Well I think you may have taken things a bit more literally than Mark intended, had to go back and read the thread though myself;) The above comment is DEFINITLY true. However there is a point where monitors(that approaches quickly) will make less of a difference than skill. I have a pair of TR8s, I would consider them fairly entry level monitors, flat enough to do mixing on. It is true that when you get used to monitors you can compensate a little by nature for some errors in EQ or the mix, but it is still not as accurate as doing it correctly the first time on a good set of monitors. The TR8s are at least accurate enough for my purposes, and give me a place to work on refining my skill level to allow me to take advantage of better equipment sometime later. It is VERY hard to refine your skill level when a LOT of the error in your mix comes from your speakers being completly wrong for the purpose. For instance if I tried to mix on my wife's computer speakers I would HATE my mixes, they would never have enough bass, very uneven response and overall sound absolutely like crud due to her computer speakers being designed to play MP3s and are EQd to make up for MP3s shortcomings, and to sound 'good' to your average listener. That being said though better monitors quickly become useless when the acoustics of your space cant support them. For example there is no point to me having better monitors in my space right now because my space is not accurate enough to really support a better quality. While better monitors may make some difference, there will be a noticeably better increase in quality from me working on the space sound, for probably noticeably less money. Also very true. Headphones != monitors. I can always tell when someone has mixed something on headphones instead of on monitors, there is a completly different sound to it and the balance is completly off typically. While they are VERY good at examining things in close detail to find errors, they are not something I would want to use for a complete mix. Also of note though is even if you have monitors, this is no substitute for listening to your mixes on various types of speakers, be it your home system, car stereo, etc to see how it sounds on many different qualities of sound systems. There are exceptions to this, but typically not in music mixing(I am thinking of install systems for art displays for example you only need to listen to it on the install system, or theater systems it is more important to listen to it in the space). As a side note SOS(Sound On Sound) is a good resource for this, and the eSub with them aint a bad(Read somewhat inexpensive) choice at all. Not to mention they have a linux music forum that occasionally gets some activity along with their rather good forums on music technology in general. Enough of the advertisement there though, the forums are free;) Seablade

On 2/10/06, Florin Andrei <florin(a)andrei.myip.org> wrote: Florin, I certainly agree with your comment, but possibly you didn't see the quotes around my use of the word 'required'. I would contend that most any set of reasonably wide range speakers can be used to create a good mix. The real key is that the person doing the mixing MUST know what these speakers sound like. The engineer has to listen to LOTS of recorded music on these speakers so that she knows what's strong and what's weak about them. By getting very familiar with the sound of the monitors and how they create the sound of similar music one will then be able to mixes that are similar in nature. I would suggest that with even the best monitors in the world one has to listen to how they reproduce other recorded music before one can mix good music on them that will work on many systems. Granted - if the original post was suggesting that the speakers couldn't reproduce anything below 100Hz or over 10KHz then certainly they would not be acceptable. However, if they are able to get out to the edges of hearing then, even if they are not flat, with careful listening one should be able to do a reasonable job and that job can be checked against other systems after burning a CD. I think then, and only then, should an engineer stick on a set of headphones. Just my thoughts.... Cheers, Mark

On 2/11/06, Florin Andrei <florin(a)andrei.myip.org> wrote: You and I are actually in 'violent agreement'. Sure, we can learn the sound of our bad speakers and over time and to a great degree learn to compensate. That said, I'm sure we'd both rather mix on a really nice set of ADAM's.... http://www.adam-audio.de/studio/studio_start.htm Cheers, Mark

On 2/11/06, Florin Andrei <florin(a)andrei.myip.org> wrote: Aren't they!! Even more for us here in the US with the dollar/Euro stuff that we now contend with. I've recently made some environmental changes that make my NHT's sound much better, so I'll hang for awhile, but maybe one day..... Cheers, Mark