Buy Studio Monitors HOT!
Fortunately, there are tons of great models available, all suited to different uses, tastes, and price ranges. This guide will help you choose the best studio monitors for music production by answering some common questions and suggesting popular models for home, project, and professional studios.
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Secondly, familiarity is just as important as accuracy. As long as you know the sound of your speakers intimately, you can achieve great results without breaking the bank for monitors with a completely flat frequency response.
Most monitors produced today are active, meaning they contain built-in, powered amplifiers. Without having to worry about hooking up an amplifier, you can simply plug active monitors into your audio interface and get to work.
Before active monitors, all speakers were passive, meaning they required an external amplifier (like old hi-fi stereo speakers). The extra gear and setup required to get passive monitors sounding good is generally not worth it for the average user, but some passive monitors, like the classic Yamaha NS-10, are still popular.
A 3-way or tri-amplified system is exactly what it sounds like: One more driver is added to further split the signal into low, mid, and high ranges. Many higher-end monitors use this layout to reproduce the entire frequency spectrum with greater accuracy.
Every monitor will come with a graph of its frequency response. A flatter line means greater accuracy, but no speaker will ever have a completely flat line. Keep in mind that this data is obtained by laboratory testing, and that your room will always have an effect on the accuracy of your monitors.
To ensure the best possible accuracy, use an acoustical measurement program like SonarWorks Reference, FuzzMeasure, or RoomEQWizard to analyze and adjust your monitors for the flattest response possible.
Functionally, there is little difference between ports located on the front or back of monitors. Front-porting can sometimes create the illusion of more bass due to rush of air they produce, while rear-porting can produce distorted bass response when placed too close to walls (although this happens to any speaker to a certain extent).
These terms refer to the distance at which a given pair of speakers is designed to be used. This article will focus on near-field monitors, which are typically mounted within a few feet of the listening position to provide accurate sound to one or two people.
Far-field monitors are designed to provide accurate sound across an entire room, sort of like a precision-tuned PA system. Far-field monitors are usually found only in larger studios, often mounted directly in the walls of the control room to allow both the engineer and clients to hear the same thing during playback.
For home and project studios, we recommend getting monitors with at least six- to eight-inch woofers to get closer to true full-range sound. As a rule of thumb, try to get monitors with the largest frequency range possible, within your budget. Then, if you want to spend a bit more, you can go for maximum quality and features.
Many professional-level monitors feature a 3-way design with a dedicated mid-frequency driver for greater accuracy. An extra-wide sweet spot is useful when multiple people are sitting at the desk, or when you need to move around to record yourself. If you do a lot of mixing or mastering, you may want to consider picking up a pair of secondary reference monitors as well.
Being able to hear your mixes in intricate detail is the most important aspect of music production. That means that choosing the best studio monitor is a key decision for you as a music producer. Hearing your mixes in detail means you can improve them and iron out inconsistencies, so getting the best monitor speaker for your studio is a sure-fire way to drastically improve your music making.
It will also help avoid that common scenario: where you spend hours labouring over a mix that sounds amazing on your (not so great) monitoring system, and then you play it elsewhere and it sounds awful. If this is happening to you with your mixes, then it could be time to upgrade your studio monitoring set-up, and that's where this guide comes in!
We are hugely impressed with the on-board graphic EQ of the KRK Rokit G4 series (opens in new tab). Often, bedroom producers, or those with small studio spaces, can suffer from poor acoustic treatment. By using the accompanying KRK app, and then making subtle alterations, you can give yourself a fighting chance of getting a balanced, accurate sound.
Focal and their Shape 65 (opens in new tab) monitors take the second-place spot for us. They're the best mid-priced nearfields you can get your hands on, offering a truthful image of your track, with loads of versatility and EQ tweakability. An all round great option.
