this will stir up some water
i dont know this guys situation so please disreguard my statment if you alredy have a good studio filled with decent gear and you are just upgrading monitor but i think this post may help some people out who are searching for the perfect monitor
and saving all of their money to buy the best they can
i look at monitors in a different way from most. first lets define what monitors are for.
monitors are our ears to the mix. we buy refence monitors not to listen to our music...we buy them to see how a mix translates on other systems.
I was looking at monitors in an audio catalog the other day and a co-worker came up and said "look at those prices what a rip off...only an 8 in sub..what you NEED is a pair of big cerwin vega's..... they shake my house. that little speakers going to sound like crap" I smiled at him and said "ok, i will check them out.... thanks for the advice"...... just to be kind
.
we dont buy regular speakers that are sweetened for the best possible sound because they will not translate well on another speaker that has been set up to be sweetend in a different way. its a big kick in the crotch when you make a mix and take it to a friends house and pop it in his sytem to find it sounds horrible......and you say to yourself thats not what i made...what went wrong.
so we try to get refrence monitors that play back flat and crisp across the board. we are using the monitors to find small details or frequencies that will be amplified on "regular" speakers in an improper way than we intended
on the other side of the spectrum,
When i go to another high end forum and read a post about someone who spent $5,000 on the newest set of genelc's and bitch that they sounded like sh@$ i laugh.
remember todays high priced hyped is tommorows best buy. times change and so do fads. monitors come and go with each passing year because they need to keep you interested in buying "new gear" you keeping up with fads pays their bills and keeps them from going out of business. to prove my point some people on here still use windows 98 with 256 mb ram and make awsome mixes.
now onto prefrences:
people who are looking for new monitors are tying to find monitors that help them with the goal of translating on what they are used to listening to regular music on. this is why people often double check their mixes on a sterio or car cd player that they are used to listening to music on.
Just like when someone says they think a pair of ns-10m suck. the point of the ns-10 is if you can make it sound good on this it will sound good on anything. a lot of studio's "get them"(the sound that is). and a lot of studios that have them also have another set of moniotors to a/b the mix to find exactly what they need to fix in the mix.
but the truth of the matter is different monitors sound differnt. some are crip on the highs some are muddy in the middle and some have deep bass response etc.
so their is no single BEST single pair of monitors to get. thats why we fight over named brands and have multiple threads stating personal prefrence of this speaker-A helps my mixes more than speaker-B.
if i had $1500 to spend on moniotors i would NOT get One pair of the best of todays best....... i would go more this route(and i am
)
$1500 budget:
1) set of behringer truth's $300 shipped
http://cgi.ebay.com/2-BEHRINGER-TRU...ryZ47093QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
2) set of
YAMAHA HS50M (which i have and love) $390 shipped
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-YAMAHA-HS50...ryZ47093QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
3) set of KRK ROKIT RP5 $300 shipped with cables
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-KRK-ROKIT-R...ryZ47093QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
4) to tie it all together a swith witch from pro co (this is what they use at the sweetwater store to switch from the demo monitors on the fly without pops cracks or hiss) $227
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SwitchWitch
thats a total of
...300
...390
...300
.+227
-------
$1217
this would give you three sets of monitors and for the 4th speaker input i would find the cheepest speakers i could ( boom box or computer speakers). this way you will avoid having "one sound" and switching back and fourth during mixes will help you find the weekness and strengths of each your monitors (like one muddy in the middle and one lacking bass) .
It will give you a rounder sound and eliminate hidden frequencies that you get on a one monitor system......thus greatly improving your mixes. when you get the speakers one set will inevitibly sound better to your liking than the others....but the hidden details the other 2 will find will be worth the purchase.
by the way this is not a shopping list, but more of a guide to purpose of the use of multi monitor system. the items i picked are a reflection of your budget that you have set aside. I only picked monitors with buy it now price....so go back to that statment i said that yesterdays high end gear is todays good buy and search ebay for used yesterdays jems....and you have other options for monitor switcher too. i just prefer to have 3 and a dud than 2 and a dud
http://www.mercenary.com/colaudls3lin.html
if you have all of the proper things...good talent..good performance...good acoustics...good knowledge of your gear.... i am sure you could make a hit or two with just these 3 low end speakers and it would translate very well.
and translation is the whole point of using monitors....................................................................
Yo Yan: 
