Best New Compact Monitors? IK Multimedia iLoud MTM MKII Powered Studio Monitor @PresentDayProduction

when when when are we rolling we are sir oh [Music] marvelous well we're here or I'm here at your place you again present day production mhm and we have a special apparatus I have taken my uh 3 we training course on how to use it y you have your sa to go with I've got the safety goggles on yes excellent and uh what are we going to do we are going to try out the brand new ioud MTM Mark 2 but yeah hopefully they work because Still Still and just drove good two and a half out three hours to come here so that's the wonderful thing I thought if we're going to try out some speakers we need to try out in number one a really amazing sounding room and also with you lovely fellows oh thank you and that would be Mark and Jay's behind the camera from present day production you know are specialist in speakers so this is going to be interesting because I'm really Keen to try them I've heard a lot about the mark ones never heard them I know a lot of people are using the mark ones for or the the they sort of did a package for Atmos didn't they that measures itself as well as pleas do I think they've got calibration software with them so I'm really excited to we had hair for a couple of years we had that classic setup where we had an cell over here with some big speakers couple pairs of big speakers but the screen was over there so we had a pair of these sitting by the screen so when you editing yeah perfect they're absolutely perfect and you go around and mix over there so I've heard them and I've liked them a couple of my friends highly recommended them early on um and um like big producers were using them um so yeah we got into them and we have they have the bigger pair than this that my son has right yeah but I think uh this is the Mark I want to hear what it sounds like and what better way to do it but with you gentlemen yeah exciting looks like it comes with a space rocket it does come with space rocket otherwise no there a microphone that use for measuring it's a microphone all right I'm going use the special apparatus special apparatus M fingers oh oh stand back lovely I oh more boxes look boxes inside of boxes am I going to be able to get this out without having to there without having to tip it up no they have to tip it up all right James's going to have to tip L camera down that was infinitely quicker all right oh they're upside down you got the Australian ones I always think of uh Spike Milligan you have a ring pacon or myit of my life and falling his down my partner's downall downfall sorry you won't be able to do that now he where he's uh where he's trying to prove that he has flat feet when he so he dyes the bottom of his feet and stands on paper and everybody's like well that's just cuz you're pressing down on it so he goes he stands on his he stands on his head he's got his feet up like this and they put the paper on the bottom and then the sergeant major walks in and says Milligan what are you doing he's like practicing for when I go to Australia sir one's like a kid at Christmas here isn't he look he's like all we need is the tree up is this what he's like on Christmas day dud oh yeah they uh they look rather spiffing um all right can we get he says tripping over can we get this on camera easily we can okay great James is assuring us that he can zero in on this so it looks like there's low frequency extension okay so it say it's plus plus 2db minus 3db for the low and high there a sensitivity control I see so depending on what input you put in you can make it go to plus 4 or - 10 DB but there 60 HZ 50 HZ 40 HZ um or it looks like it defaults to 80 HZ but you can select those three settings and then for high frequency it just says plus two or minus three then there's the Cal calibration preset hold to calibrate desk flat okay input volume here Center to 10 input is going to be um obviously there's quarter inch and XLR input there's the arc mic in okay and USB I wonder like other other ones these might connect between the two and you just run the calibration on one what what does yours say on the back classic English guys not even looking at the manual looking at the manual uh we've got lots of lots of little buttons same as the other one yeah and a USB input maybe that's to store the settings once you've got them could be yeah or maybe they act as an interface you can just plug them into your computer possibly I don't know well at the moment let's find out are we seeing any any Connors between the two we've got a box of box of bits here um okay so Mike and M clip all righty and then uh so I'm trying to figure out then it looks like it looks like you got the ark mic in and I was just wondering if it does it take one measurement of one speaker at a time I would imagine it does a sweep of each one that's what you'd assume so how do the two speakers connect together so I have not yet I've seen the USB cable but I suppose I was making that assumption that they were going to connect between the two yeah there's a USB cable here as well which is the same as yours so okay so my guess is is that the USB you you run the arc into the back there you put your you put your microphone in a listening position it reads both of them it takes the information and then dumps it VI USB back into the storage of the of the uh speakers themselves so yeah if we'd have read the manual at this point we would know that the