The Score Magazine September 2017 issue! | Page 32
MALIK ARSHSAQ
BEGINNERS
GUIDE TO
STUDIO
MONITORS
Whether it’s to equalize an instrument or to see if your
vocals sit in perfectly with your mix, you’ll need a pair of
speakers that can translate precisely, the information in
your DAW and the changes being made in it, to your ears.
If you’re an engineer or a producer or even an enthusiast
who likes to dabble in music,and are looking to upgrade
from mixing on headphones to investing in a pair of studio
monitors for your home studio, in this edition of Beginner’s
Guide, we’ll be getting into why you might need to invest in
a pair of studio monitors, what factors you’ll need to look
into while choosing them and helping you choose a budget-
happy pair that satisfies all your needs while not burning a
hole in your pocket.
One of the most common questions asked is, Why can’t I
just continue mixing/producing on headphones? While
headphones do have certain advantages, like the fact that
mixing on headphones is completely independent of the
room and surrounding you’re in, whether the room is
acoustically treated or not since the information is being
projected directly into your ears. And the reliability and
stability that comes with mixing using a pair of familiar
headphones are unparalleled. But one of the most important
drawbacks that come with using headphones is that your
ears begin to tire out and fatigue very easily. This not only
affects your ability to work with precision, but might also
affect your listening in the long run. This makes working on
headphones for long hours at an end a very strenuous task.
Once we’ve come to the conclusion that we absolutely need
to get some reference monitors, these are the factors that
will determine which set of monitors that you will end
up selecting. In this edition, we will only be looking into
powered (amplified internally) near-field monitors because
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of the ease of practically applying them in home studios.
First, you will have to consider what kind of set-up that will
satisfy your requirements based on the nature of work that
you intend to carry out in your studio. For example, if you
are a hip-hop/trap producer, it is likely that you will require
a 2.1 speaker set-up with two near-field monitors and a
subwoofer since it’s a bass-heavy genre of music. On the
other hand, if your clients are mostly movie producers you
might need a 5.1 speaker set-up to showcase the cinematic
surround sound.
One of the most important things that need to be considered
while picking studio monitors is the frequency response.
The frequency range (bandwidth) is basically the spectrum
of frequencies that the speaker can reproduce. For example,
the frequency range of the human ear is roughly 20Hz-20
kHz, 20 Hz being the lowest sound that your ear can hear
and 20 kHz is the highest. While you would obviously want
your monitors to be able to cover the entire audible range,
it is also very important to make sure that your monitors
reproduce these frequencies relatively even. This means
that you would want to see how much variation (in terms
of decibels) there will be across the frequency range. For
instance, a ±2db variation indicates that some frequencies
may be louder or softer by as much as 2 decibels at various
points across the full range. For most recording and
production work, a frequency range of 50 Hz-20 kHz with
a rating of ± 3 dB or less will provide well-balanced sound.
You might want to consider an additional sub-woofer if
you’re focused entirely on more bass-heavy music.
It has to be kept in mind that the flatter the frequency
response, the better the monitors (or headphones, for that
matter) will be for recording and produce music. There are