A couple things that the blog didn't address is workflow. A good set of monitors in a good room CAN help to reduce the number of extra systems needed for mix sampling. High production studios don't have the time, nor do their clients want to pay for the mixing engineer to burn CDs and run around to a bunch of different systems. 

So, of course it is possible to get desirable results on home stereo systems. But using the best monitor you can afford increases the likelihood that your mix will sound similar across multiple systems.

The other thing is that there is a perception issue (Bit goes into this a bit) with our ears. Not everyone's ears and brains combined have flat frequency interpretation or perception. Thus, when someone says that a system sounds "good," it's based on their perception. Thus it is subjective. So, going back to monitors...good ones in a good environment are more likely to produce "good" results across systems and a large population of listeners.

I'm sure that there is a mix out there on a platinum record that was mixed using a set of speakers as opposed to monitors, and that's great. It's just that it's not as likely to happen for most mixing engineers. 

The first passage seems to be similar to my personal point of view:

"Studio monitor. That has a wonderful ring to it, doesn’t it? In the field of audio production, perhaps no other two words combined roll off the tongue with the combination of elegance, magic and power of the phrase “studio monitor”.

For we all know that studio monitors are no mere mortal loudspeakers. No, they are a cut above, up in the refined air of sound reproduction where extreme pains are taken to design a monitor that has an extremely flat frequency response at every frequency and is meant not to sound good, but rather to tell the brutal and honest truth about our mixes. If it is designed to be a studio monitor, it may not always be perfect, but it will be a cut above your average consumer-grade loudspeaker in this regard.

Consumer-grade loudspeakers, on the other hand, are either the little toy speakers we put on our computers and MP3 players, or they are home-entertainment-centered audiophile speakers purposely designed to sound pleasant no matter what we pump through them. They are “hyped” at the low end and high end of the spectrum to sound artificially good and to save our ears from the nasty truth of a bad mix. This makes them totally different from and - for our purposes – inferior to the almighty “studio monitor”.

There’s only one problem with this clash of the classes description of the music loudspeaker world.

It’s not real.

It’s a false prejudice perpetrated mostly by those who with to market and sell studio monitors to the exploding home studio market.

THE REALITY

Most manufacturers of music loudspeakers - whether those loudspeakers are going to be marketed for the home stereo or the home studio – have a single goal in mind: to design and build the most accurate-sounding product they can within a certain design budget and retail price range,"




best regards,
mike

you should really run a poll with mastering engineers, and have them say what kind of issues came in on mixes done across NS-10's


that'd solve that conundrum.

Bitflipper - "First time I played Dark Side of the Moon on my current setup, I couldn't believe how much was going on in there that I hadn't noticed before, despite having heard the album literally hundreds of times." Just curious - what's your current set up? Sounds good.