Selection Strategies

How you actually make your selection is up to you, of course. Price, ease of listening, etc. all play a role. The breadth of applicability may also be either important or not. If you do a broad range of work, you probably need a speaker that shines on all different kinds of material. If you specialize exclusively in ex-urban hip-hop synth grooves for boomvans, however, you may choose based on much narrower material.

One interesting question comes up regarding alternate speakers. I use a minimum of three different pairs of speakers for production work, including Auratones and at least one pair of small, cheap, decent consumer bookshelf (nearfield) speakers. I treat these as necessary supplements. They don’t have to go through the same exhaustive selection process, thankfully. In any case, it is amusing and useful to switch around between a variety of supplemental speakers on an on-going basis.

Fun and Profit Time

There ARE other, less painful or complex ways to pick monitors. You can read product endorsements, for instance, and simply pick the speaker that your favorite engineer or producer uses. You can go with the speaker that the sales guy suggests that all the happening studios are snapping up these days. You can have a quick listen in the showroom, using any ol’ CD that happens to be lying around. And believe it or not, you may actually be able to buy a good loudspeaker this way.

The problem is, you can’t be ASSURED that you will get a good speaker. Dumb luck will be involved. Much dumb luck. You can dramatically reduce the dumb luck quotient, and/or quite possibly end up with very nice speakers that cost a great deal less by using the evaluation techniques I’ve described above.

Remember, you’ve got to listen blind, with each of the speakers in the same place, at the same level. If you can manage to pull this off, you’re well on your way to being able to make a really useful decision. You may be surprised how clear and obvious it makes your final choice.

Happy trials!

Dave Moulton always gets blind before he does any listening! You can complain to him about anything at http://www.moultonlabs.com.