Quality Budget Gear Ep. 03: Speakers

Speakers are one area where you really do need to spend at least a medium amount of money to get best results.

Speakers determine how you “see” your work. Making music with subpar speakers is like trying to paint with super dark sunglasses on. Inconsistent results at best.

Music made on tinny computer speakers or cheap headphones will sound that way.

That being said, don’t just go spend a grip. Ask the right questions and do your research before any gear purchase. What are you trying to do here?

• Make full pro productions in your house?

• Demo and re-record elsewhere?

• Make music for fun, with little concern for releasing professionally?

Each of these will lead to a different flow of money, gear, and time spent.

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Mass market audio gear manufacturers are always trying to get you to buy the next shiny thing, and they love a mainstream hit. Good enough to please most people, while being cheap and easy to mass manufacture.

Rokit speakers are an example of this. So are Beats headphones.

Perfectly acceptable and good enough for listening, or casual entertainment. Probably not good enough for making music, at professional quality, by your average home studio user.

Why? Mass market manufacturers tune their gear in order to sell more of it. For example, speakers might be tuned to bring out more bass, or to pull down harshness for a warmer, more pleasing sound.

This may sound nice when you’re listening, but that doesn’t always mean you can make great productions on this kind of equipment. Gear that is made for listening to music is not the same as gear made for making music in the studio.

But, it depends on your use case. If you’re not trying to mix professionally at home, a Rokit type speaker might work great for you!

Typically, pro audio brands tend to offer a more neutral approach. Maybe not as fun to listen to, but more accurate and less hyped.

Yamaha, Genelec, Focal, PMC, Adam, Barefoot, among others, are all good names.

It is important to listen to the speakers you’re considering in a real world environment before purchase! This is a personal choice, and you need to try things out to see what you like.

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Your individual use case is most important.

For example, I happen to like Genelec monitors, and they’re great speakers for my current situation. But, I would never recommend buying anything but their lowest cost speaker, unless the person asking planned on doing professional quality engineering work on a regular basis.

When choosing speakers, think of your use case, take some time, and save up to afford at least mid level professional quality gear. This is an important purchase, and you want to get it right!