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Studio Monitors
Hello. I'm setting up a new studio room, so I'm looking for some tips on choosing studio monitors. I've been doing all my mixing and mastering on headphones with Morphit, but now that I have a room to house studio gear I'm looking to ease my way in to a half-decent home studio. So, I'm not looking at the Genelec end of the scale here, but browsing Thomann there's a hell of a lot of choice at the cheaper end - I just don't know what I should be looking for to compare them all. Any tips would be hugely appreciated.
Comments
My #1 tip: Listen to them before purchase by any means, if you can.
And bring your own music.
The choice has become much better recently and you can get very good speakers for a shockingly low price.
I wish the market was like that with analog synths 😄
You mean I have to leave the house?!
@drcongo, a very long headphone extension cord should solve that for you.
If you’re in or near Berlin, Just Music has a speaker testing room with all popular models set up and ready to go.
I got a pair of Kali LP6 a while ago. They are (or were maybe) kind of 'flavour of the month' for budget monitors. The company was started by a couple of ex JBL engineers who were sick of the corporate decision making that was going on there.
There's a lot of conflicting info out there if you search for best budget monitors. But a kind of consensus builds up around a few things. Before the Kali monitors, the JBL 305 or 306 were in that spot, it might be something else now.... here's a pretty techy review.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/kali-lp-6-review-studio-monitor.17978/
I was looking for a studio monitor pair for around $400-500. Read many tests and narrowed down the candidates to Adam T7V and Kali LP-6.
I visited a music store which has a studio room and listened these monitors for almost an hour. I liked both very much and it was very hard to decide which one to take, but ended up buying the Kalis. Some people on the web say that these speakers have a slight hiss. It's true, but it doesn't bother me at all.
Speaking for myself, I record and mix on middle-of-the-road Sony headphones and then test mixes out on my car’s audio system. I figure there’s no point to a perfect mix if it cannot be listened to in an average setting. I don’t bother with studio monitors because real people don’t use studio monitors to listen to music. They use their car’s audio system, they use their Beats headset with their phone, they use AirPods, they use an Amazon Echo in the home… you get the idea.
This website has really useful reviews of quite a few candidates that might be interesting for you, readable even for normal people like myself, who don't understand half of what the nerds in there are saying.
FWIW, I recently bought a pair of Adam t5v's for my smallish room, no doubt influenced in part by the review I read there. They are very good. And the loooong warranty you get if you register them with the manufacturer also helps.
It was an online purchase, I didn't leave the house.
Good luck!
While listening on non-studio monitors is important when finalizing mastering, there are good reasons to use good monitors in tracking and mixing. Good flat monitors let you hear the details of what you are working with. If you make your decisions based on the all the frequencies present, you can make better decisions about eq'ing and balancing. And those will translate across the spectrum of speakers good and bad that people listen on.
Also, good monitors at a decent sound level are a joy to work with and less fatiguing than headphones. Even though I work with headphones a lot, the experience is different. And I have been unpleasantly surprised a few times about headphone mixes in ways that don't happen if my monitors played a more prominent role in the process.
Even though the range of listening environments many people listen on may be subpar...they are subpar in very different ways...and having made your decisions based on the sound content will translate better than by having made your decisions based on mediocre playback. (Not to mention some people will be playing back on good systems)
I imagine one might find a few pros that don't use decent monitors, but they are the exception. Most mix and recording engineers will use decent monitors for most decisions and refine those decisions after testing on. mediocre systems. There is a reason why pros work this way.
No, I get it. I just don’t find the typical studio setup for recording a realistic solution in a world where people seldom plow $10,000-$20,000 into a high-end audio system at home anymore. That was the 1970s.
Unless everyone listens on the same mediocre system you listen on, mixes made on those speakers won't translate well on someone else's different mediocre speakers. Using decent monitors just works out better. And they are not exorbitantly expensive.
Speakers have come a very long way since then, mostly because of standardisation, so you can get neutral sound for relatively little money these days.
The main problem that most people ignore is that you also have to account for the room, either with treatment, or EQ, or ideally both.
Also the main argument in favour of using good monitors (and headphones) is simply so that you can hear what you're working on. If your monitoring doesn't go low enough for you to hear the sub-bass, for example, then you could be leaving all sorts of problems in your mixes, simply because you can't hear the relevant frequencies.
The same applies for speakers and headphones with uneven frequency response: if your monitoring hypes a frequency then you are going to mix accordingly, and your mixes won't translate to other playback systems.
And of course the same applies to rooms! Most rooms will create reflections in the region of 50hz to 100hz, severely bloating the bass in your mixes. If you try and compensate then you are essentially mixing for the room, which of course can't translate to other rooms, or headphones.
Bass is usually the biggest problem when it comes to monitoring, and one area where a good pair of headphones can actually be more effective than monitors, since the room is taken out of the equation.
This is a quick video that shows how bad my room sounds before I add room EQ, the bass is really bloated:
So I have fixed this to a great extent with a £60 measurement microphone and the free room EQ software. For monitoring with the iPad I've created a custom EQ curve in Pro Q3.
And to add, the world is more of a mono soundsource than it used to be. Portable speakers, speakerphones, homepod / soundbar type things is what i mean. Singular speakers. I check mixes far more often in mono than i used to (even tho someone else usually does the mixdown part).
