[millett513]

The easiest way to determine weather or not you need monitors is to burn your mixes to CD's and listen to them on a bunch of different speakers. car speakers, computer speakers, small speakers, big speakers, etc. If it sounds good on all of them, then what you are mixing with must be working for you. If you start noticing problems or if it sounds great on some speakers and terrible on others, you need to mix with something else to get better results.

Remember, the NS10's (pretty much a standard for recording studios.. the monitors with the white cone you see in almost every studio picture) were originally bookshelf speakers in the 70s. They sounded bad as bookshelf speakers, got bad reviews, and I don't think Yamaha sold a whole lot of them. Then, an audio engineer started mixing with them and many of the songs he mixed ended up being big hits on the radio. The trend caught on and Yamaha released a line of NS10s as studio monitors, rather than bookshelf speakers.

Buying studio monitors can be tricky. Read reviews and do research, but the most important thing is to HEAR them yourself! Go to Guitar Center and you can AB a bunch of different ones. I have Yamaha HS80M's (which Yamaha has released to replace the NS10's) with a HS10W sub. My room is untreated but my mixes still come out great on everything I hear them on.

Also, if you do plan on treating your room acoustically, research how to make your own acoustic treatment with rockwool or owens corning because it is a lot less expensive and I have heard it is much more effective!