Monitors vs PA speakers?

[Ermz]

Please break it down for an audio newbie.

Why is the former generally more expensive than the latter when it's smaller etc. Which one is more advantageous for which purposes?

A friend of mine was thinking of getting a mixer set-up in his room with monitors so he could have jams with people easier... he found the monitors to be insanely expensive and went in favour of the PA speakers instead. I'm struggling to understand why the monitors cost so much more. Is the sound more articulated through them... do they have a wider frequency response???

 

[2dark]

I worked with so many different PA systems over the ears and I've heard the
worst and crappy system and some of the high end stuff you get for Sound Reinforcement.
You actually get what you pay for.
If you have a PA system for like 700$ and some studio monitors for 700$ the
only benefit you get from a PA system is more watts. But with less sound quality.

It's very hard to compare those 2 worlds because their work surroundings are so
different.
The only thing that studio monitors and PA speakers need to have in common, is headroom.
To have them working at their specific levels where they sound best.

I would even say that if I want to have the same sound quality for a PA speaker setup
than for a 700$ studio monitor I would have at least to double that amount of $ to get there
with PA speakers.

 

[Ermz]

Alright, so what you're saying is that essentially the PA systems are built for volume as opposed to the monitors which are made for higher quality sound?

 

[2dark]

well, almost.
PA systems tend to boost low frequencies too. Which is not a bad thing.
It can get bad when you can't adjust the crossovers properly.
They also have different sound irradiation angles, depending on the type (tops,
arrays, stage monitors, ....) of the speaker and its frequency range.

 

[ThomasT]

Alright, so what you're saying is that essentially the PA systems are built for volume as opposed to the monitors which are made for higher quality sound?

Not only. They are both optimized for their special application.

PA speakers are optimized for power. That means they can have (but not must) a worser frequency response and more distortion. The less distortion the more the speaker must be damped and the lower is it's efficiency factor.
That means a PA speaker produces normally more sound pressure level from a given electrical power than a studio speaker or a good HIFI-Speaker.

Another very important point are the radiate characteristics and its frequency dependency. This is also the main difference between HIFI speakers and (near field) monitors.

 

[Soundscaper]

monitors need to reveal faults in mixing till the very last second of your mixing.
HIFI and PA needs to sound as flattering as possible, where in PA watts also play a big role. PA gives a lot of low freq too. These can be a real pain in a small "untuned acoustical environement" as a room often is, then you need extensive basstrapping etcetcetc... To my ears the most rehearsing rooms sound VERY bad. Just as you need good monitoring in a studio to judge your mixes, you need good sound in a rehearsalroom to get the most out of your reheasals. If you don't hear what the other are playing how can you interact with them?

 

[Ermz]

So if I were to be in the market for a new PC soon, one that was geared towards recording but also listening to alot of music and games (you know the usual... a media powerhouse), what would I be better off getting?

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

On a mega tight budget you can just put the pc thru your stereo (if it sounds decent and has a reasonably flat response, which mine does).

Jonas would be able to tell you some good brands I'm sure.

 

[Nuk3m]

moonlapse is talking about stage monitors. The foldbacks thats allow the people playing to hear themselves, not studio monitors.


FLOOR MONITORS....fuck i was wrecking my brain trying to think of that term...

 

[Ermz]

Well say the budget wasn't mega tight, the person in question doesn't even have a stereo worthy of note, and is so sick of having an antiquated PC that he is willing to spend a fair deal of money to ensure he doesn't run into the same problems an engineer trying to monitor the mix out of an old mono 50's tube radio would.

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

My two cents on all this, be it off topic or not, is that for amateur recording purposes, it is better to have easy access to multiple sound sources than one good set of monitors.

I got a pair of decent monitors, 2 average sterew speakers, a boom-box, and two sets of headphones (one good, one shitty). It's easy to make something sound good out of any one of those sound sources. But making it sound decent on all of them (which is what really matters) is a bitch that terrorizes me worse than my ex-girlfriend (who, by the way, is banging my neighbor--typical Jerry Springer-type shit that haunts my otherwise normal lifestyle).

