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[worldmusic]

hi, can anyone tell me which studio monitors should i buy for my home studio and also i m planing to buy digidesign mbox 2 pro factory protools, is this mbox thing is gud enough...

thanx ...

looking for repl

[cymbaline]

i have the alesis mkII's and im really happy with them. good flat sound, not too expensive. Ive tried all the m audio monitors and they tend to have a pretty bad frequency courb, especially the 4s and the 5s. If your looking into yamahas, I suggest the ns80s, anything smaller than that is gonna be really papery sounding, not a lot of bass. Theyre good if youve got another pair of monitors to compare with, but not everyone can affors two pairs of really good speakers.

for the mbox, Im not too sure about that, since I dont use it. Protools is kinda different than the other programs. Remember that protools needs DSP, which you get with seperately bought cards, or in your real digi racks (which are expensive). Digidesign is also known to have bad preamps. I use Logic Pro, Cubase SX3, and Reason. You can choose your sound card, so your not stuck with digidesign, which means that if you want to add inputs or expand your system, you can. I suggest getting the new MOTU 8pre. Its only about 500 bucks, its got 8 preamps, midi, etc. Its firewire, and if you want to move up to 16, or 24, or however many (up to 92) more ins, you can. Just get another and daisy chain them.

voila, good luck.
_________________
- cymbaline

[canton]

[JFK]

Now this is a matter of big discussion:

I don't think monitor speakers are really necessary, unless you have an aproppriate studio. This is why:

If you mixdown and produce in your room, furniture and different surfaces will cause hundreds different types of reverberation, your carpets and curtains will absorve the sound, and the size and shape of your room will also influence the sound that you'll hear. So, you won't hear anything linear.

So, here's my tip:

If you got some good multimedia speakers (creative, JBL, Altec Lansing, Logitech, just like canton said), stick with them. You know why? 'cause you're used to hearing from them, and that alone is very important. You'll know how the bass from that specific music sounds, and you'll be able to reproduce it just as good as with professional monitors, cause you're hearing from the same source. Get it?

It also helps A LOT to listen in as many places as you can: in your car stereo, in a club (very important), in your hi-fi (cause youre used to hearing from it, and you'll detect differences), in your MP3 phones...

Now, if you have a studio, theres hundreds of good speakers out there :)
I suggest anything from Mackie.

Oh, and cymbaline knows his stuff!
Great monitor reviews man!

I hope this is usefull,
Stay cool
_________________
Polymerized - Nodachi - JFK

www.mp3.com/nodachi

[Brap]

Personally, I just got my first pair of reference monitors about a month ago. They are Event ALP5 near-field monitors...they are each individually amped and have 3 types of inputs. I live in a small house, closely situated between two others in a dense neighborhood (emphasis on 'hood', sadly). I needed something that would provide some clean sound without too much volume, and lemmetellya, placed right up at ear level, these things shred. I can't do sub bass experiements so much, but there is a woofer these go with waiting for me when we move.

I looked into a whole slew of near-field powered monitors and went with a suggestion from my buddy (read: salesrep...they're cool) Paul at Sweetwater and have been thrilled ever since. I paid $329 for the pair, shipping included. This was about exactly my budget to still afford Ableton Live (buy an Xboard or an E-MU soundcard and you get Ableton for $249 as a download...I did) and life is swirling with possibilities now. Wait:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ALP5/

That was easy enough to share. I love Sweetwater, even though they didn't hire me when I applied back when I was a younger man. Good business is still good business.

Then there's that other thing...sure, you can get a set of multimedia speakers that sound *wonderful*, all for less than $100. I did. But realize that these are what I just replaced in my system with the ALP5s. Why? Because your recordings will be weak in the areas that you speakers are strong; home speakers and studio speakers meet very different needs, but if it sounds good on good reference monitors, the recording will sound good on all home speakers. This is what I learned in days of research before dropping my cash.

Peace.
Brap