When you listen to music – whether at home, in the car or in a recording studio, your ears ultimately will guide your decisions on what adjustments to make. The speakers you use for your playback make a big difference in how you hear those sounds. This is the job of a quality studio monitor in your recording room.

Studio monitors are designed to reproduce audio signals that are as flat as possible across the audible frequency spectrum. Unlike consumer stereo speakers that may be tweaked to produce a strong bass response and sound punchy, good studio monitors don’t emphasize particular frequencies over others. A good monitor will give you accurate, consistent response no matter the volume level. This allows you to listen critically to how certain elements of the mix sound at different volumes. They also capture fleeting musical transients that add subtlety and nuance to the sounds they reproduce.

Of course, it takes quality components and exhaustive engineering to make sure the signal remains flat, and this is one of the major differences reflected in the prices of studio monitors. That said, if you have a limited budget with which to equip your home or project studio, you’ll find moderately priced monitors that can do the job.

Our recommendation is to hear the monitors in your own room. But this is not possible for every model of every brand. Hence the best way to arrive at a decision is to go for the ones you have heard at a commercial studio or even better, a friend’s setup you have been to.

And with changes in acoustical treatment, positioning of the studio monitors could make them sound even better. We also recommend you to buy the Sonarworks Reference Kit to help you maximise the potential of your speaker setup.

You can go through the list of studio monitors here>>