For me, there are a few places and systems I listen to music:

My home stereo, consisting of a nice pair of mid 70's Technics "Linear phase" speakers driven by an Onkyo receiver. Often with a Polk sub, and occasionally with the full surround system that adds a nice Yamaha centre and Paradigm rears (this was set up on a budget hence the mishmash of brands, but they blend together ok).

My studio, with a pair of Mackie HR824mk1's running from an RME Fireface, OR a pair of Audio Technica ATH-M50x, OR the built-in speaker in my old Mac Pro or my even older iMac.

My shower, with a 4-dollar bluetooth speaker.

My desk at work, with a Focusrite 2i2 and a pair of mediocre Labtec speakers.

My girlfriends house, with a cheap Panasonic shelf system.

My car, with the worst possible stereo system (the deck sounds ok despite glitchiness, but original Pontiac speakers are terrible).

At the lake, through every teenagers and twenty-somethings Bluetooth speakers all cranked to eleven.

Everywhere else, with the speaker built into my phone.


Apart from that, I don't really listen to music much. grin


Originally Posted By: justanoldmuso
1. why do the "classic hits" of the past that didnt use any of todays speaker tech sound so good even on my baby tv speakers ?
2. are we fooling ourselves spending lots of moolah on monitors ?
3. why do mixes done on big studio monsters sometimes not translate ? happened more than once to me.
4. given that lots of people in the world listen on junk, and given that a musician is lucky to make even a few buks monthly off of streaming...is the spend on hi end spkrs worth it ?


1: Nostalgia. Also because analog equipment adds distortion, noise, and nonlinearity, and the human brain likes those, but not too much of those (unless you're me).
2: Maybe. Monitors are simply supposed to be accurate rather than sounding "good" - the idea being to find faults that need correcting.
3: As with #2, but also maybe due to a bad reference track. Hard to say.
4: Are hobbies worth spending money on? I think so. If your only goal with making music is to profit, you're in the wrong business.

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