The Importance of Accurate Monitoring in the Studio

How many times has this happened to you? You’ve been slaving away for hours, even days, mixing your latest musical masterpiece in your home studio. Everything sounds absolutely perfect. Then, you burn it to a CD, jump in the car, and pop it in your CD player. You’re ready to hit the open road and jam out to the greatest tune you’ve ever recorded. Then, the CD starts playing. You’re underwhelmed. The CD sounds dull and lifeless. There’s not enough high end. There’s too much low end. And what happened to the snare drum? You can hardly hear it at times because it’s being buried in the mix by other instruments.

This is a familiar scenario, and it reveals one of the greatest challenges of recording and mixing audio: creating a mix that’s “portable”, or “translates” well on other playback systems. In a nutshell, this means that your mix sounds good on a variety of playback systems: your studio monitors, car stereo, home stereo, computer speakers, Ipod earbuds…well, you get the picture. One of the biggest hurdles to creating a portable mix is accurate monitoring in your control room or mixing space. Notice that I said “accurate monitoring”, and not “accurate monitors”. The reason I say that is because accurate monitors are only part of the equation when it comes to accurate monitoring.

That being said, accurate monitoring should start with accurate monitors. You want monitors that have a reasonably flat frequency response and are not “flattering” to the music. In other words, you want monitors that are honest, and don’t artificially hype certain elements of the mix to make it sound better than it really does. If your monitors hype certain elements, it makes it very difficult to make decisions while you mix.

For example, I once owned a set of monitors that were very bright. They over-emphasized the highs so that when my mixes were played back on other systems, they sounded dull. I owned another set of monitors that were very small. Because of their small size, their bass reproduction wasn’t that great. As a result, I would over-emphasize the bass in my mixes. When I played back my mixes on other systems, the bass was too much, because I was over-compensating during the mixing process.

Hence the need for accurate monitoring. If you can’t hear a true representation of how your mix sounds, you will under-emphasize the elements that are being emphasized by your monitoring. When your mixes are played back on other systems, those elements will be lacking. Conversely, if your monitoring system under-emphasizes certain elements, you will over-compensate, and those elements will be too prominent when played back on other systems.

Now, before you even ask it, I’ll try and answer one of the most oft-asked questions on recording and pro audio forums: which monitors are the best, and which should I buy for my home studio? The answer is: it depends. It depends most notably on your budget and your needs. You can spend as little as $100 up to many thousands of dollars on studio monitors. My advice is to buy the best monitors that you can to meet your needs, using as much money as you can spare within reason.

When I say “to meet your needs”, what I mean is this: if all that you plan on doing is recording and mixing your own songs in your home studio for your own enjoyment, you can get by with spending a lot less than someone like me, who also pursues this studio thing as a business. In fact, if you’ve got a home studio for the primary purpose of writing and recording demos, I would actually recommend that you keep it simple–spend most of your time and energy on writing and playing instead of spending all of your time, energy, and most notably MONEY on less-than-stellar recording gear. Then, when you’re ready to record a serious CD for commercial release, come see me at my studio (for more on this, check out the article Home Studios are Killing Music, by Producer/Engineer Ronan Chris Murphy).

Ok, so how do you decide what monitors are the best for the money? My advice there is to research the forums, read buyer reviews on websites and online stores, and read reviews in professional pro audio publications and on their accompanying websites. If the general consensus seems to be that they’re good, they’re probably good. If the general consensus seems to be that they’re bad, they’re probably bad. However, you need to recognize that some folks are cheerleaders when it comes to certain brands and haters when it comes to others. That’s just a fact of life. I tend to dismiss any review that says something like this: “[FILL IN THE BRAND NAME HERE] sucks. I wouldn’t buy their products if they were the last ones on earth. One time I bought one of their speakers, and it got so hot it caught on fire and burnt my house down.”

Let’s be honest. Most brands make some products that are good, and others that are not so good. Everyone’s entitled to a failure every once in a while. Just keep in mind that if you’re buying a cheaper brand that’s not known for durability and reliability, you may want to check into the return policy for the store you’re buying from, and find out what kind of warranty repair or replacement service is offered by the manufacturer. Otherwise, if your research bears out that a certain product from a cheaper brand performs well and provides good value for the price, by all means, buy it and try it.

If you’re able, don’t just rely on online reviews. Get your butt out of the studio, drive to local music store that has several models set up, and audition each of them using some familar CD’s as reference material. Maybe even take some of your own mixes (which you should be REALLY familiar with) on CD to try them out, and see how the various models stack up. Ultimately, choose the monitor that you think is best that’s within your budget.

Now, to my earlier point of “accurate monitoring” vs. “accurate monitors”. My point here is that even the best, most accurate monitor will still sound bad if placed within in a bad acoustic space. For example, I’ve played my drums in certain venues where they sounded great, and others where they sounded terrible. Same drums, same heads, same tuning, same sticks, same drummer, etc. The only difference was the room in which they were played. The same holds true with speakers. If your room sounds bad, your speakers will most likely sound bad, or at least be inaccurate to the point that it’s detrimental to your mixes. So, not only must you spend some money on the speakers themselves, you also need to spend some money on acoustic treatments to improve the acoustics of your room. Acoustic treatments are an education in and of themselves, and are beyond the scope of this article, so let’s leave it at that for now.

Even after you’ve treated your room, there may still be some acoustic anomalies working against you. In this case, there are still some options available. Many active monitors on the market today include some kind of “room compensation” or eq settings. These can help you to tailor the speaker to your room by cutting or boosting certain frequencies based upon how well your room is treated and the position of the monitors in the room (if they’re near the walls, near the corners of the room, etc.). If you buy monitors that are equipped with such settings, consult the owner’s manual for guidance on setting them up properly.

Another option is to use some kind of “room correction” system in conjunction with your DAW. These generally consist of some kind of measurement mic and some software for performing a room analysis. Based on the room analysis, your system will be configured (EQ’d), usually via a plugin that you’ll place on the stereo master bus in your DAW. This plugin will attempt to correct the frequency response of your system so that it’s optimized at the listening position, making it easier to make accurate mix decisions. Then, when you mix down in your DAW, you’ll need to bypass or remove this room correction plugin so that the resulting mix is unaffected by it (this way, it only affects your monitoring).

By following the suggesions above, you should be well on your way to more accurate monitoring. When your monitoring system is accurate, you’re able to make more informed decisions about your mix, creating a mix that’s portable and translates well on a variety of different playback systems.