The Truth About Studio Monitors

[brandondrury]

Here is an article I recently wrote that should help someone better understand what to look for in a studio monitor.

<a href="http://www.recordingreview.com/artic...-Monitors">The Truth About Studio Monitors</a>

Brandon Drury

[richiebee]

The number of times I've started a reply to this... oh my. Hopefully, I'll finish it this time.

I think you should ALWAYS use monitors that give you as flat a response as possible. I do agree that reviews don't mean much, but I think it comes down to the fact that all rooms are different, all ears are different, so the perfect monitor for one person in one room is not the same as the perfect monitor for someone else in another room. This is why professional studios put so much into control room acoustics and why you should outsource mastering if you can afford to. It really makes a difference to how you hear and will make a difference to your final project.

What people do when they listen to music is adjust the high's and low's to their taste. Don't put so much into getting it to sound GREAT on all systems... just make is sound GOOD and without unpleasant artifacts.

The best way to achieve this is to make your recording neutral. Let people do their own fiddling to suit their room and equipment.

When I listen to Jamiroquai's Synkronized, I have noticed a significant boost in the bass response. This doesn't come out as nice punchy bass, it comes out as distortion in the low end. It's not extreme, but on some systems I play on, it can overload my speakers, regardless of what kind of volume I'm listening at. This should not be happening when the response is flat. Clearly (to me) this album was mixed on monitors lacking in bass response. The master has been boosted in the bass frequencies too much.

I try to have good reference CD's that I know I can trust in the genre's that I'm recording... listen to them before you start... aim your sound towards them. Use them to compare as you mix. Sometimes you're doing something you've never done before, or for which you have no reference point. Then its nice to be able to totally trust what you're listening on and this is where flat response monitors are what you need. Of course most of us have to compromise in some area of our control room... whether it be because we can't afford $5000 monitors, or because our room is the wrong shape, or because we only have one ear (okay, you probably shouldn't be an engineer if you only have one ear, but you see where I'm coming from). You're right that you need to know your monitors in their space, and compensate in your mixes. Avoid doing anything drastic t hough. If you need to apply heavy EQ to a final mix, there's something wrong (unless you're being creative of course!) with your recording or your monitoring.

I'm not sure I've finished this thought... I'll try and come back to it later and see if I've missed anything, but I really have to send before it becomes another lost post!!!

Rich

[brandondrury]

Great post,

Keep the thoughts coming!

Brandon

[AcoosticZoo]

"So, an excessively bright studio monitor will force you to take high end out of your mix and therefor end up with a dull sounding mix. The same goes for all the other frequencies as well."

How about manually correcting the response of your speakers using a graphical eq?

Generate tones at
60hz, 125 hz, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 etc

then manually adjust your speakers to have them play back tones with equal loudness according to "your" ears...

Has anyone tried this?

3 factors contribute to frequency response:
Room
speaker
human ear's unique perception

just a thought

regards
Josef Horhay
mix engineer