High Quality Monitors at a Good Price?

John California said:
Hmm, you obviously have a lot more experience than me, but im questioning that statement. I could see if he was trying to save money to buy expensive mics, or pre, or interface or whatnot. But he wants to save money for better drums. Equipment must be more important than monitors? No? If you had shitty drums could you use expensive monitors to make them sound better? Barely, if you got a set of drums that started off sounding decent are cheap monitors going to completely ruin it? Not unless you can't cross check on a few systems and compensate.
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I used to think that way, but I'm inclined to agree with Master now.
Bad monitoring can leave you tweaking things that were fine to start with, and leaving things that actually suck.

Personally, I often get by listening on cheapo monitors and cross referencing on a few systems, but I know I can never completely trust what I hear, and I wouldn't do that for anything serious.
To some extent, it is just a sequence of educated guesses when you're doing that.

For the average home noob I'll go ahead and recommend a hifi that they know well, because money, space, and the fact that their room probably sucks kinda makes monitors a waste anyway, but for anyone half serious, the monitoring chain is key, in my opinion.
 
For the record, I was basically speaking of the recording/mixing chain itself.

No doubt, the quality of the source is going to have a huge impact on the quality of the recording --
 
jimmys69 said:
His point is, you can spend whatever amount of money on things that may make an impact on quality of a recording, but how the hell can one ever know what that impact in quality is, if you cannot accurately hear it.

No purchase can be made, without actually knowing what you are listening for.

The best advice that can be given, IMO, is to have a somewhat accurate monitoring system, in a room that allows a somewhat accurate listening environment. Everything else is just guesswork, unless you are able to hear, without doubt, what it is you are actually hearing.

Then, once you have the ability to form your own opinion, go farther than 'somewhat accurate'. Spend the time and money for room treatment, and spend for good/great monitor speakers.

My lord that seemed so redundant to say
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Okay, but the difference between a good drum set and shitty one can be heard on iBuds. No fancy monitors needed to tell that you are starting with a much better sound by spending money on the instrument.
 
Oh my lord, not again...

I prefer to have my chickens before laying eggs. This is just a stupid never ending conversation. Get good gear, both instruments and monitoring chain. Making comments about which is more important, is just stupid. They are both the most important. You can't get one right without the other.
 
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I'll take a well treated room with regular "hi-fi" speakers over great speakers in a shitty room any day.

My point is that, if you're limited in budget, spend about $100 to get your room treated and keep using the speakers you're used to. It will get you a lot further than buying "OK" or even "pretty good" monitors to use in an un-treated room.
 
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