save up, my advice...never skimp on the monitors.

There are Genelecs, Yamahas lower than that bracket (UK price new I saw £679 the pair) which will perform as well; with speakers it kinda depends where you are located what deals you can get. In the UK we get Genelecs and other brands cheaper (scale by scale) as they are Europe-manufactured.

But really, new, the price bracket you are looking for is about the minimum you can spend to get you into the 'entry-level pro' area; look at the Dynaudio BM5 or 6as as well if you can find a deal.

There are Genelecs, Yamahas lower than that bracket (UK price new I saw £679 the pair) which will perform as well; with speakers it kinda depends where you are located what deals you can get. It is really amazing.

Steve,

Welcome to recording.org. I notice your signature is not music related and looking like you are a spammer. Which I'm pretty certain you are but I will give you the benefit of doubt for ten min from this post.

I DO NOT WANT google to get any drift of crap signatures like you have meant to help you use us to point traffic to your business. You have no business here. We are 100% pro audio here and have nothing to do with your link. I have no tolerance for anything other than pro audio here.

remove your signature or I will ban you in a heart beat and block your entire ip.

Look here for some low rent studio monitor measurements to compare: [[url=http://[/URL]="http://dtmblabber.b…"]****DanTheMan's blog****: Review of Polar graphs[/]="http://dtmblabber.b…"]****DanTheMan's blog****: Review of Polar graphs[/]

Mackie and JBL look nice as do the Behringers for next to nothing.

Dan

The first thing you need to do is compare monitors you are interested in buying by listening to them with music you use as a reference (your favorite CD perhaps). Next look at the price tags. Then eliminate the cheap ones and the ones clearly outside your price range. Now you have a starting point for evaluation; look at the polar graphs and the written specs, but use your ears as the final arbiter. Try and get them all in the same room so you can A/B them with the same music in the same environment -- now everything is equal for comparison.

Don't spend hard earned money on monitors that you haven't heard in person just because someone told you they are THE ones to own. It's like taking advice from a one-eyed man who tells you the 3D effect in Avatar is no big deal.

Behr**** may look good on paper but I wouldn't pay money for them. You can also look at the Mackie monitor specs and not know that the 6" monitors perform generally better than the 8". You'd only know that by listening to them in a good room. Specs just aren't much more than a peripheral place to start. Steve has it right. Go listen to monitors preferably using music you know very very well that will show strengths and weaknesses of all aspects of a monitor.

Steve is correct in our current state of speaker sales, but any type of listening while being able to see is problematic. It's only complicated by placement issues and every place I can go to listen to monitors has serious flaws. This post on Dr. Olive's blog is probably the nicest to demonstrate the point: [[url=http://[/URL]="http://seanolive.bl…"]Audio Musings by Sean Olive: The Dishonesty of Sighted Listening Tests[/]="http://seanolive.bl…"]Audio Musings by Sean Olive: The Dishonesty of Sighted Listening Tests[/] Jack's bias against Behringer also demonstrates my point.

Now the polars I've made are not absolutely telling--they have limits b/c I don't have an anechoic chamber--but they are helpful and not subject to the opinions of people with an unknown level of experience who state their beliefs/discoveries/delusions/biases with religious conviction. Good graphs are far more clear, careful, reliable, unbiased and concise.

Dan

My bias against Behr**** has to do with having used it as a live sound engineer and having tried to support others that used it as an installation/training engineer. If you have a love of it, great. I have yet to have any of it that hasn't been substandard with regards to noise floor or failure rates and it is the latter that concerns me most of all. It's not a matter of seeing it or not seeing it. I have not listened to their monitors but due to the track record with most other of their product lines I am not hopeful for anything better or lasting.

TheJackAttack, post: 363490 wrote: My bias against Behr**** has to do with having used it as a live sound engineer and having tried to support others that used it as an installation/training engineer. If you have a love of it, great. I have yet to have any of it that hasn't been substandard with regards to noise floor or failure rates and it is the latter that concerns me most of all. It's not a matter of seeing it or not seeing it. I have not listened to their monitors but due to the track record with most other of their product lines I am not hopeful for anything better or lasting.

Jack, you don't have experience with their monitors, say that 'they look good on paper but you wouldn't pay money for them after saying you should listen to decide--data means next to nothing'. Can you see how that may have a negative impact on someone? (rhetorical) If you had thrown your experience into your original post it would have been helpful in a way. My experience is not in live sound. An unfortunate number of purchasers of their studio monitors, does not mirror your live sound experience. I don't like it any more than you do. Actually they have been the most consistent of all I've measured even though they aren't the best that I've measured. By no means am I saying they are the second coming, but they are ecologically sound. In the grand scheme of thing, the KRK aren't too bad. They'll beat a lot of popular options on the cheap--just not the Behringers when it comes to sound. I don't have any reliability data.

Dan