Best Studio Monitors

[Musicmaker]

Hello everybody! I just want to ask your opinion what is the best studio monitors for mixing and mastering? I found few that i can afford, but i need you opinion on them.

1. Avantone CLA-10A
2. Yamaha HS 8
3. Dynaudio BM5 MKIII
4. KRK Rokit 5

If there is something else that would be perfect, please let me know.

Thank you for your help.

[RichardT]

Welcome to the forum!

You have a very wide price range there! If you can reach to the Avantones then there are a lot of good choices.

Some popular ones are

Neumann KH120 or KH80
APS Klasik 2020
Focal Shape 65

And there are also good monitors by Dynaudio and Genelec in that price range. And lots of others too.

I haven’t heard the Avantones, but they look to be almost an active recreation of Yamaha NS10s. These speakers had a very particular sound and I wouldn’t recommend them as your main monitors.

[Sam Spoons]

What genres will you be mixing and how big and well treated is your room? I know that good monitors will be petty much genre agnostic but budget/mid range monitors will be compromised in some way and knowing more about the genre and room will help matching those compromises.

[Mike Stranks]

Welcome!

You'll get many opinions as to which are 'best'...

... but as Sam Spoons has said, acoustically treating your room to reduce echo, reverberation etc is really important. Spend some money on that - if you haven't already - and the sound of the most modest speakers will be greatly improved.

[Arpangel]

Please, you’ll get so many opinions, I’m not recommending anything, you’ll end up even more confused than ever, just go and have a listen, and once you’ve narrowed it down a bit, get the ones you chooses on sale or return, you have to listen to them in your own place.

[jimjazzdad]

Some might quibble that "the best studio monitors for mixing and mastering" is a bit broad - even an oxymoron - as mastering engineers generally have pretty esoteric (and expensive!) speakers in their very well-treated studios. I guess the real answer is: audition several different monitors and buy the best you can afford. For under $2K you have a range of good monitors, including the Neumanns and the Dynaudios mentioned. For real mastering monitors, you will find yourself starting at ~$10K and going up into the stratosphere.

[RichardT]

Some might quibble that "the best studio monitors for mixing and mastering" is a bit broad - even an oxymoron - as mastering engineers generally have pretty esoteric (and expensive!) speakers in their very well-treated studios. I guess the real answer is: audition several different monitors and buy the best you can afford. For under $2K you have a range of good monitors, including the Neumanns and the Dynaudios mentioned. For real mastering monitors, you will find yourself starting at ~$10K and going up into the stratosphere.

This is why professional mastering is such a good idea if you don’t have a very high quality monitoring chain in your own studio!

[Musicmaker]

acoustically treating your room to reduce echo, reverberation etc is really important. Spend some money on that - if you haven't already - and the sound of the most modest speakers will be greatly improved.

Will room diagram help to advice where to put acoustic foam panel? or acoustic foam panel is not the case?

[Martin Walker]

Will room diagram help to advice where to put acoustic foam panel? or acoustic foam panel is not the case?

Yes, it will, but 60Kg/m3 density DIY Rockwool bass traps will be hugely more effective than 'acoustic foam'.

Here's an introductory article from the SOS archives that should help you get your head around acoustic treatment and where to put it:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... -treatment

Oh, and welcome to the SOS Forums Musicmaker!

Martin

[Arpangel]

Some might quibble that "the best studio monitors for mixing and mastering" is a bit broad - even an oxymoron - as mastering engineers generally have pretty esoteric (and expensive!) speakers in their very well-treated studios. I guess the real answer is: audition several different monitors and buy the best you can afford. For under $2K you have a range of good monitors, including the Neumanns and the Dynaudios mentioned. For real mastering monitors, you will find yourself starting at ~$10K and going up into the stratosphere.

This is why professional mastering is such a good idea if you don’t have a very high quality monitoring chain in your own studio!

How many people are going to be listening on mastering grade payback systems? You could say, that it’s a good idea to listen on more modest equipment, things that are closest to your normal listeners situation.
Great if you can afford all that stuff, but is it really necessary? in most cases?

[Hugh Robjohns]

How many people are going to be listening on mastering grade payback systems?

Very few... but the whole point of 'mastering grade' monitoring is to hear everything as it really is, so that it can be made to sound the best it possibly can -- without sonic issues that the mix engineer couldn't hear -- or, worse, tonal compensations the mix engineer dialed in to correct for on -- the inadequacies of their own sub-par 'monitoring' system.

Only by mastering through an truely accurate full range monitoring system in a neutral acoustic environment can you be sure that the music will sound the best it possibly can on the widest range of typical punter systems.

You could say, that it’s a good idea to listen on more modest equipment, things that are closest to your normal listeners situation.

You could say it, but that doesn't make it true...

[RichardT]

Some might quibble that "the best studio monitors for mixing and mastering" is a bit broad - even an oxymoron - as mastering engineers generally have pretty esoteric (and expensive!) speakers in their very well-treated studios. I guess the real answer is: audition several different monitors and buy the best you can afford. For under $2K you have a range of good monitors, including the Neumanns and the Dynaudios mentioned. For real mastering monitors, you will find yourself starting at ~$10K and going up into the stratosphere.

This is why professional mastering is such a good idea if you don’t have a very high quality monitoring chain in your own studio!

How many people are going to be listening on mastering grade payback systems? You could say, that it’s a good idea to listen on more modest equipment, things that are closest to your normal listeners situation.
Great if you can afford all that stuff, but is it really necessary? in most cases?

