Recording - April 2014 - 50

A Different Approach to the Startup Studio
Part 1: Now We Add Gear
By Paul J. Stamler with the Staff of RECORDING
Last month, we concentrated on the first and most important part of any Startup Studio: the room. Now we can finally get to the gear that goes in the room, starting with the second most important piece of the puzzle: the monitors.
Note that in this article, the Editor is supplementing my
concrete recommendations with some of his own, based
on recent reviews in this magazine and on the track
records of our other contributors, most notably Paul Vnuk
Jr.. The fact is, I haven't heard everything on the market,
and I prefer to recommend pieces I've actually heard, or
whose close relatives I've actually heard. And that leaves
a lot of latitude for very worthy gear that might otherwise
go unmentioned here.
Where feasible, I'll provide a basic, rock-bottom recommendation from my own experience, and another recommendation that I feel is a solid step up from the basics. We'll
then fill in some alternatives. My original intent was to name
prices, but they go out of date too quickly; online searches are
your friends for numbers like these. Punchline up front: in the
spring of 2014 it is possible, using the basic recommendations I make below, to outfit a Starter Studio for under $4000,
including the room treatment and a very good computer.
It comes out here: monitors
You could write an entire issue of this magazine-in fact
we just did, last month-about the ins and outs of monitor
speakers-size, near- vs. farfield, directivity, power issues,
etc. Here I'll stick to the absolute bare bones.
Why do monitors matter? Because every decision you
make about mic choice and placement, EQ, compression
or level in the mix will be based on what you hear coming
out of the monitors, and if they aren't right, your recordings won't be right. A good neutral monitor leads to good
choices when tracking, and that, on a good day, leads to
tracks that practically mix themselves.
What about the argument that, in years past, great
recordings were made on less-than-great monitor speakers?
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RECORDING April 2014

It's true, but it leaves out a crucial element in the system: the trained
ears of the recording engineers. I spent five or more years mixing on
an Altec 604 (used for many Beatles mixes, and far from neutral) during my time in the television industry, and eventually I could create a
mix-live or in post-production-which translated well to other loudspeakers, whether big, high-quality systems or little 3" whizzer-coned
squawkers in a cheap TV set.
It took me five years to get to that point-five years of trying out
mixes on the 604, and comparing them with what I heard on the other
speakers in the building or at home. But you're relatively new to this
game, and I think it's unfair for a new engineer to have to learn the
quirks of an un-neutral monitor, while at the same time they're learning the ins and outs of mic choice, placement, mixing and effects. It's
much better to start out with a monitor setup that's reasonably neutral,
one that doesn't skew your listening in a particular direction.
Aren't genuinely neutral speaker systems prohibitively expensive?
They can be; achieving truly flat response across the entire audible
spectrum at robust listening levels, which (for example) a mastering
engineer's setup needs to do, comes at a remarkably non-trivial price.
But it's possible to achieve reasonably neutral response in a speaker
with more limited ambitions-one with more limited response in the subterranean bass, for example, or one with less lofty volume goals-with
a relatively modest design such as a two-way system incorporating a 6"
or 8" woofer. Most 2-way monitors are bi-amped (one amp per driver)
and many now have internal DSP; both design choices can help in
achieving relatively neutral response in the all-important midrange frequencies. That's where the most vital musical information lives, leading
to the old slogan, "If it ain't got it in the midrange, it ain't got it."
So, for our Starter Studio, I reommend a small, active monitor (no need
for a separate amp), intended for use in the nearfield (relatively close to
the engineer's ears). There are plenty of those out there, and while many
are designed with the "boom-and-tizz" sound that helps a speaker stand
out in a big box store's showroom, there are a fair number which manage to achieve surprisingly neutral sound within their designed frequency range, as long as listening volumes remain reasonable.
My first recommendation was going to be the Tannoy Reveal
601a, a 6" 2-way powered speaker that sounds unusually neutral
and uncolored. That generation of Reveals has just been superseded
by an all-new Reveal line that promises as good or better sound at
an even lower price than the very reasonable cost of the 601a. Look
for reviews soon.

Recording - April 2014

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