Music Articles and Reviews

Having high quality studio monitors for mixing and mastering is no big secret, any audio professional or enthusiast will tell you, but it is worth repeating and explaining again.

Studio monitors are not necessarily made to make music sound good, although a well recorded and mixed album will sound very good through them. They are made to reveal all the details of recorded sound; this means the good ones and the bad. The point of having monitors, as opposed to regular speakers, is to be able to tell when music is improperly mixed. Regular listening speakers have a habit of making everything sound at least pretty good and hiding little faults or poor quality sound samples.

Luckily, high quality studio monitor speakers are not as expensive as they used to be. A lot of people might tell you that you need to spend thousands of dollars in order to get worthwhile monitors, but this is simply not true. A good enough pair to do professional quality work can now be had for $300, but I would warn against going to far under that amount, for you will notice a decline in quality.

Once you have your professional grade studio monitors, you will immediately notice what a difference it makes mixing with them. One of the things they do best that regular speakers don’t make so clear is that they really isolate instruments and sounds and point out where they are in the stereo field. This can help you make your mixes sound full and balanced, and if you try doing this on regular speakers, you will often find what sounded full and balanced was really weak and thin.

Some people may hesitate on getting studio monitor speakers because they think they are not good enough at mixing, or they don’t have the space, or whatever reason, but there is no good reason not to get them. You wont be able to make good mixes until you do get them, and they are easier to fit into any space than ever before.