Someone once told me to look at studio monitors like bottles of wine. All the 15-25$ bottles are gonna be about the same. Its not until you make the next leap in the 200$ bottle of wine you start to notice real differences. He also added there are damn good 15$ bottles of wine that shouldnt be ruled out.
Yep. I believe professional sounding mixes are completely possible today using an iPad and a decent mix of software solutions. No multi-million dollar studio necessary.
I got a pair of IK iLoud MTM recently, as they were $100 off and sold individually so it was $200 off a pair. Each monitor comes with a measurement mic and it’s built in to the monitor itself.
https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/iloudmtm/
The back panel has several adjustments you can make to suit your room, but if you use the mic cal option, then they seem to need to stay where they are.
Anyway, the bass is so good for something so small! And the details you can hear are great. I don’t know if I’d pay full price, but it’s a great choice for compact monitors. I previous had JBL 104s and they were decent but had so little bass. Although they were sooo much cheaper.
Nice!! Adam series are great. I sometimes listen on Adam T7 at a friends place. I myself use KRK rokit 5 and beyerdyn 1990 dt pro cans with morphit. There are many good speakers these days within an affordable price range. My go to speakers for verifying problematic mix issues are my old car speakers. And a boomy bose non usb bluetooth speaker is also nice to check for bass and sub freqs, something I usually forget to check.
Let us know what you finaly will buy!
@animalelder I tried some of those iLouds out last year, and compared them to my Yamaha HS8s. I was blown away by how close they were. In fact, the imaging accuracy of the iLouds was a lot better than the HS8s.
Bass was almost as good. I was all set to keep them, and sell the Yamahas, but for a few things. My guitar sounded better through the bigger speakers (all-analog signal path, via mixer and analog amp-sim pedal), and I realized that it was way more hassle to sell the HS8s than to just return the iLouds.
Also, the iLouds were black, and I prefer white speakers against white walls
Thank you all, too many names to @ mention as there's so much great stuff here. All the monitors mentioned are basically the shortlist that I'd already put together, so good to know I was on the right track. Currently trying to narrow it down further than Adam T7s, KRK RP5 or some nice white Kali Audio things though I do worry about the mentions online of hiss on those.
@NeuM I used to think like you until I actually tried doing my mix on a flat response and discovered how much better the end result was when I played it on all my usual test speakers - a crappy mono BT box, HomePods, 19 speaker system in my car and so on - and it was perfect on every one of them. It just helps you get it right first time.
@drcongo : I think if you go somewhere to audition the speakers side by side with full-range material you know well, you will know right away what you like.
Another candidate if you’re on a budget might be the iLoud Micro Monitors, which are the predecessors to the MTMs, and about half the price. Bass doesn’t go quite as deep, and you don’t have the calibration stuff, but they are amazing. I’m still getting used to mine, so I wouldn’t want to overstate how good they are at the moment, but there are a lot of reviews singing their praises, and they are small enough to be portable. Don’t be fooled by the looks - they look like some cheap computer speakers. They’re not: they’re much more chunkily built, and the sound quality I’d in a different league.
A lot of tweeters hiss when there is no sound going through them, so I don’t know that I’d worry too much about that. I haven’t never heard any of the kali monitors in person, but I have heard great things about them.
I had JBL 306Pmkii, and I’m away this week on a session and they are here as well, and they sound great. I wound up trading mine with a friend for yamaha hs5’s because I was doing a lot of work with someone who had those and it gave us more similar setups, but also the treble was much more harsh and I noticed that my mixes came out more balanced that way, so the Yamaha have been great for mixing.
I use IK multimedia’s arc3 system to help in my room right now as it’s not great, and that makes a huge difference. I also use morphit and ocean way studios when using headphones as it is also helpful.
One thing to keep in mind about that though: if you go somewhere that is not your studio / room to listen to speakers, you will end up choosing the best one for THAT environment and not your place. So there's that.
That's true...but as long as it is a good listening environment, it will generally give a good sense of what the speakers themselves contribute...but that environment does need to be good. A lot of music stores aren't set up well. It should give a good relative sense of the speakers...ideally you could also test in your studio but that is rarely an option.
The hidden issue is that we need to be aware of what the room contributes and set things up as much as possible to minimize the room's problems...which is often a matter if moving the speakers to the right spot (not too close to the walls) and dampening a few key corners. One of the great things nearfield monitors brought to the game was being able to reduce the room's contribution.
I have 1 pair of JBL 302 II and I love them. I even listen music because I love all the range.
I agree, with one exception. Given the category of speakers the OP is interested in, it would be possible to order the three best candidates online, test them in situ and keep the winner. Admittedly not the most elegant solution, but definitely not impossible. And if he orders everything from the same vendor (so they end up getting the money regardless of his choice), it’s not even unfair imho.
I'd agree if OP also compared the speakers in a good environment first. A downside of not comparing them all in a good environment is that if one pair of speakers sounds significantly better in the home studio than in the good environment -- it is a clue that the environment needs some work [which might be as simple as moving the speakers and/or putting a some foam on a ceiling corner].
You’re not really looking for “better” in monitors as much as honest and revealing. Yes, that’s part of better, but monitors being pleasing to your ears is not really the aim, as that can fool you into thinking the mix is better than it really is.
Agree 100% -- it takes a while to get used to as well.