Studio Monitors
Studio or near field monitors are an entirely different animal than their cousins- the typically much larger public address speakers pr the home stereo speaker. Monitors are designed to accurately reproduce audio in the studio control room or playback areas - while no further than a few feet away from the speakers. Since sound uses the air around it to create the audio - accurate representation up close may be no small chore. It takes a well designed speaker and proper cabinetry to accomplish this.
Some might think - let's use any old speaker in the studio. Not a good idea - Your mix is colored and painted by whether you accurately hear the audio that is being recorded. Acoustics can be damaged when the monitors you use to mix on aren't a good representation of what the material will be played back on.
To get the very best in mix and playback - consider the following material below to help you choose the proper monitor from us. And call us if you have questions... we want you to have the perfect studio experience.
"Closed cabinet" vs. "Bass reflex" (click to expand)
The recent trend in studio monitors is towards "Active monitoring ". Speaker manufacturers are now matching speaker designs to the amplifers that power them. This is great, as the same speakers sound different when powered by different amplifiers of different power ratings. Now you can be sure that your active monitors will sound approximately the same where ever you listen. Or at least you have removed one element from them sounding different, the room is still going to change the sound.
That is the positive aspect of " active monitors " the negative is you carry around heavy speakers, and to help you out the manufacturers have very kindly given you a " bass-flex " design. Great, you think. But .. Put your hand up to those ports/holes in the cabinet and you get nice little puffs of air (and sound) everytime there is a bass signal. Are they in phase with the signals coming from the woofer? The constructor will swear they are ..but are they? They are not.
Do a comparison between a " closed-cabinet (non-ported)" design and a " bass reflex " and you will hear the bass smear and spread of the sounds coming from the bass-flex cabinet. And while most speaker systems are of a similar design, especially hi-fi that love to give an exaggerated bass, it won't tell you what your bass frequencies really are. Listen to a bass-reflex monitor system, can you pinpoint the bass? Or is it all wide and floppy? Now do the same on closed monitor; the bass is tighter and more focused as there are only 2 sources, the woofers, no holes front or back. The transients will be better defined as they are correctly aligned giving you the accurate "in focus"picture.
Some manufacturers use "tranmission-line" design to partially overcome this. They build in a labyrinth for the sound to run through and the sound comes out 180 degrees out of phase. Your fundamental frequencies are 1 cycle behind, but the attacks are better, because they are lined up again.
You can mix and record on Bass-Reflex lots of people do. But you run a much higher risk of NOT having the bass content you thought you did. And when you playback on a friend's hi-fi the sound can be without all the lovely bass you were sure was there!!
Proximity vs. "a good room" (click to expand)
If you want to spend a lot of money fast, buy huge speakers, run them loud, and do an acoustic treatment of your listening room. Or you can save money by buying small near-field monitors, run them at a low or comfortable level and don't treat your room. You will impress your football buddies as well as the master engineer! If you're running a Pro studio be prepared for a musician that will ask you to turn it up, and most clients still confuse LOUD with better, usually it is quite the opposite.
As you turn up your monitors, your room acoustics can come into play. And your room is a swimming pool of full of little waves reinforcing or cancelling each other out. Each space has a resonance and it will be show in your mixes, just as it will be the frequency that's missing in your mix. If you mix with the vast majority of the sound coming directly to your ears from near-fields, you stand a better chance of not screwing it up. Alas, if you could only SEE the sound, the problems would be obvious and easier to correct.
Monitoring Levels (click to expand)
Monitoring loud, for long periods and often enough can cause unneccessary abuse to the subtle receptors on either side of your head and your mixes could end up suffering in the long run. Keep your monitoring levels at a reasonable volume so that you never loose your edge.
Once you start to add a few elements in a studio together it is time for a Word Clock to appear on stage. There are few of these out there and as they are dedicated to that sole purpose of ultra precise clocking, so you can understand they do it well. They usually have 6 or so outputs to share their beautifully stable, less jittery clock.
Even if you don't need it immediately, if there is a choice between a model with a Word clock in or none, and it isn't too much more expensive get it. You are thinking of the future and improving the overall quality of your studio if you get the "word-clockable" model.
