Studio Monitor

The goal of most studio monitors is to produce a flat frequency response and a truthful representation of the source material. Unlike consumer speakers, which are often designed to make all audio material sound pleasing to the ear, the studio monitor generally attempts to paint an accurate audio image of the material with no unnatural emphasis or de-emphasis of particular frequencies. This is what it means when a monitor is said to be "flat". and "uncolored" or "transparent". Sound engineers usually require accurate sound reproduction from their speakers especially during audio mixing and mastering. This enables the engineer to mix a track that will sound consistent on high-end audio, low quality radios, in a club, in a car stereo or a home stereo. Some engineers, however, prefer to work with monitors that are far from accurate because they reflect the type of systems that end-users will be listening through.

Studio monitors can be active (they include one or more internal power amplifier(s)), or passive (they need an external power amplifier). Active models are usually bi-amplified.

Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Application
3 Home Audio versus Pro Audio
4 See also
5 References



[edit] History
In the early days of the recording industry, studio monitors were used primarily to check for noise interference and obvious technical problems rather than for making artistic evaluations of the performance and recording. Musicians were recorded live and the producer judged the performance on this basis, relying on simple tried-and-true microphone techniques to ensure that it had been adequately captured; playback through monitors was used simply to check that no obvious technical flaws had spoiled the original recording.

As a result, early monitors tended to be crude. The state of the art loudspeakers of the era were massive horn-loaded systems and were consequently used almost exclusively in cinemas. High-end loudspeaker design grew out of the demands of the motion picture industry and most of the early loudspeaker pioneers worked in Los Angeles where they attempted to solve the problems of cinema sound. Designing monitors for recording studios wasn’t a major priority.

The first high-quality loudspeaker developed expressly as a studio monitor was the Altec 604 Duplex in 1944. This innovative driver has historically been regarded as the work of James B. Lansing who’d previously supplied the drivers for the Shearer Horn in 1936, a speaker that had rapidly become the industry standard in motion-picture sound. He’d also designed the smaller Iconic and this was widely employed at the time as a motion-picture studio monitor. The 604 was a relatively compact coaxial design and within a few years it became the industry standard in the United States, a position it maintained in its various incarnations (the 604 went through eleven model-changes) over the next 25 years. It was common in US studios throughout the 1950s and 60s and remained in continuous production until 1998. In the UK, Tannoy introduced its own coaxial design, the Dual Concentric, and this assumed the same reference role in Europe as the Altec 604 held in the USA.

Monitor usage in the industry was highly conservative, with almost monopolistic reliance on industry “standards”, in spite of the sonic failings of these aging designs. The Altec 604 had a notoriously ragged frequency response but almost all U.S studios continued to use it because virtually every producer and engineer knew its sound intimately and were practiced at listening through its sonic limitations. Recording through unfamiliar monitors, no matter how technically advanced, was hazardous because engineers not used to their sonic signature could make poor production decisions and it was financially unviable to give production staff expensive studio time to familiarize themselves with new monitors. As a result, pretty well every U.S studio had a set of 604’s and every European studio a Tannoy Dual Concentric or two.

However, in 1959, at the height of its industry dominance, Altec made the mistake of replacing the 604 with the 605A Duplex, a design widely regarded as inferior to its predecessor. There was a backlash from some record companies and studios and this allowed Altec’s competitor, JBL (a company originally started by 604 designer James B. Lansing), to make inroads into the pro monitor market. Capitol Records quickly replaced their Altecs with JBL D50 Monitors and a few years later their UK affiliate, EMI, also made the move to JBL’s. Although Altec re-introduced the 604 as the "E" version Super Duplex in response to the criticism, they now had a major industry rival to contend with. Over the next decade most of the developments in studio monitor design originated from JBL.

As recording became less and less “live” and multi-tracking and overdubbing became the norm, the studio monitor became far more crucial to the recording process. When there was no original performance outside what existed on the tape, the monitor became the touchstone of all engineering and production decisions. As a result, accuracy and transparency became paramount and the conservatism evident in the retention of the 604 as the standard for over twenty years began to give way to fresh technological development. Despite this, the 604 continued to be widely used - mainly because many engineers and producers were so familiar with their sonic signature that they were reluctant to change. It wasn’t until 1975 that JBL overtook Altec as the monitor of choice for most studios.