best way to calibrate the ioud monitors is by downloading the free x monitor software available for both Mac and PC this talks to the speakers via the USB port and enables you to calibrate the monitors from the listening position with step-by-step instructions once calibrated X monitor displays pre and post correction response curves lets you create your own custom frequency response curves offers full control of all back panel features and allows you to load speaker emulations with different curves available for over 20 different types of popular studio monitor it also enables firmware updates and Diagnostics should you experience the problem with your speakers you can also activate a small floating software remote control panel that enables you to switch between your four favorite presets without having to move away from your Daw screen the user interface is clean and intuitive and even I felt at home with it in no time at all but its Simplicity doesn't compromise its functionality it's just a really well-designed piece of software that perfectly compliments the speakers and the important bit the calibration process is one of the most straightforward I've encountered although for accuracy between the two speakers because you have to calibrate one at a time it would be worth marking the four different microphone positions required with tape on the floor anyway back to us fumbling around in the studio isn't it so much fun when you don't read a manual so when Nick and I do this we called it like two idiots abroad kind of thing you know wasn't that like two two idiot the two idiot Engineers yeah I can't even undo a bag that's how good I am let's rip it that's why I didn't even make any attempt at trying to do the speakers can you imagine me trying to do it and that's why you were like I'll do the camera I'll do the camera I'll do the camera but it does like you can screw these onto a standard mic stand which would be a very good thing definitely that way yeah it isn't it but the thread doesn't reach the uh mine does does it yeah don't tell him how you did it that's that's not part of the deal SC in that's what I'm doesn't voila voila these um these little things here these are called plugy Doms and what they do is they stop the Main's cables breeding with the other C in the box and making a weird hybrid Main's USB cross that could potentially be dangerous so always keep these on when you're not using pluggy dos it's far from the weirdest thing I've heard in this studio far from the weirdest thing oh yes oh no you you've televised some of the weird things that have been said in the studio yes we' we've all heard them yeah yes we have a blue light on on the right one not on the left oh so I don't wrong you've broken it yes I have it wasn't actually detented all right so blue light and blue light nice catastic okay great Perfect Place microphone at 0.1 I'll be stand as far away from the stand as possible okay helps R reflections of the stand yeah that makes sense okay I don't know where the calibrate button is but basically I'm sitting here please ladies and gentlemen remember to loosen your stands before actually moving them I've seen so many people when it's tied up just go Mark does that don't you mark oh dear uh now I found a calibration button but it says Cal preset well it says hold calibration button I I I assumed it was on the actual mic I'd like to have the calibration on the mic if it is it's on that would be a sensible place to put a calibration button on the mic let's have a look okay so it's four positions so if we make that the center as the head it's basically it's basically in front and behind the head positions so I'm going to go to the front lip here okay so I'm going to go like one two 3 4 so that's easy cool so this is one so it says connect the blah blah blah we should be done mic stand keep the cow preset button uh press for 3 seconds to enable ey louds calibration mode the cow LED on the back and the front LED will start blinking the cow preset button to begin measurement I'm going to hold it in for three seconds let's see what happens oh it's flashing it's flashing okay and then it says press the C button to begin measurement on the current point did it only come out of that speaker yeah sounded like it yeah so we are going to have to do each individual speaker and it's re ported as well cuz I felt a noticeable gust a gust out the back here yeah of the low end all right so let's do position number two okie dokie okay position number three and position number four I suppose now it's green it's green it's it's green it went green and now it's gone to White okay fantastic so let's go to the other speaker position number one if something if we magically now plug in USB cables and it all comes up I'll be amazed that would be incredible if it's really this easy I'll be happy okay now I'm holding the button down on this one and nothing's happening yeah it's blue on the front rather than white to be honest this is probably cuz Mark's doing it and as we know Mark is allergic to technology all the ones and zeros will be getting jumbled I think you'll find technology is allergic to me here we go right that's ready that's now in calibration mode so we're in position one position two TW position or tro if you're French Troy and quatra Quatro Quatro quad I assume that's it green light green light green light okay calibrating complete there some good uh dos and don'ts like don't aim it over