Electronic Music Production, Home Studio, Music Production, Producer Tools
How To Choose Home Studio Monitors
5 Top Studio Monitors 2022
How To Choose Home Studio Monitors?
Choosing studio monitors is one of the heavy tasks when we approach a home studio. Studio monitors will largely determine the sound quality we receive in our studio, although in this context one must also remember the sound card converters, the acoustics in the studio, and even the type of cables we use.
But in the end, the monitors are the ones that move the air in your studio – and you want them to do it properly! So which studio monitors to choose? What is the optimal monitor size to fit our studio? What is the difference between studio monitors and good speakers? We will try to answer these questions and many others in this article.
What To Look For In Studio Monitor?
Near Field
Most of the studio monitors you find in stores are near field monitors. The idea of this kind of studio monitors is that they are intended to be heard from a relatively close range of between meters and two meters, thus significantly neutralizing the room acoustics.
Because such monitors are close to you, you can listen at a lower level of power and thus receive less reimbursement from the walls and a host of unwanted acoustic side effects that characterize a home that is not optimally acoustically treated.
Active or passive
An active monitor includes an amplifier and all you need to do is connect it to the power supply (and note before checking that it is adjusted to the electrical voltage in the outlet where it is located)
A passive monitor requires a connection to an external amplifier. Using an external amplifier allows you to choose the quality of the amplifier, in fact, the amplifier components that are responsible for the quality of the signal we receive.
What is the difference between home speakers and studio monitors?
While hi-fi home speakers try to provide pleasant sound to the ear and indulge the listener – the purpose of studio monitors is to give as accurate and neutral a picture as possible.
That is, studio monitors should not emphasize certain frequencies at the expense of others and provide us with the sound picture as it is.
When we make music and we want it to sound good on every play system, we have to work on as accurate studio monitors as possible.
Transparent studio monitors.
There can be huge differences between different studio monitors. Studio monitors purport to be Flat (ie neutral and transparent) but each monitor appears to be Flat in its own way. The bottom line, you need to buy monitors that you like for their sound.
You need to listen to in-store monitors but try them first (if possible) in your work environment. Make yourself a reference disc with music you know of high quality (not MP3). Listen to this disc on various studio monitors and you will find the monitor that does this to you. This is the monitor you want in your home studio.
Price
5 Top Studio Monitors 2022
With their stylish good looks and robust performance, Tannoy’s Reveal 502 2-way active studio monitors deliver an extended frequency response along with an ultra-wide sweet spot. The ported design incorporates a 5-inch woofer and a 1-inch tweeter bi-amped with 105 watts. In addition to XLR and 1/4-inch inputs, the 502 gives you the convenience of plugging your media player directly into its 1/8-inch aux jack and linking your left and right monitors via Tannoy’s handy Aux Link. Many Sales Engineers at Sweetwater rely on Tannoy monitors to deliver the sonic truth. With the Reveal 502 5-inch Powered Studio Monitor, you can, too.
One of the most affordable Adam monitors to date, the T5V is built around a 5-inch woofer and Adam’s U-ART (Unique Accelerated Ribbon Tweeter) tweeter. This Class-D powered two-way design with rear-ring bass reflex is the smaller of the new T Series designs. Sonically, the top-end is very well tuned, while the HPS waveguide delivers a broad horizontal sweet spot. This contributes greatly to the overall imaging and separation, which is excellent. Although the cabinet is quite deep, front to back, the units feel compact. Advertisement The low mid-range frequencies could be more prominent, but this certainly isn’t a deal-breaker, and by setting the LF EQ to -2dB we achieved a much better result. Adam’s desire is to make the T5V your first Adam monitor and judging by what we’ve heard here, it could easily make you a fan for life.
Available in 40, 50 and 65 flavours, the latter of which we’re reviewing here, the Shapes, from Focal, now sit between their budget-friendly Alpha series and the Solo6 Be – another 6.5″ two-way monitor – in terms of price. Aesthetically, the Shapes are an interesting departure from Focal’s other designs. The main speaker cabinet is black-painted MDF with a luxurious walnut veneer, appearing less ‘studio spaceship’ and more ‘hi- connoisseur’ – in fact, they’d look just as at home in a domestic cinema setup as in a production environment. Interestingly, the Shapes are non-ported, with dual 6.5″ passive radiators (one on each side of the monitor).
Eris is Presonus’s most traditional speaker range and its latest update adds a distinctive EBM tweeter waveguide and elliptical boundary-modelled design that delivers both a wide horizontal and narrow vertical dispersion. The horizontal width is very obvious and we didn’t struggle to find a sweet spot – good news with larger monitors as you’re likely to be further away, and handy for group listening or tracking situations. Extra controls around the back include input gain, mid-peak and high-shelf EQs, low-cut filter, and a room correction option which curtails frequencies below 800Hz and helps when the monitors are in corners or up close to walls. The tonal balance of the E8XTs is pretty good and we didn’t initially feel the need to hit the EQ. However, having AB’d with some other monitors, the mids sounded a bit restrained, and a small boost from the mid-EQ (1kHz) sorted this. The E8XT delivers the sort of scale one expects from slightly larger monitors and, coupled with the broad sweet spot and extended bass, they’re great for both tracking and mixing. Build quality is also excellent and they also offer incredible value.
The Mackie HR624mk2 active studio monitors manage to improve on the widely-used originals. New features, such as a solid aluminum Zero Edge baffle and optimized waveguide help to give the HR624mk2 even more accurate, natural sound reproduction. Designed with high-definition audio in mind, this monitor provides exeptional clarity for surround 5.1 and 7.1 applications, and an Acoustic Space Control function allows it to be adapted to any room and still provide maximum accuracy. Low-frequency roll-off and high-frequency shelf functions are also included on the HR624mk2.
5 Top Studio Monitors 2022
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