In the late 1960’s JBL introduced two monitors which helped secure them preeminence in the industry. The 4320 was a direct competitor to the Altec 604 but was a more accurate and powerful speaker and it quickly made inroads against the industry standard. However, it was the more compact 4310 that revolutionized monitoring by introducing the idea of close or “nearfield” monitoring. (The sound field very close to a sound source is called the "near-field". By "very close" is meant in the predominantly direct, rather than reflected, soundfield. A near-field speaker is a compact studio monitor designed for listening at close distances (3’-5’), so, in theory, the effects of poor room acoustics are greatly reduced.)

The 4310 was small enough to be placed on the recording console and listened to from much closer distances than the traditional large wall-(or “soffit”) mounted main monitors. As a result, studio-acoustic problems were minimized. Smaller studios found the 4310 ideal and that monitor and its successor, the 4311, became studio fixtures throughout the 1970’s. Ironically, the 4310 had been designed to replicate the sonic idiosyncracies of the Altec 604 but in a smaller package to cater for the technical needs of the time. The 4311 was so popular with professionals that JBL introduced a domestic version for the burgeoning home-audio market. This speaker, the JBL L-100, (or "Century") was a massive success and became the biggest-selling hi-fi speaker ever within a few years.

The major studios continued to use huge designs mounted on the wall which were able to produce prodigious SPL’s and amounts of bass. This trend reached its zenith with The Who’s employment in their studio of a dozen JBL 4350 monitors, each capable of 125 dB and containing two fifteen-inch woofers and a twelve-inch mid-bass driver. Most studios, however, also used more modest monitoring devices to check how recordings would sound through car speakers and cheap home systems. A favourite “grot-box” monitor employed in this way was the Auratone 5C, a crude single-driver device that gave a reasonable facsimile of typical lo-fi sound.

However, a backlash against the Behemoth Monitor was soon to take place. With the advent of Punk, New Wave, Indie, and Lo-Fi, a reaction to high-tech recording and large corporate-style studios set in and do-it-yourself recording methods became the vogue. Smaller, less expensive, recording studios needed smaller, less expensive monitors and the Yamaha NS-10, a design introduced in 1978 ironically for the home audio market, became the monitor of choice for many studios in the 1980’s. A variety of stories, probably apocryphal, abound about why the NS-10 assumed this role but it gradually became an industry adage that “if it sounds good on the NS-10 it’ll sound good on anything”. While its sound-quality has often been derided, even by those who monitor through it, the NS-10 continues in use to this day and many more successful recordings have been produced with its aid over the past twenty five years than with any other monitor.

By the mid-80’s the near-field monitor had become pre-eminent. The larger studios still had large main-monitors mounted in (or on) the wall but they were now mere supplements to the small monitors sitting on the meter-bridge and were viewed as prestige items mainly there to “impress the clients” and occasionally check for low-bass anomalies. Favourite large monitors of the time were the Westlake and Urei 813, designs based on a highly modified version of the almost ageless Altec 604. Fostex "Laboratory Series" monitors were to be found in the finest studios but with increasing costs of manufacture, they became rare. The once dominant JBL fell into disfavour as its designs were identified with 70’s excess. The new studio landscape was bare and stripped-down and the large three or four-way monitors were hardly in keeping with this philosophy.

Yamaha eventually discontinued the NS-10 due to the lack of availability of the wood pulp used in the woofer. Even so, old NS-10’s still dot the studio landscape and at present it seems to be the last of the old style Industry Standards. No single monitor has emerged to become the fixtures that the Altec 604, the JBL 4311, and the Yamaha NS-10 were in their day. It now seems that every producer and engineer has their personal favourite monitor and developments in recording and monitor design have enabled this trend to continue. Personal recording studios have accelerated the move towards customization and individuality as the need for common industry standards is lessened. Monitors have become more and more compact and portable so it’s now feasible for producers to take their personal monitor choices with them to different recording venues.

The main post-NS10 trend has been the almost universal acceptance of powered monitors where the speaker enclosure contains the driving amplifiers. The old style passive monitors required outboard power amplifiers to drive them as well as speaker wire to connect them. Powered monitors, by contrast, are much more convenient and streamlined single units which in addition have a number of technical advantages. The interface between speaker and amplifier is optimized, with greater control and precision, and advances in amplifier design have reduced the size and weight of the electronics significantly. The result has been that passive monitors are now only a sidelight to the powered market and are in danger of being phased out completely.