your head and don't aim it at your chest uh thank you do not point this at your cat so that that there's a lot of super super low bait in this track that's not there I don't expect that out of a speaker of that size at all but there is beginnings of it there is usable base there you could do a mix you could mix a bass guitar right on those without a sub I think I'm impressed with the front to back the vocal is definitely sitting out here yeah definitely straight away you're hearing a good amount of detail I was going to say the mid detail and the detail in the high end is really good they're pretty kind of good on the transients as well there's a quite a good impact on the the snares and stuff like yeah to me a vocal sitting out front knowing a great mixer wants to do that they want to have that ball of energy here and I don't know this song at all and the fact that it's doing that yeah is a good sign for me that's a surprisingly good amount of low end they get pretty loud as well don't know would want to go louder than that I don't think you what hey hey they sound very balanced they do don't they like tonally yeah so they're a little bit in the top end but not overly so not distractingly so sure um there are there are quite this so this is this is a really well recorded and well produced track obviously there are some noticeable details missing in this that you hear on really expensive on really expensive speakers but generally only really expensive speakers you're not going to hear it on Yamaha hs's or anything like that either can you just have a look around the back and see if we are on that calibration preset because it would be interesting to hear them without as well yeah how do I tell uh I don't know oh right okay so there right there's a button it says desk flat or cow oh I see okay try flat so yeah cuz they're not on the just set that to Flat that's it so this I assume will be anally flat doing whatever the room is doing surprisingly now considering they're only supposed to be 100 wats of yeah yeah exactly that's better isn't it yeah yeah definitely so that's got to Flat yeah yeah yes so there's no calibration yeah the guitar's much better the transients on the percussion are much better the loow is much better so we turned off the calibration we created y interesting so the calibration soft soften the mid-range yeah uh is that because we're all we all like our mid-range forward speakers I didn't dislike the calibrated sound I thought it sounded quite balanced but now I've heard this this is better I prefer this it's more Dynamic a lot as well you often find so calibration is something you need to do especially single mic calibration like that it's something we did it in what 5 minutes 10 minutes yeah it's something you need to spend a few hours on generally isn't it and really dial it in to the room and your preferences as well because that'll try and make the frequency flat but we don't all like flat I'm very sensitive to around 3K so if I hear something flat I instantly want to reach for the EQ and Notch Notch 3K out of it um So that obviously works as a as a starting point and it's very good that that's in the speaker and it's that quick to do um but I think You' need to load the software and just go in that sound like a nice increase of about seven and just below we getting more super low base yeah oh yeah the base is great so the moral I think so far is listen to it with and without the calibration and see what you prefer yeah and I think that's the same with any calibration really as well um because um yeah the calibration can only calibrate it to an algorithm which is normally flat right right which can be a bit lifeless and I thought they sounded a bit lifeless now they've got a bit more life back um what I generally prefer to do or what I've preferred to do over the years with any monitors I've used is get get them sounding as good in the room as they can in terms of positioning MH and then just get used to them so get used to the the the sound of them have lots of reference tracks that you know really well speaking of that I now that I've got a flavor and I've heard it through your ears I'm going to pick a couple of uh reference tracks I know well I'm going to be selfish and go to things I've recorded just because I know how they sound and as usual I'm going to go to How to Save a Life the very end because my old drum room I must admit though just straight away after listening just on a few few tracks I am impressed considering the the price bracket that these speakers are in that's a very distinctive room sounds like my drwing room the mid mids are really good you hear the ring on the snare and you hear because there's no sample on that you hear it all slightly differently depending on where he's playing it yeah it doesn't have that very flat you know here's just the most generic reproduction I can hear that's quite detailed I do like that so it does support what we used to use them for which was really for editing because we wanted to hear the mids and the high mids um so far not offensive um yeah there's nothing that pokes out as e like it would with an ns10 oh yeah for example with a what what's going on in the mid-range okay so I'm hearing James can you just switch to ours because I'm hearing a really horrible resonance in the vocal there that I'm fairly sure isn't there and that might be a consequence of the just the form factor of the cabinet actually you just go back