WanderingKid posted:

Same opinion as Wixard on this one. I basically hated everything that clocked in under about £700 sterling. Alesis M1s sound no better or worse to me than the cheap Sony hifi speakers I had at home. At the time I was monitor shopping though, the ADAM A7s hadn't been released. Now you can get them for about 400 sterling for the pair and if they are anything like the ADAM P11as (and they supposedly are) then they should be good. The P11a was give or take the best monitor I auditioned for under 850 sterling. I liked it the most anyhow. Its worth pointing out that all the monitors I auditioned sound massively different. I found this disconcerting but ultimately it doesn't matter what you use to monitor. The most important part is you get used to how they sound and where they are deficient. Then make up for that deficiency by referencing your mixes on loads of other soundsystems (your mp3 player, the speakers in your car etc). Even if your monitors are amazing I get the impression you would have to do this and I still second reference my mixes on the crap pair of headphones I got with the guild wars special edition.

I ended up getting a pair of Dynaudio BM5as and there are good and bad things about them. Mostly it depends on the environment you monitor in. You will get flutter echoes in very small rooms that don't have solid walls. Also, the tweeters are unbelievably sensitive which I suppose is a good thing but you have to monitor with your head pretty still. If you move your head a couple of inches to the left or right you can hear/feel the phase changes as the sound takes longer to reach one of your ears. Its literally a matter of inches. At first I thought this is crazy. But now I have sort of gotten used to it but my back sometimes kills me from sitting upright for so long. Occassionally I slouch over or lie on my side but they sound fricking weird when you do that. You can get used to that of course - you just need to keep monitoring on your side. If I'm doing this for a long time though my side starts to go numb. Hah.

Well below this price point I didn't notice this behaviour on any of the monitors I auditioned. The M1s for instance just don't exhibit this behaviour and I can listen off axis and it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to the sound.

I sort of liked the Tannoy Reveal 6s in a hard to explain kind of way but I hated those KRK Rokit and V series monitors. Those just seemed like really really powerful hifi speakers that bust your ears up at high amplitude. Wasn't keen on them at all. The Event TR-6 was quite nice but the build quality wasn't great and Event's tech support and customer relations are poor. Dynaudio on the other hand have been pretty good to me and there are a couple of guys working at their UK distributors (TC Electronics) which know me on first name terms and they said they can sort me out for replacements if I get problems. And they came through for me on two occassions and replaced two fecked up speakers that Digital Village shipped to me.

Overall, it tipped the scales for me and I'm glad I spent the extra cash for the peace of mind and the solid speakers. I would suggest you do the same and spend a little bit extra for something that will last.