monitor is unique and different, so please may i ask what monitors you have?

speaker placement depends entirely on the speakers and the room they are in. The book "mixing with your mind" has a chapter on speaker placement, basically the author recomends putting them on a plank of wood and moving them further appart until you find a placement that sounds best and gives you a good stereo field.

he also believes that placing them on a plank of wood with the speakers having some isolation with foam allows the sound to bounce off the surface slightlyand carry to the listener better.

my speakers are on the desk, raised slightly with some bricks then some foam. i think they sound pretty good. but play around listening to some music you like untill it sounds like you think it should. then tilt the speakers in a few degrees. just listen untill it sounds good.

Just remember to place the speakers such that they form an equilateral triangle with your head while sitting in the listening position. Additionally be careful to avoid any surfaces that may produce undesirable sympathetic resonances.

My 2 cents worth:
keep the monitors away from the wall as much as is possible - not an easy thing if you are in a small space - I also have this problem these days.

I noticed that in most of the pictures of peoples setups elsewhere on the forum that most of us have monitors way too close to the walls.

You could get wall mounted supports, but the resonance factor would still be there.

The other thing is to keep the speakers isolated so they don't set off a resonance with anything, like a desk. I had a desk that was just a giant bass bin and was impossible to get any clear bass response for mixing. I checked out various sites and looked at flashy expensive speaker stands full of lead shot, until I discovered a guy who had stopped making stands because he'd found a better alternative - cement plinths from a gardening center. Yep, I am now the proud owner of two 1 metre high cement stands - and they really have tightend up my mixes in a difficult room. I found that having the spkrs on stands didn't take up much room, as well.

I got rid of the desk, too.

A good site for studio acoustics is www.realtraps.com - there's loads on info and some slightly amusing but informative vids too.

my monitors are supposed to be against a wall, it says so in the manual.
but there absolute 2's and they sound shit no matter where i put them.