I A good pair of speakers will do it's best to accurately REproduce what happened when the mics were on or when the musicians took the stage....NOT (necessarily) what happened in the mixing room.
I kinda disagree with this though I hear it said very often and I understand what you mean.
But we have no control over what the mixing engineer did to what happened when the mics were on and there's no way to bypass that final mix.
So to me a good pair of speakers will accurately reproduce what was heard in the control room at final mix. Because we can't know what they did or did not do to the tracks, that's as close as we can come to the original event.
Like it or not ..... THAT is what went on the record. There's sometimes no clue of what actually went on in the tracking room at the mics and there's no way we can 'guess' at that and change things to reflect that.
If we do, sometimes we might get closer than the mix but sometimes we might go the opposite way. For instance, maybe we'll hear a piano in the mix sounding very tinkly and no bass and think .... thank god my speakers made that sound like a piano should. Well for all we know ..... the piano actually sounded like that. As a piano tuner I can assure you that pianos sound very very different from piano to piano.
So to me ...... accuracy is paramount and I'd like to get as close as I can to what they heard thru
their monitors.
My desire out of a pair of speakers is to hear exactly what they heard in that room when they were getting a final mix.
That's why I'm here- to learn from statements like this^. I am absorbing this.
What I would like to ask you is -> how do you know if the musicality stays in the mix when your monitors are focused on being nuetral? What I fear most (just getting into this sort of thing) is that somehow I will "squash" the life out of a beautiful performance if I'm using lifeless monitors.
Drone.
As you already can tell, my personal taste is towards accuracy. I believe that the musicality resides in the music. As proof, we all are aware of awesome stuff that was recorded and mixed on crap-sounding stuff. To me, that energy and life you're talking about is inherent in a piece of music and will come thru no matter what. I've been recording both in my own studio and professionally for over 40 years and been here at HR for almost 12.
I've seen guys right here mix and record on crap ...... get mediocre sound .... and just blow me away!
Everybody has an opinion and a taste for what they like and yours is just as valid as mine so don't mistake me stating
my case for trying to convince you of anything.
Who am I to tell someone else what they should do? ..... I like hearing other peoples' take on how they do it and the results of that. Very many things thru the years that have been awesome
because of their choice of methods.
But for me ....... after a lot of years at it ....... I've come to desire accuracy above all. I always did tend that way but now I'm just locked into that as a goal.
Not to forget that pretty much no speaker I can afford is 100% accurate ..... same with the amps ..... but I like to get as close as I can.