There’s a lot of discussion around what makes the perfect studio monitor speakers. We spend hours discussing frequency response and a multitude of other factors trying to find the holy grail. In this article I want to tell you my ultimate test of studio monitor speakers and how I found mine.

There’s was a pub near the town where I grew up called The Crooked House, then it burnt down! It has that name because several hundred years ago it was built in an area of mining subsidence. Over the years, one end of the building started to sink, although the building remained intact. People came from miles around to see the optical illusions of glasses sliding up tables and marbles rolling uphill on window sills.

Why this story? A lot of us mix in the same situation, albeit it’s our auditory senses that are tricked and not our optical ones. I’m not talking about room correction or acoustic treatment, I think it has a place in getting a good sound, but some people are so desperate to reach acoustic perfection they still miss a vital point.

What’s In A Spec?

Speaker designer and one of the founders of Kii, Bruno Putzeys, spoke to a team of producers and engineers in London, a quote stuck with me and many others that day; “most speakers sound good in a test environment.”

It’s so easy for speakers to flatter us, either with rumbling sub or soaring highs. The only problem is we are mixing in a crooked house. In many cases it doesn’t matter what we do with the acoustics, the proverbial marble is always going to roll uphill.

Why does this matter? It matters because we can have amazing sounding speakers in perfectly treated rooms, but outside of that space things don’t sound right.

Part of the job of a professional is to submit our mix to the client and get approval. Depending on the scale of the job and how long we’ve invested our time into the project, this can be a daunting wait. Then we get the notes back from the client, ‘the vocals are too quiet” or “the guitars are too loud.” Sometimes the mix notes can run over several pages.

Qué?

Of course, some of this is down to taste, but taking that into account we can be left scratching our heads wondering what they are listening on. This is an uncontrolled variable in sending mixes to clients. Which leads me to the title of this article – my ultimate test of a studio monitor speaker is that it translates to the outside world.

Since I invested in my monitor speakers of choice, some five years ago, I can’t recall having to do any second mix on a project. Even taking into account the variables outside of my control. This article is not about what those speakers are, they happen to be Kii Threes, but I know of other people using different set-ups who tell the same story.

Mix Confidence

Having the confidence to mix what you think is right and then know that it’s going to translate to the outside world is a huge reassurance. I remember battling for years with different studio speaker set-ups listening to what I thought were killer mixes only to find that when they left the room they were nothing of the sort.

Experienced mixers and mastering engineers achieve this in part with great set-ups, but also having spent so long in their mixing environments they can translate on the fly.

Speaker specs are all well and good, but in the final analysis it’s how it sounds outside the confines of our studios that counts. For me that’s the ultimate studio monitor speaker test.