What's the difference between Monitors and regular speakers ?

B

Buzi

New member
I'm sure you've already realized that I'm a newbie.
I have two big speakers that I'm using right now. They have 2 large woofers, 1 mid and 1 tweater.
Should I switch to monitors? I've noticed that most monitors are only "2 way".
Why do they use "studio monitors" and not your regular home stereo speakers in professional recording studios ?

Thanks.

Buzi.
 
The value of monitors is they tend to produce a very accurate balance and sound quality typically needed to get a good mix. More normal speakers, like in a home stereo, usually have other design goals including price and volume.

Ed
 
studio monitors have a flat response with no accentuation of highs and lows like your home theater speakers do. i asked the same question a long time ago. you'll hear the difference after you take a listen to something on monitors and then on speakers. mixing with speakers gives you a false sense of the highs and lows and sometimes you dont hear the added noise of a recording. if you're like me you will run that question until you get a headache. even if you turn off the eq on your reciever it wont be the same. even if you get smaller bookshelf speakers it wont be the same. go to a music store in your area that has monitors and take a listen.
 
At the high-end of things (ie, several thousand a pair), there's often very little difference between hifi speakers, and studio monitors.

At the low-end of the budget scale, there's huge differences - mainly because of coloration. The typical consumer home stereo speaker is designed (colored) to make anything played thru it sound more "pleasant"... while studio monitors are generally designed to sound less hyped (to varying degrees of success!)

Also in both cases, the "throw" of the monitor is different. Studio near-field monitors are designed to be listened to within several feet, while consumer speakers are designed for listening at much further distances (7-10ft+)......

With high-quality monitors, getting your mixes to translate well across multiple systems seems to be a much easier task than with less-than-ideal speakers.

Those are, more or less, the significant differences... but there are no hard rules about it, if you find you can mix properly on your home stereo speakers then go for it....
 
Everyone's home stereo is different. A good pair of studio monitors are designed to specifically give the most accurate playback quality of the recordings you made, and it usually voiced to cover every frequency at around the same level so that no impurity is missed. Using anything thats too cheap that could color your sound (as bear said) could be misleading to the evaluation you make from the playback through those speakers. If you can get your recording sounding just in the center of frequency levels, it allows everyone with their own stereo to equalize the playback of the recordings the way THEY wish.
 
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