Placing your studio monitors is key when you’re into music production. When you’ve just finished setting up your music production studio at home and everything is looking good and in the right position, the feeling is incredible. However, once you start producing or mixing, it might seem that the sound is not right. Possibly, you might be having trouble placing your studio monitors in the correct way. A lot of people think that just placing and plugin them in is all you need. On the contrary: to get a good monitoring position you need to find the optimal sound. For this reason, you might have to think twice before you think you’ve got it right.
Placing your Studio Monitors: the Dos
The thing is that placing your studio monitors requires much more than just that: monitoring starts with a good placement. This all comes to several factors and combinations. For example, there’s the position of the walls in your room or studio. Also, there’s your own head and the placement of your acoustic treatment. To be honest, this topic is much more complex than what it sounds like here. Nevertheless, for this article, we’re only going through the basic principals of monitor placement to get the optimal sound.
Two simple rules apply for the “ideal position.” Firstly, your head has to form an equilateral triangle with the drivers of your monitors. This means that all sides have to be the same length in order to be correct. Remember you can go either too wide or too narrow with this one, so get your measuring right. Secondly, point the monitors directly to your head. This is optimal if you’re going from one studio to another. Similarly, this is the case if you’re sharing the sweet spot with another person. On the one hand, given that high frequencies are more directional, one perceives the sound as stronger when the monitors point towards your head and ears. Low frequencies, on the other hand, are not.
Image: prostudiogear
