Hi there, thanks for this discussion space, this is my first participation, but I have been reading some post and is definitely a better place to talk (or write) than social networks.
This post is spatially interesting to me, because I’m looking for buying my first “Mastering Monitors” but I’ve found this task very hard considering that I live in Panama, here are not any possibilities to try pro audio gear, so my research until now is based on specs and sadly on reviews, and I mean sadly because of this:
I have done some amateur mastering, I’m not an actual “Mastering Engineer” but i hope someday to work professionally. In the meantime, I am electronics engineer and I’ve been working the last 15 years in the telecommunications industry. In telecoms we choose equipment based on specs, and that is because almost every aspect in this industry is standardized so when you read the data sheet of an equipment you can be sure that these data were obtained under the same circumstances than the data form other manufacturers. This makes possible to take decisions based purely on objective parameters.
What I’ve found in the audio industry is that subjective component is what seems to govern. Each manufacturer gives their own specs measured as they liked or in the most of cases as they make look better their products.
In other cases, the manufacturers give almost no data about the specs of their products, just marketing blabla… This is the case of a renowned speakers maker, that seems to be the tendency in mastering these days, ATC… To me is frustrating to can’t see actual specs and testing data of a speaker that costs around 11k each one!
This decision making is harder when you see the “Top Engineers Charts” (like jaxsta) and you do some investigation about some of the mainstream mastering engineers and find that some of them use “cheap” monitors like Focal’s 6Be.
Probably I’ll have to spend a couple of thousands traveling just to try speakers in an acoustic unknown environment, due to the lack of standardization that could make possible objective analysis.
Best regards and thanks again.
PD. Sorry if my redaction is not the best, I’m not english native speaker.