[edit] Application
The studio monitor may be the single most important piece of equipment in the recording studio. This stems from the fact that every aspect of the recording process can only be heard - and evaluated – by listening through a monitor. Without it, recording is just guesswork.

As a result, production staff need to trust their monitors. The less confidence they have that a monitor is telling them what they need to know to make a correct decision the more random and time-consuming the recording process becomes. If a monitor fails to distinguish between two very different microphones or conceals distortion in the recording chain, poor production decisions are likely to be made. Producers, engineers, and mixers consequently insist on monitors that are either highly accurate and transparent or ones that they’re intimately familiar with. In the latter case, they learn to listen through the flaws, tend to be conservative, and often stick to a specific monitor even when it becomes technically outdated because changing to a new one requires a period of adjustment.

There are a variety of approaches to monitor choice and much “subjective” disagreement hinges on which of these methods production staff adopt. Some rigorously pursue accuracy and transparency, on the grounds that only an accurate monitor can tell the unvarnished truth and enable them to make completely trustworthy decisions. Others may insist that the systems used by the consumers are themselves far from accurate and that it’s more important that monitors reflect what these lo-fi stereos are doing to the recordings rather than pretend that it's being reproduced with perfect accuracy. Others believe that monitors should exaggerate recording flaws and make them work harder to make them sound good. Many more stick to monitors they know well, even though they’re fully aware of their limitations. Arguments about the “right” monitor to use still rage on, although there’s a growing acceptance that “what works for you” is the best adage to follow when choosing monitors. Producers and engineers have differing goals; some are producing high-quality recordings for expensive home systems while others are catering mainly for boomboxes and car radios. Their choices of monitor invariably take account of these facts.

Monitor use is thus in most cases geared to preparing the recording for end use: for making it sound good to the consumer. As a result, while accuracy has traditionally been considered to be the sine qua non of the studio monitor, in practice producers, engineers, and mixers are less concerned with accuracy per se than with how well the monitor translates, i.e., how well recordings made with its aid sound through a variety of playback systems, ranging from audiophile esoterica to boom-boxes. The link between accuracy and translatability is unclear, and the fact that the three most popular monitors of all time, the Altec 604, the JBL 4311, and the Yamaha NS-10, were all far from accurate may not be entirely coincidental.





[edit] Home Audio versus Pro Audio
While no rigid distinction exists between speakers intended for consumer use and those designed as studio monitors, there has been an increasing gulf between the two markets in practice. Whereas in the 1970’s the JBL 4311’s domestic equivalent, the L-100, was used in a large number of homes, and the Yamaha NS-10 also served both domestically and professionally during the 1980’s, there are no present-day equivalents. Professional companies such as Fostex, Genelec, Adam Audio, KRK Systems, Mackie, Klein and Hummel, Quested, PMC, and M & K sell almost exclusively to the professional monitor market while most of the consumer audio manufacturers confine themselves to supplying speakers for the home. Even companies that straddle both worlds, like Tannoy, Focal/JM Labs, Dynaudio, and JBL, tend to clearly separate their pro and consumer lines.

There are a number of reasons for this:

Domestic speakers are generally less rugged and unable to cope with the often extreme conditions encountered in the recording studio;
pro monitors are generally designed to be listened to from much shorter distances than home speakers;
pro monitors are generally powered while domestic speakers are almost always passive;
pro monitors are voiced to be less flattering to the source than domestic speakers are.
An illuminating indication of the difference between the two markets is the fact that the observation that “it makes everything sound great” is seen as a criticism in the studio monitor world! Monitors are selected because they ostensibly don’t flatter the material played through them and offer a “warts and all” presentation that makes it less likely for producers/engineers to approve unsatisfactory productions. Monitors are intended to err, if at all, on the side of harshness and aggressiveness rather than on papering over recording flaws whereas domestic speakers are often designed to make even mediocre material sound palatable.

For some reason, domestic speakers haven’t followed the professional move towards the active and powered. In audiophile circles, this is probably due to the fact that powered speakers tend to emphasize sonic qualities they find uncongenial, as well as a desire to select separate components rather than simplify the audio chain. For this reason, the seemingly inevitable move to domestic powered speakers is more likely to come at the lower end of the consumer market.