hey what's going on out there I'm Sean Divine hope you all are
doing well today I want to talk about multiple studio monitors and why it can
be really helpful to have in your studio for me personally it's absolutely
essential get a lot of questions about why I have two sets of monitors it's not
just to look cool it really does serve a purpose and I think it's gonna be very
useful for you once we talk about why I do this and how we can utilize these two
monitors to really have completely different references for your mixing
your mastering your producing whatever it is you do in the studio environment
it's gonna be really helpful to get a more objective sound and really
understand what is going on in your mixes so let's first talk about the two
studio monitors that I personally have so up top I've got the Event 2030 it is
a 3-way monitor and what this means is it has a tweeter for the high
frequencies it has the mid frequency driver which is separate from the low
frequency driver that's going to handle the low end and the sub material now
what this allows the speaker to do is give you a more accurate representation
across the frequency spectrum also to note they do have an extended low end
because of the port in the back of the speaker so I'm going to be pushing some
air in the room that's gonna allow you to feel more of the bass response now
going below these are the NS-10m the ones with the white cones you see them
in a lot of studios get a lot of questions about these it's just
something that you find in a lot of studios and people like myself end up
working on them a lot and so you get used to them they don't really sound
great they take a separate amplifier to power them meaning you can't just plug
them in they actually have to go through an amplifier you have to use speaker
wire and that in it alone in itself can be very expensive just to find the right
amplifier for a passive monitor some of you have also probably noticed that I
don't even have them in ear level I'm not really focusing on the NS-10 to
give me the complete portrayal of the mix again it is more about just a
response in terms of the mid-range so we've talked about both of my monitors
individually now let's talk about just the thought process of why I chose these
particular two and why you can use this to your advantage when you're picking
out the sets of monitors that you want to have together so since I already have
the event 2030 which have a lot of low-end response to them I didn't need
another big monitor now if you wanted to be in a really big studio and you wanted
some monitors with 12-inch drivers or 15-inch drivers to monitor more for a
club environment that would be very helpful going from an 8-inch driver for
me I'm in a smaller space it would make no sense for me to have a 12-inch sub or
a 15-inch sub in here it would just totally blow me out of the room so I
needed to go down a size and get something with a smaller low frequency
driver that's gonna give me more of a representation of what's happening on
systems without a lot of bass which these days is really crucial because a
lot of people are listening on their laptops on their cell phones you want to
pick two monitors that are quite different from each other you don't want
to get you know 2 8-inch monitors that are very similar in sound I would
go for something where you get a really nice portrayal of the low end and then
go for a smaller monitor that's going to give you that real-world reference and
something that's going to be a little bit brutal in terms of what it's telling
you about your mix start with a smaller set of monitor especially if you're in a
smaller room start with something with the smaller driver less bass
response but this is going to be accurate for your mids and your highs
and work your way up into a bigger speaker that's going to give you that
representation of low frequency information and get comfortable with one
set of monitors first I wouldn't buy them in pairs initially right off the
bat because you're gonna need to learn each of these individually sometimes
when you're listening to a mix if you only have one set of monitors there are
things that that monitor is not necessarily going to portray in the same
way that someone's going to be hearing it on the other side of the world on
their set of speakers and if you only have the one reference you're not gonna
be able to pick up on those subtle things that maybe they're hearing on
their set of speakers whereas if you have these two very
different types of monitors going back and forth you just have more chances to
pick up on an objective perspective of your mix that's what this is all about
that's why you want to have two sets of monitors an important thing I do want to
mention is that a lot of you are gonna have questions about how do I actually
set up the routing for my "a" monitor and my "b" monitor how ever many monitors you
have hooked up now for me it's really easy because I actually have routing
capabilities in my audio interface for a main speaker and a speaker "b" so all I
have to do is hit a button and it will mute the mains and switch the signal to
the "b" monitor and I can just go back and forth and monitor that way and it's
really easy now some of you may not have that capability
this audio card is a little more expensive so the other option is a
monitor controller now this is an actual hardware box where you can route as many
different monitors as you want through this now the thing to be cautious about
with these is some of them are more or less transparent than others now what
this means is the audio passing through and out of the box to your monitors can
actually be colored if you're monitoring something that's not accurate that
totally defeats the purpose of having one of these monitoring stations so do
some research and make sure that the routing in a monitor station is
completely transparent alright y'all so that's a couple thoughts on having
multiple studio monitors in your setup once you get comfortable with a main set
of monitors and then you upgrade and get another set it's just gonna give you a
lot broader perspective and you're gonna have less surprises when you go into
your car or you listen to the mix in a different environment it's going to be
more consistent so if you're using multiple studio monitors in your setup
I'd love to hear which ones you're using together give some other people some
suggestions and if you're looking into this and you have questions about
multiple studio monitors feel free to leave a comment below if you learned
anything in the video please like and subscribe and we'll talk to you soon