thethrillfactor:
You're nuts!
Of course, if you were a true audio phreak, you would've ditched the Mark Levinson and bought a Cello, when Mark left Madrigal and his name behind, and formed Cello.
Interesting comment about the 1031 -- in many ways the 1030 is a much better design, tweaked into the 1031 for marketing purposes more than anything else. Forget about the 1029 for serious work.
Yeh yeh yeh, the Genelecs are not the greatest monitors in the world, but they are meat and potatos for anyone opening a ProTools studio as described above, and way better than the Mackie-type stuff.
nemisis633:
Regarding NS10Ms -- the comments above are exactly the point -- they have become a fetish, deified into cultlike adoration. However, the quality of affordable monitors has soared in the past 10 years, just as the NS10Ms qualified for Medicaire. Everybody and their aunt started making active near monitors catering to the growing market of higher-fidelity, smaller-scale studios, and as a result, the post-NS10M world is a far better place.
I'm sure that in some circumstances, with some engineers, NS10Ms are the thing. But are these the circumstances in which -- and the engineers with whom -- you plan to work? Are you pairing your NS10Ms with a $18,000 amp, on an SSL, with Bruce Swedian hanging mics in your tracking room? Plus, have you compared the actual sound of them to anything else?
BOTTOM LINE:
It's like French people. When you're not listening, they're all speaking English. All those fancy engineers who claim to use NS10Ms -- when no one's around, they're all listening through Genelecs.
And just picture the first client who comes to your studio and wants to listen to his mix at a loud volume, for nothing but his own vanity, i.e. EVERY SINGLE CLIENT IN THE WORLD, and you can't turn up your NS10Ms cause they'll sound like kazoos. Then picture the expression on his face, the expression of someone sitting on an unexpectedly soft toilet seat, you know, those creepy, cushy, toilet seats that enjoyed a brief popularity just about the same time the NS10Ms were becoming all the rage. And you'll have to look at that face, that look of pure disappointment aimed in your direction, and then you glance at your Industry Standard NS10Ms that couldn't deliver in the fourth quarter, you shake your head, stare at the floor, and wish you hadn't quite smoking. It is a moment too horrible to contemplate, and yet it is totally avoidable.
All you have to do -- and I say this now as a friend, rather than some faceless, internet audio correspondant -- is get the lava lamp, and chuck the NS10Ms.
-MattiMattMatt