quote:

Originally posted by John Scrip:
For mastering purposes, I'd think those are a little too...

Tiny...?

Limited-range, narrow dispersion nearfield monitors aren't exactly what I'd be looking at...

You don't want loudspeakers that make a recording of a contrabass sound good - You want loudspeaker that make it sound like the contrabass is *in the room with you*

Even the previous suggestion on the 604's - Those are on the small side of what I'd be looking at.

I know, I know - This starts a lot of "well, this guy uses them..." conversations. I'm just going with my own experience on this one - When I finally started out "on my own" I desperately tried to get the same results out of nearfields and smaller somewhat "full range" loudspeakers until I finally (FINALLY!!!) wound up with a used set of B&W Matrix 802's.

If I would've just looked for those in the first place, I would've saved a lot of trouble and "respectable results" would've come a LOT sooner.

That being said - When I was working over other people's shoulders, I was always using large, full-range, standard dispersion monitoring. Nearfields were for flipping over to check with - if they were in the room at all. So, I might be a little biased in that respect. However, I *did* try the nearfield and "bookshelf" sized boxes for some time - and hated every minute of it - so I suppose I may have a basis for the bias...

Besides the engineer, they're the absolute most important thing in the studio. I know a few guys who have a "rule of thumb" that your monitors should cost you three times whatever your most expensive piece of gear is.

I think that's a whisker excessive myself - But I totaly understand the thought - You will only ever be as good as your monitoring scenario allows you to be.

quote:

Originally posted by John Scrip:
For mastering purposes, I'd think those are a little too...

Tiny...?

Limited-range, narrow dispersion nearfield monitors aren't exactly what I'd be looking at...

You don't want loudspeakers that make a recording of a contrabass sound good - You want loudspeaker that make it sound like the contrabass is *in the room with you*

Even the previous suggestion on the 604's - Those are on the small side of what I'd be looking at.

I know, I know - This starts a lot of "well, this guy uses them..." conversations. I'm just going with my own experience on this one - When I finally started out "on my own" I desperately tried to get the same results out of nearfields and smaller somewhat "full range" loudspeakers until I finally (FINALLY!!!) wound up with a used set of B&W Matrix 802's.

If I would've just looked for those in the first place, I would've saved a lot of trouble and "respectable results" would've come a LOT sooner.

That being said - When I was working over other people's shoulders, I was always using large, full-range, standard dispersion monitoring. Nearfields were for flipping over to check with - if they were in the room at all. So, I might be a little biased in that respect. However, I *did* try the nearfield and "bookshelf" sized boxes for some time - and hated every minute of it - so I suppose I may have a basis for the bias...

Besides the engineer, they're the absolute most important thing in the studio. I know a few guys who have a "rule of thumb" that your monitors should cost you three times whatever your most expensive piece of gear is.

I think that's a whisker excessive myself - But I totaly understand the thought - You will only ever be as good as your monitoring scenario allows you to be.