Finally I have the money to buy my first pair of studio monitors.
I produce some kind of Electro, House, Minimal House, Deep House, Prog. House, etc that I'm too lazy to care to exactly specify, but i hope this helps with what speakers i should choose in your opinion.
With these speakers I'm planning on buying a Focusrite 2i4 audio interface.
In the end I'll go to a music store and try the speakers out myself, but your input is still very helpful.
My room
My room is roughly 4x6 meter in area, and probably 2,5 meters in hight. What's a little different now is that the walls are tilted (the roof) on the sides as I live on the second floor, with some flat space in the top that is the room's roof. The walls on the shortsides of the room has regular walls, though they're occupied with windows and doors etc, so not much space to place room treatment.
Right now i have no acoustic treatment in my room, though this is something that I'll look into the future when I have cash for it, I'll probably build some bass traps and buy some pieces.
When I have my new speakers set up I'll have my desk facing the windows on one of the shortsides since I believe I'll hear less phasing then than if I were to keep my desk in front of one of the tilted walls as I do right now. This means that I have 2 windows behind my desk, which makes it difficult for placing room treatment behind the speakers. Though I'll have the speakers on speaker stands a little bit away for the wall/windows.
But... I might move to a new place within a year, so don't rely too much on this info.
How I will use my speakers
I work as a sounddesigner, so the speakers will be used for fine sample editing and preset creation.
More than this I make my own music (in FL Studio 12 if that helps), that I mix and master myself as well.
Lastly, I'll use these speakers in my spare time when I just relax and listen to music, sometimes loud.
What I look for in the speakers
I'm not too concerned with speakers that has some tonal oddities, like if they are muddy in the midrange, or too bassy, too sharp, or too tinny in the highend. Because I'm well used to speaker correction EQing and I know what I'm doing in this area.
What I more look for is how accurate and naked the speakers produces the sound so I easily can find issues to correct, as well as how deep down in the frequency spectrum they reach in a treated room, as I sometimes need to work with really low bass (sometimes all the way down to 30 Hz).
I really really really want 8 inch bass cones, not 6 inch. I find 8-inch speakers mostly respond more even and natural in the lowend compared with 6-inch speakers, just my experience.
The contestants
- KRK Rokit RP8 G3
- Yamaha HS8
- JBL LSR308
- Pioneer S-DJ80X
- Tannoy Reveal 802
- Behringer B3031A
The Rokits seem to be speakers that you either love or hate. Some people seem to love their sound and think they're very accurate, while other complain that they seem to be unaccurate and even fall apart as time goes (is this true?).
The Yamahas I've heard in action before myself, and they sound sooo smooth, like silk - but... almost too smooth, as if they color the sound. On the other hand I've read that people like how low they reach frequencywise.
Then we have the Behringer, they seem to have less deep frequecy response, yet they have bigger cones?
I can't go higher in price range than this.
Hope you have all the info you need
