INSTALLATION
Like any speaker system, your Monitor Twos will work best when properly
positioned in a suitable acoustic environment. Achieving proper speaker
placement is usually straightforward, but even with near and mid-field monitors,
speaker placement and the acoustics of the listening room itself are too often
overlooked and can become significant contributors to an inaccurate and
uninspiring monitoring environment.
Please take a moment to read this information carefully. It will help you to get
the most use and enjoyment from your new Alesis monitors.
A Little History
In the early days of studio recording, big monitor speakers were almost
exclusively used. Unfortunately, they also required high powered amplifiers and
expensive acoustic treatments (often poorly done) to the entire control room.
Still, a well constructed big monitoring system really was impressive to listen to,
a fact not overlooked by the studio owners who wanted to impress the record
company executives who paid for the big studio’s time.
Fortunately, recording engineers and producers eventually learned that this was
not always the best way to accurately mix music because it wasn’t the way most
people listened to their radios, cassette and CD players. Also, big monitor
systems and the costs for the required control room acoustic treatments were
going through the roof (no pun intended), particularly beyond the budget limits
of smaller project and home studios which were growing in numbers. A new
way of accurate monitoring was needed; near and mid-field monitoring.
Near and mid-field monitors, by their definition, are intended for close-in
monitoring. The idea here is to improve the direct acoustic path between the
speaker and the listener by making it shorter, thereby giving less opportunity for
the always present indirect (reflected) sounds to get back in and muddle things
up. With near-field monitoring, the surrounding acoustic environment becomes
a much less significant factor in establishing the monitor system’s sound
character. The same holds true for mid-field monitoring except there’s a little
more distance placed between the speakers and the listening position. The result
can be a larger sound field along with something closer to that “big monitor
sound”.
A good set of monitors properly located in a reasonably non-reverberate room
and powered by a 100-200 watt amplifier will yield surprisingly accurate results
at budget prices. Even the big studios use smaller speakers to augment their big
monitoring systems today as near and mid-field monitors have become proven
tools in the recording business.
