I like plugins, I like hardware, but the things which really get my attention are transducers - Microphones and speakers. While many of us accumulate mic collections (guilty!), the same can’t be said of monitors. Some people use 2 or even 3 pairs but they tend to be very different from each other. Maybe a soffit mounted pair of mains, a pair or quality nearfields (which in my experience get used 90% of the time!) and maybe a pair of ‘grot box’ type monitors. But you’re only likely to see multiple pairs of similar monitors in the demo room of a shop. Imagine if the same approach was taken to mics? “We have three mics. An RCA 44BX, a U87 and a cheap computer mic”…

The best way to choose a pair of monitors is of course to try them in your own studio. Research is important. Specs are helpful as long as you understand them properly. As someone who has reviewed plenty of monitors I’m very aware that reviews can only ever be subjective. They are one person’s opinion after all. Something my reviewing experience has reinforced to me over and over again is that however flat a monitor’s plot shows it to be, they all sound different from each other. Sometimes remarkably so.

Hearing monitors at other studios or in demo rooms is a lot better than not hearing them at all, but you really do need to hear them in your regular space to have a meaningful opinion of what they sound like and whether you like them. However at the initial selection stage, considering the number of alternative monitors in a particular category and price range, it's necessary to weigh up the pros and cons of different alternatives in principle before diving down into the specifics of how any particular model performs.

Some aspects of a monitor’s performance are predictable. If you understand Max SPL and the inverse square law you’ll be able to assess whether a particular monitor is going to give you sufficient headroom in your space, and whether it will fulfil the requirements for an Atmos install if that’s what you’re building. Likewise bass extension can be assessed from the specs, as long as you have enough data and manufacturers are providing comparable figures. But most aspects of how a monitor actually sounds when you use it can’t be assessed remotely. 

Before you choose models to audition you need a shortlist. What goes on that shortlist will probably be guided by the key features which are important to you, and of course price! Here are a few of the principle differences you'll find between monitors available today and some thoughts on the respective pros and cons of each.

Active Or Passive

It's overwhelmingly likely that in 2023 any monitor that you choose will be active. Active monitoring took over the home and professional studio space some decades ago and the advantages are clear to see. However passive monitors haven't gone away and occasionally present significant advantages over their active counterparts.

An active monitor is designed as a system matching a particular set of drivers with a particular amplifier changes the results appreciably and HiFi talk about matching speakers with amplifiers, a conversation which has largely disappeared from studios. An active monitor will have carefully matched loudspeakers and amplifiers and in a properly designed system the performance will be optimal.

Also an active monitor uses line level components in the crossover, where as passive monitors use crossovers which work at speaker level. This is challenging and expensive to do well and in the last few years active designs increasingly use crossovers realised in DSP. Often functionally identical to analogue designs but 100% consistent because they don't rely on physical components.

Once the norm, the first generation of nearfilelds such as the Yamaha NS10 and Rogers LS3/5A, it sounds like passive speakers have no advantage over active designs today, but this isn't always the case. It is simpler to install passive speakers. They don't require power and particularly in immersive set ups this can be a distinct advantage. In live sound passive speakers are still very common for exactly this reason, though often with purpose-built amplifiers designed for those specific speakers, and a similar approach is taken by many monitor manufacturers today. Having all the amplifiers together in the same place and in an accessible position and only running speaker leads out to the installed loudspeakers, rather than having to provide power as well, can be much more convenient when dealing with for example and Atmos install.

2 Way Or 3 Way

The two-way monitor loudspeaker is the dominant design and it's easy to see why. With so many two-way boxes out there it's clear that a two-way design hits the sweet spot for performance versus complexity and cost. There are an awful lot to choose from and some great options are available but increasingly over the last few years the compact three-way format has come to be a very viable option compared to the better specified two-way designs.

With a two-way design a tweeter crosses over with a bass-mid driver which handles everything below the crossover frequency, for example the aforementioned NS10 has a crossover frequency of 2KHz so the bass/mid driver carries audio from at least 60Hz-2KHz - over 5 octaves! Lessening the demands on this combined bass/mid range driver by adding a third driver potentially makes for better reproduction and increased headroom. The conventional wisdom is that by introducing a dedicated mid range driver it's possible to move the crossover point out of the crucial mid range area. This doesn’t hold true for most of the three-way compact designs I've tried and if you compare the crossover frequency of a typical two-way with the upper crossover frequency in most compact three ways you’ll find there isn't a great deal of difference. However there is a significant difference in the lowest frequencies reproduced by the mid range driver in a three-way compared to that of a two-way driver. This arguably makes for improved headroom and better bass performance. However if someone were to supplement a two-way design with a dedicated subwoofer they would probably find the low end response of their monitoring system further improved.

