What is trully important?

@kosst_amojan-

Wonderful story! Thanks for sharing.

Tom

"I never understood the fascination some have with the studio monitor paradigm. Studio monitors aren't hifi speakers and the intent of their design is to be very flat and analytical. Personally, I'm more interested in what a recording is mastered on"
  OK what exactly do you mean by flat and analytical? If you mean speakers that do not color the music but give faithful replay of what is being done I want flat and analytical. I can add spice to the sound with all kinds of electronics but the speaker needs to be like I am there. Studio monitors I have heard did that and those guys doing the mastering listen to what they have done on them. I never see exotic or designer named anything with bands and sound pros where they earn a living and I want to hear that same sound. So why not use what they use?

The Yamaha NS-10m, which dominated the studios in the 80’s was far from flat and analytical. In my experience, engineers and producers just wanted consistency between studios and the good ones could predict how the music would sound on a wide variety of speakers by extrapolating from what they heard on the Yamahas. Same thing with Auritone 4" cube monitors. Hugely popular.

As for concert sound, engineers are faced with a multitude of issues - feedback, monitoring projecting in huge stadiums and open air - not to mention budget.  The Grateful Dead had a huge high-end sound system, but it proved too expensive to keep.  

Look at it another way, many studio monitors are designed to be flat and revealing to a fault so as to allow the engineer to tame certain parts of the performance so it will sound acceptable played back on the many different playback methods most likely for the audience. For pop/wide appeal music. First, they will compress it so it will sound ok in a car. Then through earbuds on an iphone. Many engineers stop right here because that covers the majority of the buying public and they are on the clock. Next, they might master a little for computer speakers but there are so many different models they stop here. They will then master somewhat for a dance club PA setup. Classical and jazz typically get mastered on nicer speakers if the engineer understands the audience. Typically less compression. The dynamic range for a car is tough as alot of music is typically happening below the noise floor in a car.

Anyway, if you really believe that any speaker designed to surgically dismantle a performance is what you are after then knock yourself out. You will save alot of money over time if you can be happy with the sound you get. I prefer a speaker that reconstructs a reasonable facsimile of a performance rather than deconstruct it. Additionally, since no one has a living room with the ambient and acoustic characteristics of a good recording studio why would you try to recreate that for your home rig? If you were successful, then your rig would be suitable to replay only those things recorded in that particular studio! You’d drive yourself nuts.

"I prefer a speaker that reconstructs a reasonable facsimile of a performance rather than deconstruct it."
  Precisely my goal. And then add to it a trip through Audacity to remove some of that "mastering" done for poor speakers or earbuds and restore it to what it was when it first started or as close as can be reconstructed to be so. I want a front row seat not some tonally pure interpretation of what someone thinks I SHOULD be listening to.