 

[Ermz]

uhhh... ahhhh.... emm...

 

[Nuk3m]

errr.......is this the part where we all say "GO TO OPRAH" ? By the way Moonlapse im pretty sure im going to buy the schools old PA system.

 

[Ermz]

ah k, well good luck with that.

Anyhow, I'm still open to suggestions on what would be a sensible audio monitoring/media playback solution for a person buying a new PC. I'll keep the stereo thing in mind, but surely there has to be something more high-end to work with?

 

[Exsanguis]

There are more high end possibilities, but it'd really help if you told us your approximate budget, and what exactly you'd want to be doing with the computer, in terms of audio.

 

[Ermz]

Alright, first application of the PC will be for media playback. DVDs, Videos, Music... along with alot of games (what can I say? I've been deprived for 5 years... I miss them).

Second application will be demo-quality recording (hopefully). I like to mess around recording various things at home and I figure when I start the Audio Engineering course next year, I'll take it alot more seriously and want actual capability to record well as opposed to pure drive.

Third will be for guitar jamming ocasionally if my amp ever fucks up again, or I'm lacking an amp in a jam. I use Guitar Rig and would need my guitar to sound relatively natural when played back to me through whatever sound monitoring system I have.

I'm not really sure what to say in terms of budget. I suppose I won't be spending more than $5000 AUD (Australian money) for the entire system. Since the bulk of the system should fall under $2500, let's suppose we have $2500 left to play with soundcards and sound system. Of course depending on what's available and recommended, that $2500 might be increased substantially if the equipment is worth it.

 

[spaivxx]

OK, my opinion. NOT GOOD to game/internet/etc..... on your recording rig. I have heard so many people complain about unstable PC based rigs, 9 out of ten of them are using thier all purpose computer for their recording rig. I built a machine specificly for recording, no non-recording related applications on it, and I have yet for it to ever crash or suffer a driver conflict. It does not hiccup, pop, etc....... I will put it up against a Mac any day.

About monitors, a good budget setup would be some Behringer Truth powered monitors. They run around $250 a pair on eBay new, and will fill a small room with FLAT RESPONSE sound. Of course they are tunable to compensate for room acoustic anamolies. They aint Mackie or Alesis, but they serve well in a budget monitor role.

Also, Beyer makes some really good headphones, relly good, with great low frequency response and the best isolation of of headphones this side of $500. you can get them for unde $200. A lot of people suggest not mixing with headphones, but they can be an invaluable tool.

In an ideal situation you would have a dedicated PC or Mac, good monitors, good headphones, AND a small PA system. The PA is good because you can use it both for jamming during rehearsals and to give you a good live feel while recording, then only use your monitors during mix/edit/mastering.

I am lucky, I have a small budget setup but have a good friend who owns a sweet studio with perfect rooms and an array of monitors spaced throughout the control room. So when I really need many points of reference, I can drive 5 miles up the road and use his setup.

One last thing. Nothing is going to give you a more accurate picture of what the end user hears better than a good car and home stereo. After you have achieved a good mix, it is always important to hear it in a variety of "non studio" environments. The end user is not going to give a shit what you used to monitor your recording. I know of a studio here in Jacksonville Florida where the engineer takes bands to his car to hear the mixes, it is a cheap tactic to impress them with the quality of what he has done for them, but it keeps them coming back!!!!!

 

[Ermz]

Alright, thanks alot for that.

 

[Ermz]

Just another question, because I'm a total newbie to a studio environment. How do monitors normally hook up to the PC? Do the higher-end soundcards have the outputs that are needed, or do you go through some kind of mixer? And if it's the latter, are you able to keep adding individual monitors to your setup until you're able to mix in 5.1?? haha.

 

[Hewy80]

A solution to using ur pc for both games etc and recording would be to make ur machine dual boot.
Have one partition booting a clean image of windows with just ur recording progs installed and the other partition for all the other stuff u want to do.