How to choose monitors?

[picato]

What should you take into concern when buying studio monitors? I understand that a pair of Mackie:s for about 2000 USD don't sound like crap. But in general, what size on the elements, what frequency range etc. It's so much more fun spending your money on synths than on monitors, so I don't want to spend a fortune.

[Tomer=Trance]

yeah range should be as wide as possible and as flat as possible
the elements size should be picked acording to your room size
you can take a 8.5` on a very small room
for that you have 5 and 6.5 near field monitors
hope i helped
and one other thing,the most importent is that you like how they sound or alse whats the point in music
you can pick up a nice active pair for around 400-800 $ new

[picato]

Originally Posted by Tomer=Trance

you can pick up a nice active pair for around 400-800 $ new

I live in sweden so I doubt that. Here everything seemes to cost a fortune...

My music room is very big, about 30 square meters actually. But small monitors would fit better on my desk actually, but is that a bad choice according to the size of the room. I sit pretty close to the monitors though, or doesn't that make a sense?

Thanks for the advice so far!

[Hollowcell]

my only advice with monitors is read everything you can on the pros and cons, then go and listen for your-self.

everyone has different opinions regarding monitors, so its really hard to say whats best for someone.

take some CDs of your favorite bands and also some of your own tracks (specially your own tracks that you know where the problems are when played on other systems. eg; too much bass/high end ect...) if you can hear the faults you already know about clearly, then lean towards those speakers.

good luck with the choices!

[Tomer=Trance]

Originally Posted by picato

I live in sweden so I doubt that. Here everything seemes to cost a fortune...

here in israel the situation is the same 80-120 % more expensive then in germany for say "the land of the cheap music gear" so im bringing mine from there you should find out how tax you need to pay if you will order them from there you can save alot of money.

Originally Posted by picato

My music room is very big, about 30 square meters actually. But small monitors would fit better on my desk actually, but is that a bad choice according to the size of the room. I sit pretty close to the monitors though, or doesn't that make a sense?

Thanks for the advice so far!

well if you sit close to them you need to change that
move the table to the wider wall of the room and take it 0.5-1 meter from it put it almost in the center of the room if you can
and then you need to place yourself in an equale triangle with them
when the monitors are about 0.5 meter away from each other
and you sit 1 meter from them
its hard to get that from a small desk so you'l maybe need to buy some stands or make them your own shouldnt be hard...
hope i helped that just some of the stuff i grabed from forum and friends.

Tomer Iserovitch.

[picato]

Thanks for the advice!

I've just bought the studiophile BX5. I've got both for the price of one, and the problem with my music isn't mixing so they are enough to me.

[flexoffset]

I've been mixing on headphones for so long. I've had to move my studio temporarily to another part of my home while I get my office building fixed up. Since my room isn't next to my daughter's room, I can now use REAL monitors and not headphones.

So, I finally bit the bullet and bought some monitors for myself. I picked up a pair of ADAM S3A active monitors.

I have worked with these monitors before and they translate to many different listening environments quite well. If you can get it to sound good on the ADAMs then it's gonna sound good just about anywhere.

http://www.adam-audio.com

They'll be here in about a week or two.
I feel that monitors are very important but I'd rather have spent the money on some good synths and stuff, too. Oh well. I'm broke now so that does it for spending.

[Tomer=Trance]

arent the adams very expensive?
about 1500+ ?
im looking now and its just a center speaker isnt it?
or how does it work?
you buy a pair?

[flexoffset]

They're about $2450(USD) each.
Yes. I bought a pair. The way I did it was this...
I was intending only to buy one for now, then buy the other one later.
They make a left and a right model. They're called 'A' and 'B'.
They can be oriented in either vertical or horizontal fashion. The ports need to be facing 'in' when vertical, and the sub needs to be on bottom.
I think the low-freq. woofer is supposed to be facing in when they're sitting horizontal.

The store I bought them allowed me to pay 25% down to lay away the second one, then when I get my money in, I'll be able to bring the second monitor in.

It's an expensive proposition, for sure. It's well worth it. Please don't take my word on monitor quality. It's always something that has to work for your studio and environment. Many people say the bass response is different, and it is. It's very very very very tight and you don't get the (erroneous) harmonics that make the bass sound meaty. It doesn't hinder you from eq'ing correctly, though. You don't have to 'learn' these monitors.

In commercial CD's you are able to hear where vocals were spliced, and it's certainly not a monitor to use as a home theatre where you want everything to sound good. You can easily hear the compressors kick in and stuff like that. The speakers are very brutally honest and quite a few commercially-released CD's will probably not sound too good on them. But they're among the best translating nearfield /midfield speakers on the planet.

It has two woofers and a ribbon tweeter. One woofer doesn't activate till 150Hz. They can be used in a surround setup. The setup I tested on was surround. He had 5 ADAM S3A, and an M&K sub.

[Tomer=Trance]

yeah of course you need a good monitoring system but why not mackie or geneltec ? im just seing because i never listened to such a high end monitors before so i dont know how big is the difference between the 1000-2000 dollars more difference
anyway a three way monitor is just amazing congrax on your purcush!