Re: studio monitors on a budget
I know it sucks to hear but 'ya gotta get out there and listen to things yourself.
Every single time I've bought a set of monitors off blind recommendations I've been really disappointed & ultimately tossed real good money out the window. Didn't seem to matter if it was the big soffit mounted Urei 811's or the small stuff like horrortones.
The magic word is translation.
When it leaves the room does it sound 'right' or is it totally different?!
Monitors are really the LAST place you should cut money out of a budget... that and room treatment as a pair. Every single decision you make, from picking & placing mics & dialing EQ's through adjusting the reverb that one last time while printing that final mix with the revision of the edit of the final final 2nd revision, is based on what you HEAR through that system of room & monitors.
I've always got at least two sets of speakers connected, if not three... big ones and small ones. For a while I was & still am using Dynaudio BM15s, the passive ones as the 'A' set, which are like $1200 and the 'B' was a pair of small 5" things I got from Rat shack for maybe $30 or $40. I had those on a stand over in the corner, about 2 or 2.5 meters away so it hit me as mono & the bigs on stands in an equilateral triangle to the mix position.
That combo worked well! Stuff always translated... the big ones had a bunch of top & bottom... all the detail and stereo spread & the small ones had really focused mids, like a car stereo so all the holes were filled. It was really funny, in the corner I've got a set of speakers I bought on sale with beer money & then there's the megabuck marvels.
My overall favorite monitor though is the mono 5" speaker in the meter bridge of the Studer A80 2-track! Sounds really crappy but if somethings really whack with the blend I always catch it there. Like the snare drum is way too loud or that sorta thing...
Last pair of monitors I bought blind & still own are Tannoy PBM 6.5. Had a bunch of people recommend 'em, so I bought 'em and I never got along with 'em & still sorta don't. When stuff left the room it was always a guessing game... never really "off" but never true either. I had retired 'em to the stereo for a while, PS2 & DVD... that stuff but recently pulled 'em out & have 'em next to the Dyns.
I had 824's for a while and don't anymore but I still work on 'em a lot since they're everywhere. There's a lotta low end, almost too much but it can be dialed back with the rear switches which is what I usually do. They're good tools that SUCK to service. Had some problems with mine like a blown fuse that was soldered to the inside of a PC board that was under another PC board... cost$100 for a .25 fuse. Then I blew a woofer and smackie couldn't get me a replacement for about 6 months because they don't stock replacement parts, so I was sorta forced to replace 'em.
Went into NYC and listened to EVERYTHING from the $5k adam S3A's and B&W 803D's (like $10k) through $250 bookshelfs at J&R with the same set of music and ultimately bought the Dyns. Price no object, I liked 'em the best aside from one other audiophile pair which was like $6500 & would probably blow up the first time there's a good ZAP! from the bass player unplugging his DI or hot patching a live mic... or at least thats what the company that builds 'em told me.
A 'good' set of monitors is like a camera lens or a magnifying glass. Gives you more detail without being cloudy or full of artifacts.
Go listen to stuff!
