Why Monitors?

N

neilt

New member
I've been looking for a good speaker system for my computer for a while. I notice that the studio monitors are probably double or triple the price of a decent speaker system. Why is this?
I have my eyes on the M-Audio Syudiophile LX4 2.1. Does Anyone have experience with this monitor? What are your experiences?

Thank-you
Neil
 
3 words: Flat Frequency Response

Studio monitors at all price ranges have one thing in common; they try to present the clearest, undisturbed sound too accurately portray the audio signal.
 
3x's the cost?

Why are they more expensive?
Hopefully the "Studio Monitors" are better quality by design than some pc speakers from WalMart. Materials cost, in short.
Double /Triple the Cost???
If your getting Actives like the M-Audio you have amplifiers built into the speaker which will bump it up.

Decent Hifi??
Some Wharfedale & B&W, so called HiFi speakers, are used as Studio Monitors and used by Pro's.

what is a speaker? there's people that are obsessed with speakers, so much they have chat lines on how many weaves of Kevlar they recomend or how many times they wrap a Voice Coil!!! its crazy.

time to go play my guitar...have some fun.
 
I'm a big fan of hi-fi speakers...

"Studio monitors" as we call them now is hardly more than a buzzword... 90% of the time, they're simply short throw, low dispersion, dell sounding boxes that are meant to sound "decent" from a yard away.

The plus side - They take much of the room out of the equation.

The minus side - They sound like crap (honestly, does anyone here actually enjoy listening to great recordings on their nearfields? Hello? Anyone? Testing, is this thing on?

Yeah - I didn't think so...

Older "studio monitors" were really great loudspeakers - Big, overbearing, wonderfully colored sounding (GOOD sounding) boxes that were essentially really, really wonderful hi-fi speakers on steroids. Wonderful to listen to, wonderful to work with. But the room had to be worthy of them. And you had to LEARN to work with them, and the room.

Me? I've got my mastering speakers, but I also have a set of original Wharfedale Diamond 8.2's. I'll mix through those before I mix through almost anything that say "studio monitor" on the box. Because they sound good. Not "plain" or "flat" or "surgical" or "sterile" - Good.

YMMV, IMHO, yada, yada, etc., etc.
 
I grappled (still do sometimes) with the same ideas. The problem is that every place and every system set up sounds different. Get a reference pair of monitors for mixing. Get very familiar with how they sound in your space. Flat is good but if the room changes the sound, then all bets are off. So you've got to know your setup.

I make several comparisons during mixing...I've got two sets of fairly inexpensive monitors at the desk but then later, I'll play back and listen in my living room through the home stereo Advents book shelf and also through the Klipsch Heresey's and Klipschehornes. The Advents are a little brittle/bright and the Klipsch stuff is very full and a little bottom heavy. I try to mix to find a balance. Then the big test...take it to the car...if it still sound good, then I'm done. That the best I can do with what I've got. Thats really why headphones suck for mixing. If you mix to make the headphones sound great, then when you playback through a decent stereo system, I will sound like crap.
 
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