Thank you for taking the time to read my post!
The reason I've ignored all the details you mention, is because in my view they are not key issues when selecting monitors.
Well, I am not here to start an argument - there are plenty of children on this board that excel at that - but I have to respectfully disagree and say that when it comes to actual end result, they are about the only issues worth discussing. All that rest of the stuff is happenstance details at worst and grist for for the gear slut mills of this world at best.
After being at this for a long time, starting out selling high-end audio gear from consumer speakers to studio reference monitors - long before the nearfield, BTW - and having many friends and acquaintances at the time who worked for a few different loudspeaker manufacturers and distributors, I have come to a different set of conclusions:
What you are talking about is coloration or in other words, a certain degree of variation in a flat response to suit a personal taste.
This was one of the points that I had contention with in the original post. It is incorrect to paint with a broad brush that loudspeakers are purposely designed for a specific type of coloration, and that this ethic varies between consumer loudspeakers and so-called studio monitors.
While there are some obvious exceptions, of course, most loudspeakers in both categories ("home" and "studio") are designed with the intention of having relatively extended and flat response, but only as allowed within three constraints: a) the intended retail price point of the product, b) the available pool of OEM components available in proper supply and price for the projected sales numbers, and c) that can be designed and built within the R&D time and budget allotted for development of the product.
This is equally true for "studio monitors" as it is for home speakers. The fact is that when looked at as a whole, "studio monitors" are not necessarily any flatter or any more extended range than home entertainment speakers. There is as much of a variation in coloration and response - and price, BTW - in so-called studio monitors as there are in consumer lines, and in fact many of them use many of the same OEM components and enclosure designs
when mixing, a flat response is not really a matter of personal taste, but accuracy in reproducing what you (and everybody else) will hear, so it is important to maintain a clear and objective view on the spectral image.
If only it were that back and white. But the real word with it's infinite shades of gray has shown me repeatedly that the only thing more varied in response than loudspeakers is the response of those ears listening to them. The chance of any two "golden ears" or studio engineers agreeing on just what speaker has a flatter response, or even whether a flat response is what they really want or need for their own mixing preferences is not much better than a completely random 50%.
I got out of sales a long, long time ago, when I decided I did not want to burn in the depths of hell when I died, because of all the lies one has to perpetrate to be in sales (
), but one of the things I learned and had to lie about was the large number of "expert ears" that came in and made complete asses out of themselves by being completely wrong in what they thought they heard, and in how easily they could be manipulated and fooled. Christ, probably 6 out of 10 of them could be tricked into picking the most efficient speaker of the bunch because they could not even get their brains past the bias of loudness.
The best ears and the most honest of them would get their listening tests mostly right, but would admit to purposely picking a certain response bias because they simply could hear problems easier with it than they could with a flatter monitor and could mix better and faster with it than they could with the flatter one. The rest of them couldn't even agree as to which one actually had flatter response. As I said earlier, flat to one was hyped to another, and vice versa.
The funny thing is the only time they agreed was when they saw either the numbers or the nameplate first, in which case they all picked the ones they were "supposed to" pick based upon popular consensus in the community - irrespective of what their ears were telling them at the time.
Being able to clearly identify a 'preference' is an indication that the degrees of variation are too great between different monitor speakers, a factor most common in low-end 'budget' monitors. As the quality increases (and prices exponentially) to reflect a more accurate, flat response, you will find these variations to be a lot less obvious and identifying your preference will be a much harder task.
Well, first off, most folks that ask questions on this board can't afford Tannoy Ellipses, and have barely spent as much on their entire studio that a pair of those would cost. So talking about the big boys is kind of like debating Chateau Neufs with the thirsty.
But even if they were in the market for The Good Stuff, this idea that differences disappear is really not a lot truer with loudspeakers than it is with microphones. A Tannoy Ellipse doesn't sound like a Genlec 1032 any more than a U87 sounds like an RCA 44. All great speakers and mics for sure, but a transducer is a transducer; whether it's picking up sound or delivering sound, small changes in their personality make for big differences in their performance characteristics, all only amplified by the differences in response and preferences of the human element using them.
I've told the story before, but one of the best audio guys I have known did his best work on a pair of Advent 5012w home speakers topped by a pair of Advent 2002 bookshelves, a total of about $750 worth of consumer-grade stuff that he could mix to translate perfectly well to any environment, including studio control room playback. Put him on some JBL farfield arrays and he longed to get back to his Advents. The guy with the JBLs was in exactly the opposite position. Yet both could make equally high-quality mixes. Which one was right?
G.