to the beginning of the song it was just the first those first two high notes he does with the there the call yeah so I'm hearing a I'm hearing a bit of cabinet there about 700 yeah yeah yeah if I was to be super picky about one thing I'd say maybe just the super high end if you were to to you know how the like the difference between MP3 and WB files you can just hear that kind of ever so slight tail off in the the high end where it's kind of aliasing that data that's almost what I feel like these are doing to a degree I'm not saying it's anything that would ruin the ability to mix you can still hear it but I feel like it's just missing that tiny little crispiness that you might get from like more high-end monitors again these are 500 a pair or near enough it's expected the detail that you get from a pair that 10 times as much isn't there but that's what you that's what I'm saying but for the price I don't feel like these would hold me back from mixing at all I feel like they're perfectly revealing um and for a small room on a desktop um considering the a pair of those is less than the retail cost of one of our base drivers that's fairly insane and you're getting amplification room correction it's pretty crazy stuff yeah that's pretty good these are my vocal testers yeah so I mean they go pretty loud before considering their size they go damn loud just hitting the clipping thing just but you know what they sound like to me sorry about this they they they sound like 1031 Gen X to me right which are like $4,000 or something yeah they have that sort of mid-range they don't quite have that super super modern kind of like um you know softness in the mids and stuff like that now we' got the calibration off probably if we put it back on they would start to sound super much more modern and soft I don't like modern soft speakers I grew up with ns10 so I like forward mid-range I like better of work off it um they got a lot of low mids when you think cuz that's how that vocal sounded that was a u47 um 10 1073 and then two compression changed so you had it like always compressing aggressively Blended in with light compression so it always feels for and it did that really well the forwardness of the vocal was yeah it portrayed that very well it did yeah in terms of tonality I'm not sure I'd want to make too many major EQ decisions with them especially the the louder they get you can hear that sort of distortion right from from cheaper amps starting to come in right which again you'd expect for the size that they sound a bit like PC speakers when you when you crank them I thought but listening at at human volume level normal volume level so I'm yeah I think they're actually quite good at representing what's going on yeah I mean we had it clipping and I was I had my eyes closed I just wanted to like not look at them and not have an impression about the size and they reminded me a lot of like 1031 cranked right sitting in the room when I made this cuz we made this record on a pair of 103 ons and I was like that doesn't sound a million miles away from you know where I placed the guitars how I placed them and everything I think they um I think they two purposes I think for for younger people they're going to be loud compact detailed for the price range and for the older members of the world the right hand side sitting over here they'll probably be mid-range forward enough to be able to work on yeah I mean after just a short period listening to them I don't think I'd hesitate if someone was to say like if you got a a cheap recommendation for monitors I think you know they'd certainly get you started for sure I'm just wondering it's almost like I wish we had another or something in this price range so we could just do a quick comparison but my my my memory is you know knowing them well to be honest they're a lot loud and I was going to expected them to be I don't know if they considering a 100 Watts RMS per speaker I I would have put that at 200 no problem not blinks although 200 is only what exponentially 10% louder so yeah it's yeah it's only certain percentage louder not a straight line yeah yeah yeah I'm quite Blown Away the amount of output before the before that red light come yeah I think that's and it was only briefly yeah it was only briefly clipping we know how low these go in terms of low ex stands yes oh sorry it it says 40 HZ and I'm sure it does I doubt if it's you know zero at 40 HZ it might beus 3us 60b but it can reproduce that l so I was going to say for for such a relatively small speaker to be producing low frequencies and going that loud is no small feet of engineering yeah and that's what a threein driver four I think looks like a four looks like our mids kind of size yeah the mids are further away oh yeah they're threes small Cow Big C thing isn't it do you want actually you hit the calibration in see what it does this midrange because this is so Stark between the mids and the lows the see the benefits it's not it's not a huge difference it definitely tucked it like this not as not as dramatic as I thought it was going to be I definitely still prefer the uncalibrated version to be honest yeah yeah which it sounds like a crime saying that but that's how it is yeah I think I think they're great I I I would be great to compare them other speakers in this price range but my my my gut is um exactly the same thing that they they are good mid-range forward um without the color um they are very very loud