I had a phone conversation with one of my fellow Production Expert Team Members the other day, I’m not going to mention who it was I was talking with, to save them the embarrassment of what I’m about to highlight in this article. I will confess in this post to a bad habit we both realised on that call we share in our studio workflows, I believe many of us in The Production Expert Community are guilty of this as well - Not powering down our studio monitors at the end of the day.

I’m going to put my hands up and confess that I’m lazy when it comes to powering down every piece of gear in my studio when I lock up the for the night. My computer, outboard gear, control surface, main lights… you name it, all of it gets powered down, however, I don’t seem to ever power down my studio monitors. I’m going to be a little fair on myself here and admit it is a bit of pain powering down my monitors because the on/off switch on my ADAM Audio P22a monitors are around the back on the cabinets and they’re not easy to reach because I have studio racks either side of my control surface… access is a bit limited. But, who am I kidding, really, what I've just said sounds like an excuse.

When I had easier access to the on/off buttons on the rear of my monitors in my previous studios I still didn’t power them down at the end of my working day, why?

Years ago I owned a set of Yamaha NS10 passive monitors, these were wired to a 1u power amp which was bolted into my studio rack. I always powered these monitors down at the amp because it was easy to flick the on/off button on the amp as the poweramp was part of the sequence of powering up and down my entire collection of rack gear.

I can’t seem to work out the main reason why I haven’t bothered to power down my studio monitors at night, I know I’m being lazy as I’m reminded of this every time I turn off my main lights in the studio only to see two green LEDs glowing in the dark abyss.

Writing this article may help me kick this silly studio habit, but I want to know if anyone else shares this ignorance.

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