Listening at home

I’m assuming you have at least a project studio or equivalent in your home.

You will want to listen to the various monitors set up in the position where you will actually use them. This presents some inconveniences, because it means you are going to have to remove the speakers you currently have in place, and you are going to have to switch speakers regularly during your selection process. A difference in position of as little as 6” can screw up your evaluation, so resign yourself to the inconvenience. Probably, you will need an assistant to help you. You will need to take considerable care to match levels. This is not a trivial thing. Again, listen in mono first, one channel of audio to one speaker. This will make it much easier to hear the differences between speakers and enable you to reach a satisfactory decision comparatively quickly.

Take your time. Listen to all of the speakers with all of the program material. Make notes. Build up a mental image of each speaker.

Listening blind

I know, I know. Both you and I are completely unbiased and perfectly objective. Nonetheless, research that Floyd Toole has done makes it perfectly clear: we are heavily influenced by brand identity – we all KNOW that Genelecs sound better than Auratones, for instance. That’s called prejudice! To remove that variable, to get down to just the sound quality itself, you are going to have to listen blind.

The simplest, cheapest way to do this is to use a sleep shade (er, blindfold, available from your local pharmacy), and have your assistant do the setup. It sounds kludgey and just a little weird, I know, but it actually works. You sit there, with the blindfold on. Your assistant sets up each loudspeaker, names it A, B, C or D, sets the level (hopefully you pre-calibrated and marked each relative level) and hits Play. Use a handheld recorder to record your comments. Switch speakers. Do it again. Work through all the speakers. Go back and forth as you wish. Go as long as you can without getting exhausted (half-an-hour is good, an hour is max).

After a while, you’ll have a pretty good sense of “the sound of” loudspeakers A through D. Once you’ve finished this in mono, time to go to stereo. Listen again, blindfolded (change the identities if you learned them during the break). More recorded comments. Isn’t this fun?