Before You Buy Studio Monitors

When you're building your home recording studio, one of your first purchases will likely be a nice pair of studio monitors. Studio monitors are special speakers that have a nice flat, accurate frequency response, and they're used specifically for listening to your recordings and mixes in a somewhat controlled, more reliable environment. Most studio monitors are designed with accuracy in mind, and depending on the model you buy, can come in varying degrees of sonic quality -- from mostly-accurate to a crisp, razor-sharp, flat frequency response.

Let's cover some of the basics about buying studio monitors.

Ask Yourself: Active or Passive?

The first element you'll need to consider is whether you're looking for active or passive speakers. Active speakers are monitors that already have amplification built in, and don't require anything other than an audio feed and electricity. Active speakers are the most common that you'll find in most studios, because external amplification can bulky & expensive. For passive speakers, you'll need to also buy an amplifier (or use a powered mixer in your studio, something most studios don't have the resources for). Active speakers generally offer a much better value and more consistent quality.

Check your frequency response.

All studio monitors have what's called a frequency response; this is how the monitor portrays different frequency ranges throughout the spectrum. You'll ideally want a monitor that's as flat as possible; measured in hertz, a typical frequency response for a flat monitor is 20Hz to 20kHz; most speakers can reproduce up to 20- or 23kHz with no problem; the low end response, the data you hear from 20Hz to 100Hz, can be very strong or very weak depending on the makeup of the individual speaker; you want to watch for a frequency response that's no worse than 20Hz to 20kHz, preferably 10Hz to 22kHz.

Consider if you need a subwoofer.

If the music you're generally working on is bass-heavy, you might want to supplement your studio monitoring system with a subwoofer. Generally, a subwoofer delivers ultra-low end data, usually from 10Hz to around 20-30Hz. Subwoofers are larger, slower-moving speakers that specialize in just one frequency range: low end. Subwoofers aren't necessary, and if your system isn't designed with the proper crossovers and amplification in mind to seamlessly add an additional subwoofer, you may find that it's not worth the effort to try to match a subwoofer. That's up to you, but most studios do fine on their own without one.

How big is your room?

When buying a studio monitor, another consideration you should make is how big the room is that you're monitoring in. Most monitoring rooms in home studios are relatively small; you're probably using a bedroom or basement as your studio base, and won't need to fill a lot of space. A typical set of bookshelf-sized speakers can fill a medium-small room with no difficulty; if you're setting up a studio control room that can hold, say, over 5 people, you may consider larger speakers -- speakers over 75 watts in power.

In smaller monitoring rooms, speakers from 10 watts to 60 watts are generally more than plenty.

Most important, trust your ears.

The final and most important piece of advice in selecting a new pair of studio monitors sounds relatively simple, but it's the most often overlooked element: trust your ears. Listen to every pair of studio monitors you're considering buying, and find the right pair of speakers based on what your ears tell you. Nobody -- not even the slickest salesman of the bunch -- can sell you a speaker you don't need if you're armed with knowing what you want from your purchase, sonically. Listening carefully and making an informed decision based on overall sonic quality, to your ears, is extremely important.