DJDEALS.COM STUDIO MONITOR BUYING GUIDE

There’s only one piece of recording studio equipment that you use every single time you work: Studio Monitors. Everything you produce and everything you hear passes through your studio monitors, so the impact of studio monitors on your recording and mixing is pretty obvious. Despite amazing advances in audio technology, speakers still simply do one thing: push air. Choosing a pair of monitors from DJDeals.com isn't a difficult decision because we only offer the best Studio Monitors.

Studio monitors are are designed to be placed on desktops or on stands and are made to be positioned three to eight feet from your listening position. We always suggest putting monitors on speaker isolation platforms such as the Primacoustic Isowedge so that energy isn’t transferred from the speakers or your speaker stands.

Before examining studio monitor specificationsyou should know the difference between active (powered) and passive speakers. Active monitors have a built-in amplifier so you won’t need to buy a speaker amplifier; passive monitors require external amplification. Neither is better than the other, but we vastly prefer to use powered speakers over passive ones. If you decide on passive monitors, your choice of amplifier will have a profound effect on how the studio monitors sound, but you'll have more equipment to buy, and far less portability. Active speakers have built-in amplifiers that are optimized for the speaker. Active monitors may have multiple amplifiers such as one for the woofer and a second one for the tweeter. This is known as biamplification. A biamplified speaker puts the crossover at line level, before the amps as this is more efficient: Consider a speaker that uses a 100-watt amplifier to power the woofer and a 30-watt amplifier to power the tweeter; this combination makes sense because the woofer requires more power to move a larger mass of air than does the tweeter. Placing the crossover before the power amplifier means it is never subject to high voltages and heat which improves the reliability of the speaker. Biamplification also reduces Intermodulation Distortion (IMD), and allows the manufacturer to build in protection to avoid damage should you turn the volume up too high.

Studio Monitor Spefications Explained:

Frequency Response
This is an analysis of frequency versus amplitude. Don’t confuse response with frequency range, which tells you the lowest and highest frequencies a monitor can reproduce, but doesn’t provide a tolerance. A small speaker may have a frequency range extending down to 30Hz, but the amplitude at that frequency might be -15dB making that 30Hz essentially fictional. Frequency response with a tolerance (for example, +/-3 dB) indicates the speaker’s overall accuracy. Frequency response can vary when your listening position changes from on-axis (directly in front of the monitor) to off-axis (when you are listening off to the side). If you require a wide "sweet spot" (perhaps to accommodate many listeners in the studio), then off-axis response becomes more important.

Impedance
For a passive speaker, this is the average resistance, expressed in ohms, that the speaker presents to the power amp, because a speaker’s resistance varies with frequency. As impedance drops below 4 ohms, some amps may be able to develop more power, but as the impedance gets lower the amplifier begins to see what looks more and more like a short-circuit; and amps don’t like short-circuits. Most monitors have impedance ranging from 4 to 8 ohms, and most power amplifiers do not have any problems driving this range of impedances. This specification is irrelevant in an active system because the manufacturer has already matched the amplifier to the speaker.

Power handling
The amount of power a speaker can handle is measured over time. Power-handling measurement practices can vary, so the more meaningful specification is AES power handling, which is defined as filtered pink noise input for a period of two hours.

Sensitivity
Sensitivity is meaningful because it describes a passive speaker’s efficiency; the amount of power the speaker requires to achieve a certain volume. A specification of 92dB SPL at 1 watt/1 meter indicates that the speaker will produce a sound pressure level of 92dB, measured one meter away with 1-watt input. To increase the volume level 3dB, you’d need to double the power. In this example, you’d need 2 watts to produce 95dB SPL, 4 watts to produce 98dB SPL, 8 watts to produce 101dB SPL, etc. This helps give you an idea of how much power your amplifier needs to be able to produce.

We recommend you do your own research and make your own decision on which studio monitor is best for your particular needs, but we offer the following tips:

Listen to really expensive speakers first, even if you can’t afford them, so you have a reference point.

Listen to commercial songs that you’ve heard on multiple audio systems when testing speakers and listen carefully for sounds you haven’t noticed before.

Bass should be tight and well defined and you should be able to distinguish the pitch of each bass note.

High-frequency sounds should be crisp, but not piercing.

If the speaker comes with a grill, listen to it both with and without the grill and observe whether or not the sound changes.

Evaluate speakers in a room that's similar to your recording environment including a work desk or mixing console because furniture and other equipment in the room with have a dramatic effect on how the studio monitors sound.