for their size they are deceptively big for their size like a track and I was justen to sitting front in front of air of 1031 I my eyes remember they were really just this small so I suppose it's the this is going to suit that person with restricted amount of space number one yep um so you know probably here in a lot of environments yeah the pting is at the rear so you're going to be have you're going to have to be careful with rear wall right placement but that could be used to Advantage that could be used to boost the base if you can get those back as far against all as you can the ports not actually right at the back you have cables and stuff sticking out sure to give it a little and there there was wasn't a huge amount of air coming out of it I had the general X that were this size um they actually that color the gray color blanking what they were what the model name was and they didn't have any of the slow lows that have right I mean the low end on Sledgehammer yeah sounded unbelievable yeah it was really good so that's telling me that if you do a really good mix yeah they're going to let you know yeah and if you do a rubbish mix they're going to let you know which is exactly what you want from from the speakers at the end of the day I mean I don't mix bass guitar or Bass synth below my kick drum yeah so my life has be perfectly fine on these because I know the amount of sness I need on my kick drum and I know where my bass guitar or Bass synth or whatever sits against Kick Drum there might be one out of a thousand songs I get where it's like subb and the Kick's going do do do but 9 9% of the stuff I do the kick drum the low end on that is the lowest thing so that is so easy for me to control in a mix because I know what I'm doing um I think these are probably sell to like I said there's two different people people that already know how they want their music to sound will love this because it's small and Compact and you know they'll go oh yeah I don't need you know I can wipe my 20 HZ off here and they don't care whether they can hear 20 HZ or not because they know not to put it in y and I think there's lots of uses for well if you're on tour with the major act and you're on a tour bus and you're editing the video for social media of the show you did tonight on the way to the next city you can set a pair of those up in your bunk um as well as headphones obviously and and and I think there's lots of use cases for for situations like that as well for people that are on the go that are mobile all the time that want to par of speakers they can get to know and just because of their size as well I mean you could stick to of those in a backpack they are tiny yeah I think what I keep coming back to in my mind is like they're so far the best sounding speakers I've heard at that size and they compete with other speakers that are bigger at that price range so perfect for traveling perfect for small environments and probably perfect if you've got two or three sets of speakers like you might have a couple of pairs here and you want to put another pair there um just for yeah I think I think that's probably what they're doing is they're trying to give you the sound you expect out of something twice the size cuz twice the size isn't that big stick two of those together it's toally that way exactly yeah it's yeah but again for Atmos perfect just stick them on mic stands all around the room that's the other thing small Atmos rig a room that's only this this deep yeah you could do the whole atos system with with these and obviously a relatively low budget I mean you know still 500 GD a pair but 12 of those that's six pairs you're looking at three grand for a full set of speakers that's pretty good that's really not bad yeah you're throw in the Oreo which is how much 2500 five and a half for a full kit yeah you could spin it on a high pair of headphones couldn't you yeah you could yeah or just one pair of speakers yes yeah yeah okay so that's sort of the verdict the verdict is uh incredible sound for the size no doubt um when the limiter comes on we heard a little bit of the Distortion coming in so but they're bleeding loud I had them absolutely cranking that was way louder than you'd normally mix I yeah I just wanted to get lost in it and I cranked it and closed my eyes but um very loud for the size great base response for the size I mean they basically sound like bigger speakers they sound like bigger speakers so they it's really comes down to like if if it if Siz is important to you they're going to win out of anything in that price range so the next thing up is is really like what's important to you mobility and size then I wouldn't even bother looking at any of the competition if size is not important then yes definitely compare that to other things in the price range pretty amazing yeah it's amazing how far Technologies come on next week it be like here's a new pair of 500 wat speakers let exactly good work really good work yep there's just one thing I want to try please check away always wanted to do this so as usual enter down below to win great speakers thanks everyone for watching salong fwell adios goodbye [Music] a [Music]

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 11,837

Keywords: affordable studio monitors, quality studio monitors, studio monitors, ik multimedia, new product releases

Id: B_S_FUBH4cI

Length: 30min 34sec (1834 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024