Review: Digidesign RM2

Sitting in a darkened room between the soft blue glow of two LEDs is no way to get a suntan. Believe me, I’ve sat in front of the new Digidesign RM2 monitors for several sessions now under their anaemic blue light and I’m as pale as I’ve ever been. I’m becoming translucent like those cave dwelling spiders you see in nature documentaries. And like the bats hanging nearby, I’m ‘all ears’.

Try as they might, the new Digidesign RM2s are never going to cut it in a solarium, but they’re ‘bright’, that’s for sure – and I’m not talking about the sun here (although I was tempted to put some masking tape over the somewhat distracting, asymmetrically aligned LEDs). Not too many speakers provide more air above 10k than these guys. For anyone familiar with the sound of an Avalon 747SP, imagine pushing a bit of high-end shelving EQ into the mix and you’re close to the RM2s. These speakers shimmer and sparkle like a Queensland sunset. The top end is remarkably articulate as a result, producing a beautifully clear sound stage and imaging worthy of the Hubble telescope. Panning of instruments in detailed mixes becomes a luxury, with every nuance of your spatial placements revealed in intricate detail. The depth of reverbs and delays is quite remarkable. Decays are long, while rooms and reflective surfaces are vivid and realistic. I can hardly recall when I’ve been able to ‘see’ further into a mix.

But this supreme clarity does come at a cost. Working with the RM2s (particularly during rock tracking and mixing) can be harsh at times, with the unmixed dynamics of drums, hard rock guitars and sibilant vocals a little overbearing. The top end of these speakers is strident and merciless – it’s not particularly harsh, just a little excessive.

But the devil is in the detail, to borrow a cliché. Although the RM2s mightn’t offer hip-hopists enough bottom end sub-harmonics or rock ‘n’ rollers enough midrange power (and cone distortion), the RM2s have a number of controls on the rear of the cabinets that make them versatile enough to adjust the tonal balance to suit most monitoring scenarios. They’re a studio monitor with a hi-fi attitude, and how they interface into a listening environment depends, to some extent, on how they’re calibrated and what you’re listening to. So let’s take a closer look and see where the strengths and weaknesses of these monitors lie.

SPEAKER PLACEMENT

I’ve never felt the need to say this before (that I can recall) but if you’re after a pair of reference monitors for your studio, having some idea of the main tasks they will likely perform is very important. If you’re predominantly tracking and mixing folk music, mellow soundtracks and detailed acoustic instruments in a modest-sized room, the Digidesign RM2s will suit very well. With music of this type, the RM2s provide a clarity and fidelity that reveals every creak, every squeak, every finger movement and expression with uncanny detail. For this sort of work they’re ideal. They’re dynamic, vivid and revealing. Acoustic guitars shine so bright you can almost tell what strings the guitarist’s chosen, while intimate vocals offer an intimacy that would make Jeff Buckley blush. The sound is luxurious and immersive.

But for heavy rock, or dense mixes that require genuine power in the midrange and a solid foundation in the bottom end, the RM2s start to sound a little strident in the top end and light-on for bass (with the rear controls left unmolested). And for this sort of work (rock), oodles of top end isn’t ‘where it’s at’ for mine. Mixes of bands like Powderfinger, Radiohead, Green Day and, particularly, Metallica start to feel a little unsupported and hard. I had a similar experience during a mixing session, where electric guitars felt a little artificially bright, and certain instruments appeared to have a sheen on them that didn’t really exist. It was at this point that I started to investigate the switching on the rear panel (but more on that in a moment).

Initially, I did a lot of listening to finished mixes through the RM2s, some of which were tracks I’ve only recently finished mixing through my Quested VS2108As, and dozens of others styles across several decades. What this revealed was interesting, and in some cases shocking. Apart from the extraordinary amounts of tape and electronic noise they exposed on many of the older mixes, there were noises I’d never heard before: countless gates opening up and closing around main vocals, mis-hit snares, voices I couldn’t account for (no, I’m not losing it) and even bum notes. All the ‘acoustic’ songs, both old and new, from Neil Young and Jonnie Cash to Jack Johnson and Rufus Wainwright sounded beautiful. The detail of the transmission line’s low distortion characteristics combined with the soft dome tweeter, exposed compression artefacts with scant regard for the engineer’s ego (or attack and release settings).

But pretty soon I’d come to the inescapable conclusion that I was honour bound to do something about the overall balance by engaging the tone switches on the rear panel (something I’m generally reluctant to do with speakers). My overall experience of the RM2s to this point was that they were a little too glossy, too shiny and lacking in genuine power. This is a common reaction to transmission line monitors it would seem [see box item for more on the ‘Transmission Line’ concept]. Transmission line speakers are renowned for emitting lower percentages of distortion by controlling the excursion and flex of the main driver. The result is a generally clearer midrange and more detail, since the low frequency distortion no longer masks the mids and highs. But this can, of course, simply be perceived as a lack of bass response. Whether all of this ‘clarity’ makes them any ‘better’ is a very subjective proposition. After all, the aim of the game is balance in the end – both from the point of view of the speaker and the final mixes.