About monitor speakers/sound card...(?)

J

jocasrb

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Hello :) I know its better to have monitor speakers than normal ones for production...and i know its better to have some 500e+ soundcard than the one you have got in your comptuter (dont know whats her name on english :D)...but my question is...logically, we have more people who is listening (to say rap) with very cheap speakers (like where price is 50e) and with normal sound card (default)...and they there cant hear everything on them like someone (producer) who has very expensive monitors...but isnt it a point to mix/master a sound (instrumental, whole song, no matter) on average speakers (...ok,not on the cheapest one...(or ye)) because like that we can hear THE SAME 'range' like listeners...? in short, whats the point to mix/master on 1000e speakers, where YOU can hear everything and hear everything you modify, but your finished project, LISTENERS cant get the same sound like you have...and yea, we are making music (for us) and for them...i hope ill get answer on this, thank you very much :)
 
You don't know definitely what systems the people use listening your music. On monitor speakers you hear everything as it is and so you can edit/mix it properly and this is important for the reason to make it sound as best as it can on various systems the listeners use.
 
You can also reference the final audio on lower quality gear. From my experience, it's a lot easier (and less time consuming) to start with relatively transparent monitors
 
It's always best to mix and master on professional near-field monitors. You want your music to have the best quality right? Not all of your clients are going to have cheap equipment! If you want to hear what listeners with lower quality gear hear, try referencing your mix using a pair of headphones (That's what I do at least). But in the end its always good to have top-quality mixes using top-quality equipment. You never know what kind of gear someone on the other end has. You want to make sure that your mixes are crystal clear for them too!
 
yea, you all are right, but in my country i dont think too much people use monitor speakers, also a lot of them listen songs to smartphones...especially in my town...i'm not trying to be a popular with my beats, just for 'my' people, and i think for it its enough to have solid -normal- speakers for producing...i mean, yea, some of my citizens have KRK or whatever, and maybe some pro-people from another country want to listen to my tracks, but thats probably 10% of all views...so i think its not very clever to spend a lot of money on gear...or maybe it is, BUT if you cant get a 'good' sound with your 'solid' speakers, than you know 0 about mixing and mastering...so my vision is, depends on your goal, you should buy it after your 4-5-6 years of experience in mix/master....:) maybe im wrong but i think its smart move :)
 
The point of mixing on proper speakers is that your mix translates to as many different systems as possible. If you use a biased, not-that-great a monitoring environment, then it'll probably be nice on some systems but not in others. A good mix on a good system will sound great on the lower-end systems as well. But yeah, it's always a good idea to reference on lower-end systems as well. But there's no point compromising your quality before it even reaches the listeners.
 
krushing said:
A good mix on a good system will sound great on the lower-end systems as well.
Click to expand...

this little changes my mind...one more thing : isnt this a good solution: listen to some good produced track, to say some DrDre's song (or some which you really like, 'associated with your style') and on your speakers (to say, cheaper) listen to everything you can hear on that song...so later, when you produce, you are trying to get that (or similar) sound...is that possible? i think possibly no, becouse they are using hardwers (we amateurs have only softwer plugins)...? :)
 
The same thing applies: you're not gonna hear the details of your reference tracks in the same way, if at all, with not-so-great speakers - which in turn can end up meaning that they'll never even exist in your own. That said, great records have been made in all kinds of environments, from sonically awful bedrooms to state of the art studios. If you know what you're doing, anything can work - but if you've never experienced what a great system should sound like, it's hard to know what you're missing.

The hardware/software thing is irrelevant, imo - the older classics were made on hardware because that's what they had at the time. I'd wager 90% of modern mainstream production is done with plugins & totally itb. The hardware is starting to be more and more an acquired taste & another flavour in the toolkit rather than a clearly superior option.
 
thanks for that...just one more thing, maybe offtopic but still important:

maybe i have cheap but (very) good speakers, i mean with offering very huge sound range, i can hear 'real' sound....my speakers were made in West Germany, about 1978. ....one speaker's weight is about 15kgs...(witch is irony for modern ones, they are empty now, literally)

i found some link, how they look like: HiFi-Lautsprechereinheit L 620/1 Speaker-P Braun; Frankfurt (fourth picture, which is down-righ, is the best example how they look)

is there possibility that i have speakers (they're old one - maybe manufacturers then know better what should good speaker has in it .... lol :D ) which have the same (or similar) quallity of sound compared to monitors ... ? :)
 
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Yes, it's of course possible - monitor speakers aren't "special" in the sense that their design would be fundamentally different from "regular" speakers. Of course their frequency response is designed to be as flat as possible (well, hypothetically at least) whereas a regular speaker is usually designed to sound good. But of course, no way to tell w/o hearing them :) Also remember that the room plays a big part - you could have the best monitors in the world, but they won't sound but average unless the room is properly acoustically treated.
 
well thank you very much for these explanations...my room has 0 or -1 point for acoustic....in my opinion, still theres no good reason to, not buy, to even think about buying these monitors...thanks again :)
 
You can also reference the final audio on lower quality gear. From my experience, it's a lot easier (and less time consuming) to start with relatively transparent monitors
 
Samaran11 said:
You can also reference the final audio on lower quality gear. From my experience, it's a lot easier (and less time consuming) to start with relatively transparent monitors
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think that's key - even if your monitors (and the room they're in) are decent, it doesn't really remove the need for referencing on various setups. I'd advise always keeping even un-finished mixes of your stuff on your phone so you can plug it into whatever system you come across.
 
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