Very few indeed! But if you want the best results, it helps if somebody listens to your mixes on a top flight system, gives you feedback and when you’ve corrected the faults, optimises the mix. For me, it’s an important validation step as much as anything.

[Arpangel]

How many people are going to be listening on mastering grade payback systems?

Very few... but the whole point of 'mastering grade' monitoring is to hear everything as it really is, so that it can be made to sound the best it possibly can -- without sonic issues that the mix engineer couldn't hear -- or, worse, tonal compensations the mix engineer dialed in to correct for on -- the inadequacies of their own sub-par 'monitoring' system.

Only by mastering through an truely accurate full range monitoring system in a neutral acoustic environment can you be sure that the music will sound the best it possibly can on the widest range of typical punter systems.

You could say, that it’s a good idea to listen on more modest equipment, things that are closest to your normal listeners situation.

You could say it, but that doesn't make it true...

It doesn’t make it untrue either!
Some mastering engineers have a magic touch, and are (were?) in big demand, but how much music today actually relies on high end mastering?
With musicians doing more and more of the work now, and the high quality of equipment on offer at lower prices, that last thing in the chain, just becomes something we do, just another job we don’t even notice, I think we do it as we go along.

[Urthlupe]

Whoopsy…..

You’re completely missing the point bud……

‘Only by mastering through an truely accurate full range monitoring system in a neutral acoustic environment can you be sure that the music will sound the best it possibly can on the widest range of typical punter systems.’

You only get here by running your output through an accurate system fella (and that system includes the acoustic environment). Simple as….

If you don’t care about transferability of course then you’re good to go.

Loopy

[Aled Hughes]

How many people are going to be listening on mastering grade payback systems?

Very few... but the whole point of 'mastering grade' monitoring is to hear everything as it really is, so that it can be made to sound the best it possibly can -- without sonic issues that the mix engineer couldn't hear -- or, worse, tonal compensations the mix engineer dialed in to correct for on -- the inadequacies of their own sub-par 'monitoring' system.

Only by mastering through an truely accurate full range monitoring system in a neutral acoustic environment can you be sure that the music will sound the best it possibly can on the widest range of typical punter systems.

You could say, that it’s a good idea to listen on more modest equipment, things that are closest to your normal listeners situation.

You could say it, but that doesn't make it true...

It doesn’t make it untrue either!
Some mastering engineers have a magic touch, and are (were?) in big demand, but how much music today actually relies on high end mastering?
With musicians doing more and more of the work now, and the high quality of equipment on offer at lower prices, that last thing in the chain, just becomes something we do, just another job we don’t even notice, I think we do it as we go along.

I get your point, but high-end monitoring systems are not designed to make the music sound good, they're designed to deliver as much information as possible. That, in turn, allows you to create a mix/master that has the best sound of sounding acceptable across the widest possible range of playback systems.

If you're using cheap consumer stuff to mix or master, it's a constant moving target. One cheap system might boom horribly around 100Hz. Another might not, but sound really nasty around 5kHz. It's no good for your mix to compensate for those two specific issues, because the next system someone uses to listen to your mix might not have those issues at all, but instead have another set of problems. If you've held back at 100Hz and 5kHz in your mix due to your speakers, then it's going to sound lacking on other systems that don't have those specific problems.

No mix or master is ever going to avoid the problems inherent in poor speaker/headphones, but having a high-quality monitoring system in a well-treated space ensures (hopefully) that you're not adding any issues of your own to the mix, and not baking in the deficiencies of your speaker by compensating for them in the mix.

[Mike Stranks]

Late last year I decided that as I wasn't mixing music any more I'd 'downsize' my monitors from the respectable, but relatively modest, set I had to some well-rated and well-regarded computer speakers.

A/B during the switch-over was dramatic. The computer speakers sounded very deficient in a number of ways and definitely w a y behind what I was used to in terms of transparency.

No great hardship to me as they're only now used for casual listening... the little bit of serious stuff I'm still engaged in all gets monitored on my AKG cans...

But the difference was stark... choose your 'monitors' - within your price-point with care.

[RichardT]

Tony,

I've upgraded my monitoring (speakers and listening environment) a lot over the past few years. It's clear to me that with my earlier systems, I simply wasn't hearing things correctly. The same is going to be true for you, given that you don't have a treated room and you use quite basic monitors.

If you get a good mix out of that kind of environment quite honestly it's down to luck! In fact you are not going to get good mixes full stop, even if you think you are.

[James Perrett]

A couple of times over the last few years I've tried setting up a studio in the house in addition to the main studio. Both times I've tried a variety of speakers that I've had around here ranging from NS10s, KEF Celeste IIIs and Wharfedale Unit 5s. None of these gave me the insight into the music that I can get with my usual Tannoys which are really good at pulling mixes apart. NS10s have a reputation for being good for vocal balancing but I find that they don't give me a convincing sound stage and the balance is very skewed towards the midrange. The KEFs were an improvement but I was still missing something. The Wharfedales had more of the weight of the Tannoys thanks to their 12" bass driver but they sounded nice rather than convincing.

The first time I tried a home setup I was able to bring the Tannoys into the house and use them while I finished building the studio but more recently I've had to settle for using the LS3/5a's in the house. They are much better than any of the other alternatives that I've tried and probably more suitable for use now that I have close neighbours but still don't give me quite the same insight as I get from the Tannoys. That's why I use them in combination with decent headphones.

[Mike Stranks]

Sorry OP!

We've taken a little diversion here to deal with a 'does it really matter?' comment...

... you were saying...

[James Perrett]

Back on topic - as Richard says in the first reply - if you have the budget for the Avantones then the Neumann KH120s or KH80s will make much better general purpose monitors.