Ableton help: Studio Monitors - Why you need them in your home studio

This is an interesting and much debated topic with about a million sites telling people what studio monitors are great to use in home studios and why. If all those were not enough to convince you.......I hope I can add the last bit of information that might sway you to purchasing a good studio monitor.

Are Studio Monitors Needed?

The answer, is a resounding yes. If you are remotely thinking of producing good music, studio monitors are a must.

There are multiple reasons for using studio monitors.

Getting Stereo Imaging done right.
Getting a good reference mix-down of your production
Fine tuning your master mix

Why are some speakers termed studio monitors while normal home audio speakers are not?

This is a tricky subject to tackle and irks many audiophiles and expensive system owners if one says a studio monitor plays material better than their 25,000$ system :)!

A studio monitor is specifically made to listen to music critically in a Studio environment. Here is the catch. By studio environment I mean a room that is acoustically close to dead, provides no unwanted reflections and has the user listening near field....around 2-5 feet or less from the speakers, most good sound engineers mix their song at a very low level. The speaker design is no frills and employs very good to excellent woofers, tweeters and amplifiers and the less is spent by the manufacturers on the exterior design of the box. The primary duty of the design is to provide as flat a response as possible from 20-20000hz for a near field listener so that he can mix down and master an audio track to the best effect.

A home audio speaker on the other hand, is designed to be more of an all-rounder. A lot of money goes into the cabinet, the wood used on the cabinet, the shape of the box, the finish etc. The drivers used are generally tweaked to provide optimal listener experience from 20-20000 in a non studio environment, example living room at a high level of volume and wide dispersion for covering a large listening area. The key here is non Studio environment, smaller home speakers and those of a HTIB (home theater in a box) use ported enclosures to deliver bass that the speaker cannot reproduce due to physical size. This ends up affecting the frequency curve and it is not very flat at the lower end. The bigger speakers have the opposite issue, there is too much going on in mid range and lower end, that some manufacturers employ very high quality crossovers and tweeters that can cut through and balance out the lower end and get the high end clarity that most of us crave.

Can you use a home speaker for mixing and creating your track?

The answer is yes, they are speakers that produce audio aren't they! but wait.....there are a few gotchas you need to be worried about.

Home audio speakers end up tweaking certain frequencies due to their design for non studio use. When you mix using a home speaker, the mix is going to be affected by the design of the speaker, for example...

I use a brand X HTIB fronts for mixing an audio track. Since the speakers are physically small they have an exaggerated low end using ports, medium to very little top end due to low cost tweeters and pronounced mids.
When I do my mix, I will end up giving very little low end, comparatively more middle and provide even more highs to compensate for the speaker and get the sound I want from the song.
Guess what happens once I master the track and listen it on Brand Y, a large floor standing speaker with 8inch woofers. The track is going to sound shrill and have absolutely no body in it.

How do you avoid this?

Once you mix down on your speaker, listen to it using multiple set of speakers and compare how the sound translates on different systems against reference tracks.
During my early days as a producer, I did not have the money to spend on expensive speakers and I used to mix all the time using my Polk Audio R300speakers that i picked up for $49 each!
One thing I did make sure was to have reference tracks. Listing a few of the finest music recording efforts done from all over the world in the recent times. I am sure there are many more recordings that you love and know the songs inside out, if so use them. They are priceless since they give you Tracks that have mixed using the best engineers and equipment out there.

1. Come Away With Me - Norah Jones (Jazz bass, vocals, Piano, balance)
2. Greatest Hits - Queen Greatest Hits (1992) (Rock guitars, Acoustic Drums, Vocals especially harmonies, Bass Guitar, Balance)
3. The Dark Knight - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Hans Zimmer - Original Soundtracks (Orchestral Balancing, huge mixes with large dynamic ranges)
4. Imagine - Armin Van Buuren (Dance/Trance music)
5. Vande Mataram - Ar Rahman (Pop, Folk instruments, Percussion, Vocals, Ambience)
6. Rhythm & Romance - Kenny G (Jazz Instruments, Percussion mixing, Bass Guitar)

The Idea is to do an A&B comparison between your mix and a reference mix. just focus on one area at a time. Drums, Bass, Guitars and so on. using this method, you know you are comparing a very well mixed song on your speakers. And by doing this...you take on instrument at a time...example... your drums have the same impact/sound as the reference song at the same level then you are on the right track.

How to do it the right way

Invest in pair of decent monitors, I currently own M-Audio Studiophile AV40 powered monitors. Nothing fancy. I also run Bose Companion 2 Series II Multimedia Speaker System to quickly listen to my mix on a normal system and also do AB comparison with reference tracks. If my track does not have the same presence or impact as the reference tracks listed above on the Bose Companion 2..then I go back to the drawing board and mix down using my monitors again.

Invest in a good pair of Studio Headphones. In most cases the studio headphones are incredibly useful. My monitors have 4 inch woofers and can get only to a certain point in the bass. I will not get the full extent of the precise bass presence using the small sized woofers. I run Sony MDR-V6 Monitor Series Headphones with CCAW Voice Coil and Audio-Technica ATHM40FS Precision Studio Headphones for making fine tunes to the bass and the highs.

Master List

Ending this article by providing links to the top Monitors that are being used at studios all over the world, ranking them from bigger to smaller size. I am leaving out Genelec, Equator, Dynaudio and Adam Audio due to the very high cost of entry for these systems (750-1000$ minimum). If you have the money and also have an extremely well set up studio then go ahead and look at these brands.

8 inch woofer