Top 10 Best Home Studio Monitors | The Ultimate Guide 2023

So what makes a good studio monitor? And how should an accurate monitor sound? This answer depends on your listening sensibilities as to know how the real audio is supposed to sound, along with the accuracy in which the speakers reproduce those sounds in the context of your particular studio.

There is a direct relationship between the music you are making, the dimensions and set up of your room, and the monitors you use. This means that the ideal monitor will vary among musicians, applications, and room dimensions. Don’t let this confuse you, this guide will walk you through all the details to help you determine what’s appropriate for your home studio.

Your goal is to ensure that your mix translates well across any and every playback device that your audience is listening on. This means headphones, car stereos, kitchen radios, smartphones, laptops, TV’s…you name it. For this, you want to go after the most transparent and accurate studio monitors that you can afford.

It is not uncommon for electronic music producers and DJ’s to use monitors that offer more low-end. This can help create a vibe during the production process—some extra “pump” the helps one get in the zone.

In mixing, post-production, or making music that is largely acoustic with an emphasis on songwriting, musicality and tone, you will require the most accurate and uncoloured representation of your music as possible.

These sensitive colourations are extremely delicate to work with and applications like this require studio monitors that you can trust and listen to for lengthy sessions without fatigue.

Some simple rules to follow: The larger the space, the larger the speakers and the more amplification you need. The smaller the space and the lower the volume, the smaller speakers you need.

Recording acoustic guitar and vocals in a small room? Get a small pair of near-field, powered studio monitors with 4″ or 5″ woofers. These will do the job quite nicely. Producing hip-hop or radio-inspired pop tracks? If you’ve got a little more space to work with, consider monitors with an 8” woofer or add a subwoofer to help you sculpt some of those lower frequencies.

We’re going to get into some detail about both of these types of monitors, but from the get-go we’ll suggest that if you’re looking for an easy monitoring set up for a home studio that is efficient while being cost and space effective, you’re probably best suited for some powered studio monitors.

Powered Studio Monitors

Also known as active monitors, these are the most popular choice for home and project studio monitoring as they house their own amplifiers eliminating the need for an external amplifier to power them. Simply connect a line-level signal to these monitors directly from your audio interface and power them individually from a 125V wall output.

Unpowered Studio Monitors

Also known as passive monitors, these require a more powerful signal provided by a standalone amplifier. The advantage here is these monitors give you flexibility while working with a multi-speaker set-up. In this case you can pair your preference of monitor to amplifier for more customization. But again, this is likely an unsuitable choice for the home studio and will require additional equipment and know-how. The one instance where we would recommend an unpowered monitor for the home studio would be would be with an Avantone Mixcube.

You will see that studio monitors are often marked Near-, Mid-, or Far-Field. These terms indicated the listening configuration the monitors are designed for: near-field being built for close listening and far-field designed to carry the sound over a greater distance with equal accuracy. Consider this important design feature when choosing a pair of monitors for your studio.

If your studio is small, choose near-field monitors. These are designed to be listened to from 3 to 5 feet away from the monitors driver, directly in front of you and angled inward so your head forms the point of an equilateral triangle between the two monitors. This listening position is referred to as the “sweet spot.”

This minimal distance between your ears and the speaker means that the poor acoustics of your studio will have less of an impact on what you hear. This explains why near-field monitoring is the more popular choice when it comes to mixing and post-production. For untreated rooms, these will help create a more accurate listening environment.

In a properly acoustically treated environment, far-field monitors are a great alternate referencing option during mix. They’ll provide new perspectives in the mid to low frequencies and the music’s dynamics.

However, unless you have transformed your entire barn or into a fully functional recording studio, far-field monitors are simply out of the equation for home studio recording applications.

These large monitors are used for high volume listening, are directed toward generously sized rooms and are commonly placed 10 feet from the engineer. In a home studio, you’re unlikely to benefit from this kind of investment.

These configurations explain how the input signal is divided to power the drivers in a studio monitor. Studio speakers are equipped with amplifiers dedicated to each individual driver.

In the case of a single-amp configuration, appropriate frequencies are sent to each speaker—highs to the tweeter, mids and lows to the woofer. A bi-amp configuration means that each driver has its own dedicated amplifier powering appropriate frequencies. Same goes for the more uncommon tri-amp configuration which has a midrange driver.

Bi- and tri-amp configurations reproduce much more detailed audio with a flatter response than a single-amp studio monitor as these amplifiers work within a dedicated frequency range, offering overall superior precision.

A well designed cabinet is built around the characteristics of the driver, as this is where it gets its maximum performance. A cabinet should be transparent and not colour the audio in any way. Cabinets are designed to eliminate resonant, and create an optimal environment for drivers to perform.

You’ll notice that many models of studio monitors have a hole or slot placed in either the front or back of the cabinet. This hole is called a port and it helps extend the frequency response lower for more bass. It is tuned in such a way as to work with the resonating air from within the cabinet to boost more bass output than the driver alone is capable of producing.

While this only seems beneficial, some find that sealed or enclosed cabinets are more accurate and the tuning of these ports aren’t exactly precise. If the port is placed on the rear of the monitor and the monitor is placed too close to a wall—which is often the case in a home studio—this additional low end can become exaggerated as they produce a build up of low frequencies. To prevent this, monitors with ports on the rear need to be kept at least 3 feet from the wall behind it.

If you’re room is small, consider looking at front-ported studio monitor like the PreSonus Eris E5. You still need to keep them a small distance from the wall, but not as far as back-ported monitors.

The answer to this depends on the size of your room and what your doing with audio. The mathematical reality is that smaller rooms simply aren’t large enough to allow bass frequencies to fully develop; a subwoofer in a small room is just begging for sonic inaccuracies.

If you’re mixing sound for TV, video games, or motion pictures, then a multi-speaker monitoring setup with a subwoofer is essential. Home theater systems and commercial systems in clubs and cinemas use lots of sub frequencies. You will need to be able sculpt these accurately.

If your recording environment is sufficiently large enough with proper acoustic treatment, then you will certainly benefit from using a subwoofer. If not, then don’t sweat it. Learn to use your ears in your room to the best of your ability.