I was thinking about writing an article on acoustics and studio monitors, while doing some research I came across this article. Rather than recreate the wheel, I thought I'd share it with you. This was written by Brandon over at Recording Review. Really great stuff.

Can I mix a record using my home stereo speakers?

The Ultra Pro Situation
Without a doubt, the most important factor in monitoring is the acoustics of the room and the placement of your monitors in that room. (Read my article about moving your studio monitors). The major label big boy recording engineers have rooms that cost as much as a house. The acoustics in these rooms are amazingly even and this allows for the most accurate monitoring possible. The big boys all seam to use different studio monitors because their tastes and mixing styles are much different from recording engineer to recording engineer. I will put up money to back my my claim. No big boy mixer is going to pick mixing a record in a shitty building with their own monitors when they could mix in a great mixing room with some other monitors. In other words, the room is much more important than the monitors/speakers.

The Ultra Broke Situation
You are recording in your bedroom. You bought a few cheap condenser mics and are going to town on your record. Can you get great quality with your home stereo system? There is no reason that you can't to be honest. Depending on the speakers you use , the room you use, and the way you hear things, there are lot of factors that come into play and the speakers are just one of them. I would consider it much more important to use speakers that you know in a familiar setting than to just run out and buy new studio monitors. If you are just starting a studio and haven't done much mixing, you are in for a learning curve from hell. There are some many things that you must learn to get your mixes to translate well to the outside world regardless of you monitoring situation that I'm not sure if it matters what you are mixing on when you get started. I started with Mackie HR824s which are by no means the greatest studio monitor of all time, but I've been told by several big boys that they should be sufficient for cranking out kick ass records (assuming the room is great). Well, let's just say that the sound coming out of my studio has changed drastically over the years and my monitors have stayed the same. In other words, I could have been mixing on a phonograph and it probably wouldn't have made that much difference.

You can read the full article here.

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