Recording - March 2015 - 43

can intermodulate inside a power amplifier, producing dirty or
unfocused sound; if the amplifiers handle different ranges of frequencies, this is less likely to happen. Finally, powered monitors
allow much more control over the signal. Their circuits may include
compensation for the characteristics of the drivers being used and
for room placement; some speakers even include digital signal processing (DSP) for more sophisticated control.
Choosing a monitor-several strategies
When it's time to choose the monitor for your studio, one of
the first choices you'll need to make is the size of the woofermidrange, and here you come up against one of the dirty little
secrets of loudspeaker design, one that makes designers mopey
and prone to depression.
Remember what I said about getting the midrange right? It
turns out that it's much harder to get the midrange right on a system with a larger woofer than a smaller one. Unfortunately,
small woofers usually can't supply enough bass to adequately
support the midrange.
It's a juggling act. Many designers and users have converged
on a single answer: a 6.5" woofer provides a good compromise between clean, neutral midrange and adequate bass
response. The bass from these speakers isn't super-deep, and it
won't play super-loud, but it supports the midrange frequencies
in a balanced way.
For those reasons, as well as size and cost, you'll find a lot of
6.5" woofers in home-studio monitors; they mark a decided
"sweet spot" in pure two-way speakers. Another strategy is to
punt, and install a subwoofer-a separate cabinet containing a
larger driver (8"-15"), a power amplifier to drive it, and
crossover circuits to split off the subwoofer signal from the rest
of the audio. There are distinct advantages to going the subwoofer route, including flexibility of placement-read the interview with JBL's Peter Chaikin (Recording, September 2014). For
me, the best argument for subwoofers is that they allow the user
to choose a monitor with a smaller woofer, which offers a better
chance of getting the midrange right.
Going shopping
So you're going out to buy a pair of monitors. I'll give a few
concrete suggestions to help you choose-but first, a word
about where to look.
The most important test of monitors isn't how they sound in the
dealer's showroom, but how they sound in your room. To find that
out, you'll need to actually try them in your room, and that means
buying from a dealer with a grown-up return policy, one that will
let you buy and take home a pair of monitors, try them in your
room, then either keep them or return them for a refund. (There'll
probably be a restocking fee). The average big-box musical instrument store won't let you do this; real professional audio stores will.
Okay, you're listening to a demo room full of monitors, deciding which you should take home for a trial run. Here are some
hints that can help narrow the field:
1. Read the reviews in Recording. The guys who review monitors for the magazine, Mike Metlay, Paul Vnuk Jr., and Lorenz
Rychner, have heard a lot of monitors, and they know what
they're talking about. Pay particular attention to what they say
about the midrange, and what they say about room placement
compensation.
2. Do the knuckle test: knock on the sides, top and back of the
monitor. Ideally, you should hear almost nothing; the box should
be as unresponsive as knocking on a brick wall. No monitors in
the real world are that dead, but many get remarkably close. On
the other hand, if knocking on a monitor box produces a distinct

"clunk", go on to another one. The monitor with a box that clunks
will have colorations that won't go away with EQ (or even DSP).
3. Bring in recordings that you know very well to try out monitors, and forget about the "sonic spectaculars" that sales people like to put on.
When checking out monitors, I do what I call the "Margaret
test." I bring in a recording of Chicago singer Margaret Nelson
and her musical partner Phil Cooper. We've been friends for
thirty years; I produced and engineered albums for them over a
ten-year period, and I've run sound for them in several clubs. As
a result, I know what Margaret sounds like over good monitors,
a good PA, a bad PA, and in the living room with no PA.
When I'm trying new monitors in a showroom or in a studio,
I'll bring in a particular recording by Phil and Margaret, "The
Indian Lass". If the monitors can make the recorded vocal actually sound like Margaret, I give them a thumbs-up. I'm mostly listening to tonal quality, not soundstage; the latter is important,
but good tone is the trump card, and if the tonal quality makes
Margaret sound unlike herself, or if the monitor exaggerates
sibilance on her vocal, or makes Phil's guitar sound tubby or
thin, I move on.

FIGURE 1

"The Indian Lass" is a fairly simple recording (like the clip
we're using for this series); to hear what prospective monitors do
with a busier sound, I'll also bring in a recording with a lot
going on at once-probably a jazz record from the 1950s,
Charles Mingus's "Better Git It In Your Soul"(from Mingus Ah
Um) or an orchestral work by Stravinsky. I'll also listen for articulate bass: can I hear the actual pitches of bass notes (good) or
just a generalized boom (bad). My favorite test disc for that is
The Band's "Across the Great Divide" (from their "brown
album", just called The Band).
Undoubtedly you'll come up with your own favorite test discs.
Ideally they'll include something like my Margaret test, featuring
a voice you know intimately. But not too intimately; don't use a
recording of your own voice, since how that sounds to you is
quite unlike how it sounds to the rest of the world, thanks to bone
conduction. You'll also need to find your own recordings you
RECORDING March 2015

43



Recording - March 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - March 2015

Contents
Recording - March 2015 - Cover1
Recording - March 2015 - Cover2
Recording - March 2015 - 1
Recording - March 2015 - 2
Recording - March 2015 - 3
Recording - March 2015 - 4
Recording - March 2015 - 5
Recording - March 2015 - Contents
Recording - March 2015 - 7
Recording - March 2015 - 8
Recording - March 2015 - 9
Recording - March 2015 - 10
Recording - March 2015 - 11
Recording - March 2015 - 12
Recording - March 2015 - 13
Recording - March 2015 - 14
Recording - March 2015 - 15
Recording - March 2015 - 16
Recording - March 2015 - 17
Recording - March 2015 - 18
Recording - March 2015 - 19
Recording - March 2015 - 20
Recording - March 2015 - 21
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Recording - March 2015 - 28
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Recording - March 2015 - Cover3
Recording - March 2015 - Cover4
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