[anodyne33]

This takes me back to working in a few (slowly going to way of the buffalo) "professional" or "big" studios. Both of the A studios I worked in had a big set of Genelecs in the bulkhead and two or three more mid and near field monitors just above or behind the console meter bridge.

Each served it's own purpose and all the mixing guys I saw wound swap between them fairly regularly. In that situation it was about emulating different scenarios, from the 4" block speakers to get a feel for what someone would hear on an old car stereo to mid field Dynaudios that were more flat than hyped to get a feel for what the home audiophile might experience.

That's not a practical approach for a small studio (either in size or budget) but having been out of that world for a long time it makes me wonder if someone would be better served with two or three pairs of reasonably priced pair of speakers rather than trying to perfect the sound of one pair that aren't going to reflect (no pun intended) other playback environments that aren't acoustically optimized.

[thisisbrians]

Astute. The goal isn't to get the mix sounding good on one particular listening system, but being able to hear the raw, unadulterated signal as well as possible with knowledge of how it will or won't translate in other environments. Always good to have multiple sets of speakers to test those assumptions out in real-time. Interestingly, even the geometry of your specific ears will color the resulting sound that is heard, which is why referencing to commercial tracks is so helpful in the process.

[sjcoles]

Hearing damage plays a role too I think.

Aesop Rock is one that comes to mind where you can literally hear the hearing damage in the resulting mix. Late Zappa the same thing happened.