Budget Speakers And Headphones For Home Recording Studio.

To get your computer recording system to work, you don't need anything other than the multimedia speakers that came with your computer or those you can purchase for less than $30 in any computer store. However, keep in mind you're creating music to be listened to from a CD and over a stereo system, not necessarily a desktop computer. When you begin to listen to your music critically, in order to make decisions in the balance of the elements and the tone controls, you'll want to be making those judgments using speakers that are much better than the kind that may match the color of your monitor but are less than stellar in their audio performance.

The process of listening back to recorded music is called monitoring, and the speakers you use are referred to as reference monitors, or just monitors, for short. Monitors for music production are different from those sold for stereo and hi-fi systems. They're much more robust as far as handling a wide range of signals, and they're more accurate in their reproduction of what they see at their input. Stereo speakers are often „tweaked“ so that the low frequencies „punch“ and the high frequencies „sizzle.“ But this doesn't necessarily serve the musician trying to make a master recording that will play back on a variety of systems. For mastering, you want to hear your music as neutrally as possible, and that requires a more careful and expensive approach to loudspeaker manufacturing.

Monitors are not sold in stereo stores; they're sold in music and audio stores. Though you can learn a whole lot about the recording and mixing process without high-quality monitors, in order to get predictable and good results in your mixdowns, you'll need to invest in some decent-quality monitors designed for music production. Alesis, Genelec, KRK, Mackie, Tannoy, and Yamaha are just a few companies that specialize in making monitors for music mixing.

The below figure shows the Tannoy Reveal Active, a popular choice for a powered monitor (meaning it doesn't need an external power amp to drive it because the amp is built in). The Reveal Active is built like a tank (and won't blow up or fail with repeated use and long hours of loud signals pumping through it), and a stereo pair of them provides the neutral, accurate sound desired by desktop recordists.

Budget Speakers

I realize that $750 for speakers may be beyond the financial pale for many recordists, especially when there's so much other gear to buy. If you want to go the inexpensive route, consider a set of multimedia speakers that includes a subwoofer, which is a dedicated speaker for handling just the low frequencies. It's often the low end that gets sacrificed in budgets systems, so by making sure you have a separate subwoofer, you can control your bass frequencies somewhat.

The Altec Lansing Ultimate 621 series costs only about $150 and provides pretty good sound. If those pro-level speakers must wait until another birthday, the 621 's will do just fine.

Headphones

Much cheaper than a high-quality set of monitor speakers is a pair of headphones. Headphones are good for zeroing in on sounds, to listen for specific problems or strange happenings in your mixes, and are handy when you have to do some basic, or rough, mixing and can't crank up your speakers. Headphones are silent to those in the immediate vicinity, and this has two advantages for computer recordists: they keep sound in, meaning no one hears what you hear, and allow you to keep working when someone is sleeping nearby. Also, they keep external sound out, which is important when you need to concentrate on a particular passage to see whether the guitar part is in tune with the second baritone harmony vocal—something that's harder to judge over large speakers with all that air in between and perhaps two people chatting in the near vicinity.

Headphones are the tool of choice for editing on the micro level — trying to shave off the breath sound of the singer as she inhales just before her entrance. Headphone types include those with open or closed earpieces. The closed variety provides maximum isolation, completely surrounding the outer ear, but can become more uncomfortable over time. It's largely a matter of choice, but many recordists who use headphones for detail work opt for the closed-ear variety. The below figure shows the AKG К 240 DF headphones, a closed-ear system that works well for monitoring under critical situations. They cost only about $120 (street).