A Brief Tutorial On Studio Monitors
Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2016 1:46 pm
From our friends at Presonus here's a handy PDF guide: http://www-media-presonus.netdna-ssl.co ... -22-15.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_monitor
Some notable quotes:
An unqualified reference to a monitor often refers to a near-field (compact or close-field) design. This is a speaker small enough to sit on a stand or desk in proximity to the listener, so that most of the sound that the listener hears is coming directly from the speaker, rather than reflecting off of walls and ceilings (and thus picking up coloration and reverberation from the room).
In the 2000s, there was a trend to focus on "translation". Engineers tended to choose monitors less for their accuracy than for their ability to “translate” – to make recordings sound good on a variety of playback systems, from primitive car radios to esoteric audiophile systems. As the mix engineer Chris Lord-Alge has noted:
Ninety-five percent of people listen to music in their car or on a cheap home stereo; 5 percent may have better systems; and maybe 1 percent have a $20,000 stereo. So if it doesn’t sound good on something small, what’s the point? You can mix in front of these huge, beautiful, pristine, $10,000 powered monitors all you want. But no one else has these monitors, so you’re more likely to end up with a translation problem.”[11]