studio monitors

so im after some studio monitors, and while i would love to pay somebody to give me a lift to the place miles away and look at them myslef, i was wondering if people could reccomend like particular decent ones or around 400 to 500 quid, so like 700-900 dollars

as far as i can see the only way to differentiate them is the brand and the price tag.

personally, i wouldn't buy new monitors. i'd rather look for old (but still working great) monitors, those tend to get dumped for ridiculous prices. for example, for 900$ i'd try to get a used pair of tannoy system1000's:

but if you don't like buying used stuff, you could just goto a decent store and listen to what they've got. it all comes down to personal preferences but if i had to buy new monitors for 900$, i'd get a pair of mackie hr624s:

or you could save a bit more money and buy a low-end Adam setup, like the P22As:

the adams and mackies are both active but the system1000's are passive so you'll need to find a amp to go with them (could be anything, i'd get some second hand quad monoblocks or maybe an old, low-end bryston).

got beat to rec'ing tha hr624s....i just bought a pair a month or so ago.....all i got to say is they are a sweet investment...

Mackie HR824 or HR624

or

Tannoy Reveal Actives

the difference (which drives the price tag) is in the frequency response and colouration of the sound - you want a monitor to accurately reproduce as wide a frequency range as possible, have good crossovers and decent tweeter and cone component/contruction and be as colourless as possible (ie what you hear is as close to the true source audio signal as possible).

Generally, Genelec, Mackie and Tannoy are your choices at the mid to high end depending on range, with Genelec as your most expensive. However do check out the KRK Rokit series, recognisable by their distinctiver yellow cone. They've been going since 1985(ish) and have built a great reputation with some excellent monitors at affordable prices. Failing that, the Tannoy Active 5 or Mackie HRs are probably worth your money.

For us mortals, spending any more than £4-500 on monitors is lunacy as far as I'm concerned. I laugh at folk who spend a fortune here, obviously have more money than sense. If your output is likely to be heard by the thousands, tens of thousands or millions of people and make it onto commercial release, then invest that sort of doe.

i am creating some tunes and that, dont realy understand the significance of monitors, but im essentially more after a really high quality hi fi set up

mackies are lookin bangin tho.

man, you can get the mackies for £500 ish? gutted, i liked there sound but they were way more when i was buying not too long ago.

I ended up getting the bluesky media desks, but there great, though. You need to set them up well, and the sub adds a dimension you need to be aware of, but I'm getting more than what I wanted from them. and you can get them for a little less than £400

what do people here think of the Genelec 8030/8040 monitors? They look pretty decent for a home set-up, non? I have to get an idea of the prices over here of course....but be interested to hear opinions.

  chenGOD said:

what do people here think of the Genelec 8030/8040 monitors? They look pretty decent for a home set-up, non? I have to get an idea of the prices over here of course....but be interested to hear opinions.

top of the class.

a bit more than most of us here would ever need in terms having the commercial requirement for such quality or the ear to discern such quality for that matter. but if you feel flush and got cash to splash, there among the best solutions around and highly respected at that.

  ~ism said:

  chenGOD said:

what do people here think of the Genelec 8030/8040 monitors? They look pretty decent for a home set-up, non? I have to get an idea of the prices over here of course....but be interested to hear opinions.

 

top of the class.

 

a bit more than most of us here would ever need in terms having the commercial requirement for such quality or the ear to discern such quality for that matter. but if you feel flush and got cash to splash, there among the best solutions around and highly respected at that.

commercial requirement? for me, listening to a good soundsystem while building tracks is very important, i enjoy good speakers. its not like i NEED them to be able to make great mixes (there are cheap monitors out there that are very accurate too). its just that i enjoy working on tracks with a nice soundsystem, thats got nothing to do with commercial requirements or investments of any kind.. if i needed to mix tracks that would be aired on radio or TV (thats what you talking about right?), i would rather have a crappy NS10 setup instead of some monstrous three-way midfield monitors that go down flat to 18hz.. its about personal preference, some people like making music on a trust 5.1 speaker set that costs 30$ at the nearest PC store, some of them like to finetune their mix & have very precise control over their sound - whether their music is aired on radio/TV & is a huge commercial succes or not.

and 8030/8040s aren't top of the class at all. infact, they are genelec's budget monitors! 1038s blow them out of the water, for example:

1038's

8030's

then theres manufacturers like Klein & Hummel or ADAM who REALLY make nice (nearfield) monitors.. but that gets very expensive very quickly..

top of the class being top of the class. as in price bracket.

when someone refers to a ford fiesta being top of the class, it generally means it's the pick of the small hatchback market. not that it's the best car money can buy.

that was my point.

yeah they're about 500 quid over here in South Korea. I'm doing alright, but I might have to wait and buy them as a Christmas prezzie...

  ~ism said:

top of the class being top of the class. as in price bracket.

 

when someone refers to a ford fiesta being top of the class, it generally means it's the pick of the small hatchback market. not that it's the best car money can buy.

 

that was my point.

ah yeah, i though you meant class as in what chengod refered to as 'home setup' (nearfields, bascially). if you're weary of buying second hand monitors, they (8040s) might indeed be a solid choice if you're going to spend something around 500 pounds..

but still, i don't think that dropping more than 400 or 500 pounds on a soundsystem is 'lunacy', even if you dont make big money with your music (and i'm not saying this because i got buckets full of money to spend, which i dont, in fact, i'm a pretty poor student who just gives up alot of other stuff to buy sound equipmentizzles).

I've used some Genelec 8030's. I think you can pick them up for about £500 in the UK if i'm not mistaken. I think that's how much my friend paid for his.

They are pretty sweet. I'd buy them if I had the ca$h monies.

i make all my music on headphones, is that bad?

given how good your production is, fred, i would say no it's not bad, until you try and translate the production skills you have learned to a different monitoring chain.

if you work with a flat response system, (which i'd be willing to stick my neck out and say flatly, headphones just will not and can not be)...then what you do on your system will be more-or-less the same as what you'd expect to happen on another flat response system, given the same input from you... ie, boost it on a narrow q at about 80hZ... two different systems, two very similar results.

but you're good on headphones, (though i'd like to hear a higher quality version of 'how a hot air balloon works')..anyway, i've played your stuff on a few studio setups and it sounds good. stick with what you know...

hey that's good to know.

the biggest shocker for me comes when i'm done with a track and then i hear it on my car or something, sounds like a totally different song and at first i cant stand it, and then my ears adjust after a few days. i wonder if i worked with monitors the difference wouldn't be so drastic?

another problem is living in an apt complex with roommates or gilfriends, i feel like i've been holding off on monitors till i have a proper house with a proper room for recording only. i'm pretty anxious to get some soon though, i want to see if it can improve my recording quality.

i have tannoy reveal 8d's and they are just motherfucking brilliant. they're raw in exposing the sound for what it really is. when it sounds big and nice, it's amazing. when it sounds thin, it sounds thin. Listening to songs I made on my earlier system is like a huge difference. part of what makes monitors so great is that you unconsciously make the right decisions when designing your sound, rather than doing something that sounds good on a pair of shitty speakers but crappy on everything else. NS10's anyone?