Hey gals/guys I'm from the live world and I'm thinking about setting up a mixdown room to work out the recordings I do of my live gigs.

In the Live world speaker selection has to do with dispersion angles and how a speaker reacts in the room as well as power handling, THD and frequency response. I'm guessing that this is only part of the case when setting up a mixdown room.

So if I'm looking for some reasonably priced near field monitors what specs do I look for? I'm not looking for names of brands or models I should buy. All I want to know is what I judge them by.

Thanks for taking the time to comment on a silly little post like this.

Hey bro, I'd say things to look for would be:

- Smooth frequency response
- Good bass extension
- Solid stereo Image
- Clarity at low volumes (you can't mix too loud or you'll fatigue)
- Good translation of your mixes - though this is hard judge till you've owned them ;0)

Also, room treatment and speaker placement are essential if you want to hear them right!!! Make sure you do some searches on these issues.

Cheers.

The single most important thing in a hi quality nearfield is what perception it gives you IN YOUR ROOM and how well this perception TRANSLATES to the outside world.

this is fundamentally different than LIVE because all listeners are in the same space at the same time sharing the experience.

so a wonderful sound in YOUR MIX ROOM is only truly wonderful if it's sounds great when you take it to your car, your living room, your friends kitchen, your I_POD, your boombox, your television speakers, etc.

SPECS AND THEORY will not provide you with the answer to this test but some room testing in advance (a REALLY easy thing to do is to sweep a tone from hi to lo in the room and note which frqs get quieter or louder... a test mic and a freq readout are even better... check Metric Halo, etc.)

so once you know a little about how the monitors react in your room and the anomolies your room may have, you can use this info to balance the freq response of the monitor in the room as most nearfields have adjustments possible via pots or swithces on the back.

then do some mixes and see how they translate to THE REAL WORLD outside.

also listen carefully to albums you know well.

believe me, most sane people would not listen to NS10's for the pleasure of how they SOUND in their rooms dfegad but rather because the midrange seems to translate well to a variety of real world conditions.

hope this helps!
(you said "no names" but after 20 years of using about every nearfield, I'm using ADAM S3a's... and loving it!)