Studio Monitors

A sub will get in the way of you mixing a good rounded song with tight bass/low end.
A sub is good, if you use it to check your mixes, but not to mix your mixes (Just like headphones)

 6" or 8" Studio monitors will be enough. 
 
Save another $100 and get these Tannoy's. There 6.5" and for the price, there AWESOME!!!!!
 
I have a new Alesis Resolve Sub in my closet with remote CTL, if your interested let me know. It has less than 2 hours on it

hey cj, are you talking about these?

Tannoy Reveal 601p

I was steering away from subwoofers, as I heard they mess with the mix, but wanted to get some opinions on it to make sure.

Chilldanny, thanx for the advice, but I am thinking the sound card in the computer at the store is a mega one, I would not get a true picture of what they would sound like with my sound card.. but that is sound advice for most items. appreciate the feedback on your monitors.

hey cj, are you talking about these?

Tannoy Reveal 601p

 
Yea!!!! Im sorry, I thought I put a link to them.

Are those made by Faberge?

chilldanny


Hiya Guitarman
I've been using my Yamaha MSP5's for around 7years now and they're great.
Yamaha have the MSP10 Studio monitors too which are also very good.

Go to your local store with a bunch of tracks that you like and try some out
is probably the best advice.  It's really the only way to go, everyone has
different prefrences.

Using a sub is fine but really your room needs to be balanced otherwise
it can seriously screw up your mixes.

This above is the best advice around for speakers. You really need to hear them to make any decision on which to get. It wont matter what the source is just as long as that all the choices are using the same source.

"True sound" - hmmm.... how would I know it if I heard it?
 
But seriously... I think there are some good suggestions already.  I played around with Subs a few years ago and that was a disasterous waste of valuable time.
I find that matching the speakers to the room (and whatever time & money you want to put into room treatments) is the key.
Many people go for the 8inch cones but I find that wastes lots of my $$ in treating the room since standing waves emerge so much faster with the bigger speakers.  On the flip side, 4 & 5 inch cones are trickier to figure out the proper amount of bass (since they dropoff the low end).
In the end, I picked up KRK 6" on a huge sale (~$350/pr) and I've been very happy with them.  They replaced a very old pair of Alesis Reference One Monitors which I loved as well.
 
PS - get a store that will let you take them home and listen to them for a few days to see how they fit your producing style.

those actually scare me... lol

quick observation...

once upon a time we mixed to a target audience that had sound reproduction systems that handled a wide dynamic range and a broad frequency spectrum. At that time main studio monitors typically went down to 40 Hz, some all the way down to 20 Hz. Of course the big dogs back then also used compression drivers and horns<G>...

I suspect that these days that would be, well, counter productive. People just don't sit in their listening rooms and focus on the music any more. I'm not even going to try to guess if that's good or bad, but I acknowledge that it is real.

As such, you need to pay attention to how your mix will translate to such systems, and if you use a monitor system that goes down the the lowest couple of octaves it will probably sound a little anemic on more moderate systems. It always did, of course, but that was ok.

There are hundreds of tricks to make something sound like it has more energy in the extreme edges of the spectrum, we used to use these tricks to prepare music that had to go out over telephone lines, or even FM transmitters. No harm is thinking about personal MP3 players in the same light!

So, a two-way cabinet with a 6.5" or maybe 8" driver will usually be a good yardstick. As for specific recommendations, well, everyone has their favorite monitors, and you will not find a lot of agreement<G>! I use Yorkville YSMs, mostly because they have a similar vibe to my mains (Urei 809s), and my home Hi-Fi (Polk Model 10s). No, the Polk 10s don't sound exactly like the 809s, though they are remarkably close to the YSMs. But if I mix on the YSMs (and check on the 809s, or vica-versa) the mix usually sounds pretty good on the Polks.

The biggest factor will be how the monitors interact with your room, so try to find a shop that'll let you audition them in your place!