You are better off incorporating objective data into your studio monitor selection. Fundamental issues like room acoustics, level-matching, brand bias and others are compounded by your listening skill, or lack of it. In other words, “buy what you like” is incomplete advice, at best.
The journey of studio monitor selection should be fun. But if that’s true, why can it be so daunting? You have dozens of people online, all with differing opinions. Turning to pros, you find that their monitors are too expensive, vintage, or both. So how can you make a decision that’s best for your situation? In this post, we’re going to explore
Joe the Audio Engineer
It’s a regular Sunday morning. Your grandparents have been awake since 4:30 a.m., and you’re in your bedroom making music. No you’re not, you’re reading comments under your last upload. Standard practice, really.
No you’re not. There’s just one comment: “this mix sucks.” “Hater,” you think. Yet you can’t brush the feeling that they might be right. Despite working on your mixes, they kind of all have the same spectral profile. This makes you suspect that your monitors may be to blame.
Wize Slutz
Since just practicing more doesn’t cross your mind, you head over to gearznut dot com. There’s always people there, and surely some of them must know what they’re talking about. Right?
Your post about monitor selection and buying is initially ignored, so you post on reddit. 15 new accounts all tell you some form of “Buy what you like.” Yes, the hive mind has spoken, and its wisdom is inherently correct.
Escape from the Cave
Stepping outside into the unbearable sunshine, you feel a sense of adventure. “Sitar Center, here I come!” you say. Being a producer, however, you don’t don’t know how to play an instrument. No matter, you just pull your baseball cap down over your eyes and try to look at enigmatic as possible. Fake it till you make it.
When you approach the lone salesperson, you say, “I’m here to fairly compare studio loudspeakers, please. Naturally, I assume they’ll be perfectly calibrated, and all unfair factors will be accounted for and balanced. Shall we go forthwith arm in arm”?
The guy looks vaguely aroused, and his awkward response is endearing, “Our speakers aren’t hooked up right now, but we have some used ones you can try.” “Good enough,” you reason, and off into the musty room you two head.
Mission Irresponsible
The motley assemblage of sub-$200 5″ black rectangles sputter to life. “What do you want to hear?” he asks. “Whatever you got,” you reply. You didn’t think to bring any tracks you know, nor did you bring any test files. These salespeople are all elite professionals, and you trust them. Rightly so.
As you listen, you’re struck with a cold sweat. You can’t hear a difference. Well, you can because one monitor is in the corner ten meters away, and the other is right in front of you. Besides that, the more you listen, the more confused you get. “Do I want the one with more bass or less?” you ask yourself. “Hey, can we put these two next to each other?” So you try that but now they’re not really level matched. Thirty minutes later, your parking meter has expired and you’re no better off. Doing monitor selection under these conditions sucks. “Which one you wanna buy?” he asks. “I’ll be back later,” you lie.
Age of Enlightenment
After your date with Amanda Handy, you’re back to scrolling, It isn’t two hours till your bedtime, so there’s still time to practice your production skills. Instead of gearznut, where you post is like a single kickdrum in a multi-nested directory structure, you find Audeeo Science People. “Hmm, science you say? I’ve found the smart ones!”
There’s many people online when you arrive. They all seem to be congregating around one person. Looking more closely, there’s a man in a white poet shirt, and he’s shining. Him and his energy is fused with a machine to his right. The spinorama machine. Its purity is palpable. A one, true tool for measuring what’s real about loudspeakers. This is the mechanism literally designed for monitor selection. By the machine, on the same table is a hologram of a pdf called Sean Olive in Differences in Performance and Preference of Trained versus Untrained Listeners in Loudspeaker Tests: A Case Study. Overwhelmed with a passionate urge for knowledge, you push forward, and take the USB stick plugged into the holographic projector. Precious! It’s yours now. All you have to do is escape.
Revenge of the Audio Nerdz
Turning toward your exit, you’re surrounded by a horde of middle-aged men in off-white tee shirts. The room reeks of cheese, mildew, and old McNomnal’s. Frighted as you are, you know they can’t catch you. At 28, you’re far more fit than most of them have been in years.
Left and right you zig zag. For nothing really other than dramatic effect. This is the time to flex, because you’re the knower of things now. In your mad dash, you see an X icon. Summoning your will, you project a mouse cursor onto the artefact and click with your mind. The entire scene disappears and you’re back in your computer, with a USB stick and a crumpled up napkin in your lap. Home at last.
Heading back over to gearznut, someone replied to your post: “git good noob”. As you read, someone else replies with, “Ever since I bought a MixSquare, I’ve been getting paid full time wages.” “Bah!” you think. This can’t bother you now. You read the summary of the pdf and reply with what you’ve learned. The reply comes, “You can’t pick monitors with a graph. Use your ears.” Drowsiness droops your face. “I’ll produce first thing tomorrow morning,” you think as you head to bed.
Reflecting on Reflections
After you wake up the next day, what you learned in the document is on your mind. It says you can’t necessarily trust your ears. Interestingly, despite being unreliable, untrained listeners generally prefer what experienced listeners do. What’s more, the most preferred speakers tend to be flat, and not mid-forward.
Reading more around the internet, you find more on this topic. You find that brand bias can affect your decisions. Other pressures, like seeing a pro use a monitor, or its price, or brand can skew your perception too. All told, it seems impossible to make a good decision.
Fact Attack
Armed with your new knowledge, you go to reply to your reddit thread. Rereading the replies, it’s clear what is true and what isn’t:
“It’s all about preference.”
No it isn’t. Your preference is a function of your experience, compounded with external factors, some of which have nothing to do with the sound.
“You should use different monitors for different activities.”
Really, you can use studio monitors for a variety of activities. If you want more bass, you can always EQ down the highs and turn them up. You need to watch out for distortion, but why buy a different monitor for gaming or watching TV? Many people use studio monitors for domestic use. Genelec even rebranded one of theirs for this purpose. Now, if you need a PA then that’s a different story.
“The point is to enjoy the speaker.”
Is it, though? Then why do producers use things like MixSquares if they supposedly sound terrible? Or why will some mixers use mid-forward speakers? The answers may be numerous, but the sure point of agreement is one: they use them to create a result, not for pure enjoyment. If you want to be abstract about it, they enjoy the results of their labor. But noobs don’t think like this—they have a hand-to-mouth mentality.
“The internet can’t tell you what you like.”
It can and has. If you include all the research on loudspeakers and listener preference in your definition of internet. On the other hand, if by internet you mean multitudes of unqualified mouths saying whatever comes to them first, then yeah I agree. Ironically, the people saying this are on the internet. Buyer beware!
Retrospective
Many years later, you’re listening to your monitors, and you’re happy. They’re flat, they were in your budget, and they’re broadly useful. Frustratingly, something is still not right. They’re too bassy!
A little more research confirms what your now more experienced ears were telling you: your room is messing with the bass. Strangely, everyone seems to agree on this point despite having disagreed on the science of listener preference. So it goes.
You do a few measurements, apply a little EQ, and everything is right in the world. This whole escapade or monitor selection showed you one thing: objective research is helpful, regardless of what the subjectivists say. With mixes that are better than ever, you’ll never tell anyone to buy what you like without a little more clarification.
Join the Hexie Dose Newsletter to be informed when I publish content.