Type Of Tweeter

Broadly speaking there are three designs of high frequency driver you'll find on studio monitors. Leaving exotic designs like electrostatic, planar ribbon or even plasma to one side, tweeters will either be soft or hard dome tweeters or folded ribbons. All have the potential to perform extremely well but in my experience I found I have a preference which carries across most examples I've heard. Different tweeters have different characters.

Hard and soft dome tweeters work in the same way in that they are pistons, built to be as light and a stiff as possible so as to best reproduce the highest frequencies. The Air Motion Transformer (AMT) or folded ribbon is an alternative which has managed to break through into the mainstream. A few companies offer this clever and extremely efficient alternative to a piston. It takes direct experience of each to know where any preference lies and I'll keep my preference to myself here as there is no bad option and certainly no best option. Get out there and listen to some speakers.

Cabinet Design

The box in which drivers are mounted makes a huge difference to the results and the larger the box the deeper the bass. Nobody wants a cumbersome speaker and everybody wants extended bass response, but these demands are mutually exclusive! With size comes expense and inconvenience but while there are many tricks to eke additional bass out of smaller boxes, ultimately there is no real substitute for internal volume. Speakers can be tricked into behaving as if they are in larger boxes than they actually are and this has been happening for years. Ported speaker cabinets are the principal way in which this is achieved. We’ll leave to one side exactly how this works but when it's done well it works extremely well.

Ported cabinets when done badly tend towards a loud but restricted bass response. Sometimes referred to as ‘one note bass’, Ports can also be a source of noise though this is less of an issue than it used to be. Porting also affects the behaviour of a speaker in the time domain. This ‘group delay’ can be a source of unsatisfactory timing of bass frequencies. The alternative is the sealed box cabinet. This design has excellent timing often described as having a bass character which is ‘dry’ but the bass response is inherently more restricted than it is in an equivalent sized ported cabinet resulting in sealed box designs being far less common than ported designs these days.

A third and notable alternative cabinet design is the transmission line. This is much less common and in the pro audio space is almost exclusively represented by PMC whose ATL technology provides performance which avoids the disadvantages of both ported and sealed designs. Inherently complex and difficult to do well, the transmission line design has been around for a long time but has never become widespread in spite of its impressive performance. But do check out PMCs!

DSP

I’ve already referred to crossover filters being realised in DSP. Using DSP in hardware in speakers is becoming increasingly commonplace. At the more budget conscious end of the market it can be an effective way to build designs which might otherwise be less economic. At the high end the possibilities offered by comprehensive control over the system including speaker calibration can significantly improve performance once a speaker leaves the anechoic test chamber and begins work out in the real world. This DSP-driven approach has become more available in less high-end products over the years and there is now something of a divide between traditional approaches, which are mature technologies but being based on traditional engineering will always be expensive to do at the highest level, and using DSP. Any speaker calibration technology isn't a get out of jail free card and you have to have the acoustics of your studio in order using traditional acoustic treatment. But when combined with these approaches can reap significant benefits.

A second benefit of introducing digital control into speakers is that of system control, system calibration and expandability. A stereo pair of monitors is a relatively simple system, the complexity rises exponentially with additional channels and the increasing popularity of immersive monitoring systems makes system control and calibration far more complex. The implementation of DSP in monitors can also bring with it software integration which makes the otherwise onerous task of calibrating and setting up an immersive monitoring system far far easier. Something I have advised people of recently when they've been considering monitoring is to future-proof yourself against the potential expansion of your monitoring system. For example a small pair of two-way monitors being used for stereo could prove very useful as surrounds or height channels in a Dolby set up, particularly if they integrate well via DSP and software control.

Brand

There's no getting away from it. I know I'm influenced by brand and if you're being really honest I bet you are too. Brand isn't just about marketing though. A well-known and respected brand is likely to be more attractive to potential buyers if you were to choose to try to pass them on at a later date and if you have a client visit to you then a well respected name on your monitoring won't ever do any harm.

I know that when I see the really well established high end brands I have confidence that all is well. However monitoring isn’t a closed shop and the established brands haven’t pulled the ladder up behind them. There are new and very impressive monitors being launched all the time. There has never been a better time to be looking at buying a set of monitors.

My personal monitors are Neumann KH310s (pictured at the top of the article - compact 3 way, sealed box, active, no DSP). I like them for their transient response. What do you use in your studio and why?