From my 30 year experience of Hi Fi speakers and professional studio monitors I have found the following. Good Hi Fi speakers make most recordings sound nice and listenable. However, professional studio monitors make good recordings sound wonderful and poor recordings sound absolutely dreadful. Maybe the studio monitors are telling the truth and the truth is not always want we want to hear. Modern recordings are getting far better so maybe studio monitors will be the way to go in the future.
Quite the opposite to my, albeit a tad younger, ear. Quality of recording and mastering is often painfully evident on good systems, let alone those costing a fortune. Many recent and not so recent releases are compressed with elevated ends of the spectrum and frankly unbearable. At the same time, re-masters of older recordings, especially those presented by Mo-Fi, Audio Fidelity/Steve Hoffman and Analogue Productions in SACD format, blow the doors off, colloquially speaking and have the ability to transform a wall of shrieking sound into a layered, deep and wide soundstage with detail to die for. The most important aspect of loudspeaker design, again- in my experience, is the cabinet itself, it must not be allowed to re-radiate the sound through drivers' diaphragms and the panels themselves, especially as the surface area ratio has long reaching consequences. Most budget speakers miserably fail in that respect. Moreover, proliferance of rectangular cabinets with parallel walls isn't exactly dictated by acoustic benefits, but results from the ease of manufacture. Then there is listening room interaction, the crossover and finally, drivers themselves. Cabinet manufacture and transport cost precludes dead and inert concoctions from making it into the mass market. Other than that, good loudpeakers can sound as detailed and effortless as headphones and offer comparable level of insight.
I work from home and listen to music all the time. Listening distance is 1,5 meter. Nearfield but almost midfield distance. I tried iloud MTM, Focal Alpha 50 evo and Genelec 8030c. The genelec was the best but they present the music very aggressive while the frequency response is perfectly fine and flat with a calibrated mic. I tried 2 hifi speakers which are known to have a rather flat response and the in room response wer eqed to be almost perfectly flat. The Kef LS50 Meta was objectively better than Elac DBR62. I prefered the presentation in near field by the elacs because the voices are deep and not up front in the face. In far field / mid field or without eq the kef is better. -> I tried 5 different speakers and the cheapest was the best for my room and distance, very surprised. Are the elacs less detailed than the genelecs or kef? Maybe, I wasn't focusing on that but the difference was very small there was one. All speakers were accompanied by a subwoofer, so sub bass wasn't important. if you want near field ~1m, I would not pick the elacs, I would go with the Kefs or Genelecs.
I'd say the function of speakers in a studio is more elusive. Its the concept of making a recordings that translate. That means that what is heard in the studio should resemble what will be heard in the outside world. A kind of perfect average ia the ideal in a studio speaker. Given the incredible variation of contexts music will be listened to by consumers this ideal is elusive. However translation (not differing in presentation) as it is known is the ideal. It's irrelevant to a mix environment to have speakers that sound incredible but don't represent the average. But no one really knows what average is. They used to use little cubes called Auratones to get close to average of car and portable radios I guess one of today's averages is the airpod.
Nailed it. What is more HiFi than a monitor that is designed to have a flat response, uniform dispersion, low distortion and wide dynamic range. Many recordings you buy were mixed and mastered on JBL LSR -32, LSR - 28, LSR 6332 speakers. So listening to those recordings on those speakers are as close as you get to hearing the mix exactly as intended. There is no higher fidelity. I have bought many pairs of these used as recording studios update their equipment and sell on eBay. Often the tweeters need to be replaced, but then you essentially have new monitors. One pair of my LSR speakers came from Britney Spears dance practice studio. Those tweeters were roasted. Ha
We (most engineers) use neutral and detailed speakers with very low distortion that let us spot things that aren’t quite working with the arrangement and/or mix. This is also what works best with to an average of the consumer gear out there. Regardless of the trend, really. gear trends changes in the consumer space over time- because technologies change what is cheaper to make/market over time. That is not how we choose studio monitors. I do not listen to trend-following consumer gear when working with audio, but on my spare time I am a somewhat trend following consumer, so I do in general know what current earbuds, car stereos and bluetooth speakers sounds like these days. It’s not as bad as it was;-)
