Just a quick note regarding the differences between speakers for recreational listing, for making pro recordings and for mixing pro recordings,
here are a couple of truths about speakers that most people, including most musicians and some audio engineers do not know.
Most Hi Fi speakers are designed to discolor the sound in an enhancing way (or to the best of their ability within their given parameters/budget).
Studio Monitor speakers are designed to be as accurate or as neutral as possible in order to show as much detail of the audio field and its elements as possible. This is important as the speakers will show up imperfections or sounds that may not normally when listening using speakers that mask the audio using built in eq or fx due to their construction.
An example where this is particularly handy is when an audio engineer is monitoring a recording of a musical instrument or vocalist in the studio. If for example he is recording an acoustic guitarist that has a feint buzz in one of the strings when he plays a certain chord,
If the engineer is using speakers that do not pick up this detail, and he or his client does not want that buzz to be in the recordings,
he is then left with a bad recording due to the speakers that he is using. This buzz may have been picked up if he was using better quality and more accurate / neutral studio monitors.
Now, once audio has been recorded in this manner, there is little that can be done. Or, what can be done often takes a lot of time and effort. All this time and effort could have been saved by using the right type of speakers.
Now, many people use their monitoring speakers for mixing with.
Where this may be due to low budgets. Many pro mix engineers will recommend that engineers use a completely different type of speaker than the ones that they use to record (track) with.
As, during the mixing process, a mix engineer isn't looking for accurate sounding speakers that pick up every tiny bit of detail.
This is because the recordings have already been made and are now ready to be polished.
The mix engineer needs speakers that simulate speakers that the end product (the music) will be listened to on.
A mix engineer will generally have a favorite pair of speakers that simulate a BAD quality and inaccurate set of Hi Fi speakers.
This is because if the engineer is able to make the music sound good on BAD sounding speakers, the music will then sound awesome on speakers that are of a higher quality. The now discontinued Yamaha NS10's were an industry standard, not because they were the most accurate speakers in the world, but because they sounded like a BAD Hi FI.
This is why engineering using highly accurate and highly expensive monitors is generally a bad idea.
Most studio's will have several pairs of speakers. Some for tracking (recording). some for mixing, and some Hi Fi ones for testing out a mix.
Hope this helps.