We have also included a selection of brilliant affordable monitors in this guide - head to our best budget studio monitors guide for more like this. While their sound quality is not quite as accurate and true as most of the mid and high-end speakers here, some do deliver an awful lot of monitor for the cash. Of these, the IK Multimedia iLoud Micro (opens in new tab) and the M-Audio BX5 D3 (opens in new tab) both have features geared specifically towards making sure you get the clearest, most precise image of your mix.
If you've ever stepped foot inside the studio domain of an electronic music producer, the chances are you're familiar with the famous yellow speaker cones of KRK. The Rokit series - now in its fourth generation - is the Gibson-owned brand's affordable nearfield range, and has a selection of neat features which make it worthy of note.
The famous story about the old Yamaha NS10 studio monitors was that they were chosen not because they sounded great, but because they didn't. The theory being that if you could mix a track to sound good on them, you could be confident it would sound good anywhere. Of course, times have changed and even modern entry-level monitors will do a job, but the appeal of owning a piece of genuine studio history is strong.
From their famous Oxygen MIDI controllers, M-Track digital interfaces, and robust studio monitors, M-Audio is the go-to company for many budding producers looking for high-quality, affordable home studio products.
Extra controls around the back include input gain, mid-peak and high-shelf EQs, low-cut filter, and a room correction option which curtails frequencies below 800Hz and helps when the monitors are in corners or up close to walls.
We found these monitors to be very well made and durable. They come with a rubberised base, ideal for desktop positioning, although you might want to put them on a shelf or monitor stand for ear height. We did find the sweet spot pretty broad, both vertically and horizontally.
Output is well known for its much-loved audio plugins, virtual instruments, and beautiful studio furniture. The release of the Frontier nearfield loudspeaker sees Output enter the studio monitors arena, with a little help from their friends over at Barefoot Sound.
A sister product to the original single-box iLoud, this two-speaker setup is billed as "the smallest active studio reference monitoring system in the world," and is designed to be used in small "makeshift" working spaces. iLoud Micro Monitor certainly has the look and feel of a downsized 'proper' monitoring system rather than a posh pair of consumer-level computer speakers.
If your recording journey has started with you using headphones or the speakers in your laptop, the PreSonus Eris E3.5 will provide an instant upgrade. These affordable studio monitors offer a variety of connections, and the onboard EQ correction is superb to find at this price point.
The Eris E3.5 monitors pull a fairly reasonable amount of low-end out of the small 3.5" speakers, even with the LF range only extending as far as 80Hz. There is a lack of low-end clarity in certain areas, but as an upgrade from headphones or laptop speakers, the Eris 3.5s fit the bill happily.
During our review process, we found that the Eris are not quite so capable at higher volumes. For a shade under $/100 though, the quality is still exceptionally impressive - meaning that these monitors are well worth taking a chance on.
We find that the Mackie CR3-XBT monitors hit that sweet balance between price and performance, and offer a great selection of input options, including Bluetooth. With features such as a wide frequency range and solid build quality, they have a multitude of uses for the modern producer and music listener.
The layout of speakers themselves is crucial too. A classic two-way speaker employs one woofer, dedicated to producing low frequencies, and a tweeter that kicks out high-mid and high frequencies. The signals are separated by a crossover filter which splits the input into low and high bands. In monitor designs at the cheaper end of the spectrum, this crossover point sits at a crucial midrange area, so many higher-end monitors feature three-way (or even four-way) designs that employ more speaker drivers, aiming to keep those key midrange frequencies free of crossovers and so are clearer.
Studio monitors should reveal everything about your music in as truthful a way as possible. They should therefore have a completely flat frequency response, that is not coloured or enhanced in any area, so what you hear being played is the actual mix in all its glory. You can then make correct mix decisions based on this true response (reduce volume levels, or EQ certain parts, for example). If your studio monitors don't have a flat frequency response and are, say, enhanced at the bass end, you will hear too much bass so reduce it while mixing and your mixed track will sound bass light on any other playback system.
On my journey as a composer and audio engineer, I find being able to listen to my music through studio monitors is vital for producing the sound I want to create. It can be a pleasure that is second to none. 041b061a72