[Bob Womack]

I had a wonderful example of the results of limited low-end frequency response in the monitors in someone's recording chain today while I was out shopping for my wife. I had National Public Radio News on my car's subwoofed stereo system. The NPR host threw to a reporter to talk about a terrorist attack and suddenly my car was filled with the powerful, forced ultra-low-frequency thrusts of a hip-hop kick drum and synth bass rattling my brains. Apparently the vocal booth that the reporter used had low-frequency acoustic bleed from an adjacent editing suite or she recorded her voice in a car and another car with a blaster stereo came alongside for the whole time the reporter was recording. Also, apparently no-one in the signal chain from recordist to editor to broadcast control room to transmission control room had monitors with enough low-frequency response to reproduce this cacophony because it went on and on for the entire two minute report... then the mind-numbing blast magically went away.

That's the problem with saying, "Acoustic guitar only goes down to about 100hz so I don't need full-range monitors." If the region below 80hz isn't reproduced to some you really have no idea what is happening to your recording down there. There could be weak bass, an A/C hum, a 60hz line hum, too much proximity bass tilt-up, your four year old thumping the baseboard downstairs, or flabby bass going on and you just can't tell. I get it: home recordists don't need expensive monitors. But don't find yourself missing a huge portion of the spectrum in your monitors. Buy a cheap stereo system subwoofer and only turn it on to check for screw-ups, but don't embarrass yourself and allow a nasty, distracting abnormality that everyone else but you can hear to overshadow your mixes.

Bob