[k-mcgrady]

Studio monitors and HiFi equipment seem like different categories and use cases to me. HiFi speakers should fill the room. To get a good sound from studio monitors you need to be positioned well. Just moving a little bit can make a big difference in the sound.

[KozmoNau7]

I used a pair of Adam A5Xs as my main speakers for a long time, and those were perfectly capable of filling my living room with sound, as well as being seriously good and accurate monitors. Obviously the 5" woofers did struggle a bit with bass at high volumes, but so would any hifi speaker with similar-sized drivers. Augmenting them with two 12" active subs took care of that well enough. Replacing them with the larger A7Xs or A8Xs would have been an option as well.

I've since replaced the Adams with a set of Monitor Audio Bronze 2s, because I wanted something with a bit more living room friendly looks. Finding an AVR with outputs for active speakers is surprisingly difficult, so I had to go back to passive speakers, and I compensated a bit by getting the largest practical model I could fit.

Studio monitors are as varied as any other speaker design. There are ones with really small sweet spots and others with extremely huge ones, the JBL LSR series is a great example of the latter, their horn loaded tweeters have really impressive horizontal dispersion.

[JohnBooty]

    Studio monitors and HiFi equipment seem like different categories and use cases to me. . 

Studio monitors can potentially be great hifi speakers, though generally not the other way around.

    To get a good sound from studio monitors you need to be positioned well. 

Modern studio monitors are often quite the literal opposite of this!

Thanks to the waveguide on the JBL 3-series and 7-series monitors, you get nearly perfectly constant sound over an unbelievably wide 120-degree swath. You won't find anything approaching this in the consumer hi-fi market segment. This is nearly as true for Genelec studio monitors as well. Check the dispersion graphs (the rainbow colored ones) for these models:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/j...

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/j...

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/g...

Which makes sense given the use case: you might have a few people sitting at the mixing desk and you'd like them to be hearing the same thing.

    HiFi speakers should fill the room

Depending on the size of the room, studio monitors may or may not be able to fulfill this duty well. It does definitely tend to be the achilles heel when you try and use studio monitors for hifi. I've got JBL 306's crossed over to a pair of compact 12" subs in my fairly small music room and and they definitely get way louder than I want or need them too.

[k-mcgrady]

Interesting! I guess it depends on the specific speakers/monitors. It's not something I would have considered before. I'll have to check out those JBL's.