Really? alot of musicians don't know crap about good sound. Just look at all the photos of "artists" with the Yamaha NS-10's in the background... yeah like that's some kind of "reference"
Funny you should mention these. The NS-10's have almost a cult following. In the past, studio monitors were not reliably accurate...they were impressive but differed from studio to studio significantly...nobody could trust their mix and so the legend of the NS-10 was born. These very cheap crappy speakers simulate what most consumers have at home. In the past audio engineers relied on the NS-10's to check that their mix would translate well to a home audio system (i.e. for example it wouldn't blow up the speaker with too much LF or it would sound ok when played loud where most consumers speakers start to compress). This need became so prevalent (the problem of mix translating to cheap consumer gear) that some people just mixed or mastered straight to NS-10's.
As I mentioned, active speakers have largely caused the industry to converge on a much more accurate and consistent lab tested sound (for sure studio speakers still sound a little different from model to model but much less so than in the past). This has largely negated the need for NS-10's to test a mix.
Therefore, I don't think the NS-10 implies musicians know crap about sound - it was just a tool that worked well. After all musicians want their sound to translate as well as possible and compete with what else is out there. (Lately this has led to "CD loudness wars", which is a whole other topic where there is intentional destruction of sound quality by artists and producers)
I do agree with you that musicians are like the rest of us and there are varying degrees as to how much they care about sound. For example, INXS were so fanatical about sound that they had their own studio, Rhinocerous Sydney. Mark Knopfler, David Gilmour and several others are the same. Of course, having the luxury of your own high end studio means that you have already made it big, as a musician. Recently PC's and software are making home studios much more affordable and democratizing music production a little, for example Creed's big hit album was produced for only a few thousand dollars. However, high quality production is still pretty expensive and requires expertise and most musicians still rent everything and pay by the hour for experts.
