Upgrading my monitoring situation - few questions

[brianbfw]

It's about time for me to upgrade my monitoring situation and i have a few questions.

Currently i own the Event ALP5. Even though i have a treated room, i still have alot of problems making my mixes translate from those speakers to regular systems, ie car, boom boxes, ipod mixes.

speakers i have been considering are the
Yamaha HS50M (very good reviews and i always here mix engineers talk
about how they love their NS10's) and the Genelc 8020's.


Questions i have:

1)would a Presonus monitoring station color the sound?

2)why do people mix with such expensive speakers when most listeners out there don't have speakers that even come close to that quality? is that the big argument for monitors like NS10's?

My converters are an apogee symphony system.

thanks

[Smithcok]

Howdy - couple of thoughts, I'll just bullet them.

- NS10's and the new HS series are nothing alike. NS10's are great at what they do (I use a pair), but they are not accurate studio monitors. They are somewhat of an analog to consumer bookshelf speakers. The HS series are definitely aimed at a more accurate playback experience (and from the reviews I've heard, they are good monitors)

- The PreSonus central station is used by a lot of people and most all like it a lot. I've only used one once, and nothing struck me as out of place. I think its a great, versatile unit.

- Mixing on high-end, very accurate systems is a good thing because as the mix engineer, you need to make sure that your mix will translate to almost any other playback system. If your playback system has (for example) terrible hyped base response, then surely when people play it back on a system that has accurate or diminished bass response - it will sound extremely thin in the low end.

- I definitely think a monitor upgrade will help by itself, but how is your room treated and what are its dimensions?

[Rad]

The Central Station is passive from what I've heard, so there should be no sound coloration.

As to speakers, if you want accurate monitoring you should really look at the HS-80s, not the 50s, unless you absolutely need to place them on a desktop and space is an issue.

Regarding the HS-80M, this is a very good and very detailed speaker. It does not sound like NS-10 partly because the NS-10's were optimized for flat _power_ dispersion at most frequencies, while the HS-80s have flat _volume_ at most frequencies, which is what you need for nearfield monitoring.
I would certainly place the HS series ahead of any Event or Mackie model as regards to good mix translation.