yes and no, depends what you look for,

I can honestly say my (much cheaper) Kali Audio IN-8's sound "as good as" my Genelec 8331's yet here's the example:
Kali Audio have annoying self-noise when nothing is playing (it's masked by sound when anything's played), so they're absoutely unusable for any music/speech restoration and denoising,
on the other hand Genelecs have weird sounding bass in music (I blame coaxial dual oval woofers), so they're not joy to listen music to (don't confuse with actual mixing or working with audio),

to be honest, lots of hardware is overpriced, but lots gives you what you pay for (in good or bad way),
I ultimately appreciate variety of options on the market, so anyone can buy what they can afford, and frankly nowadays even very low budget gear is not terrible if you know what compromises to expect

 

I don't want to rain your parade, but a monitor can't make a sound without an input. its an electromechanical device that moves air, it needs energy to move the cones that move the air.

That being said if you are getting noise, when you expect silence, you are getting input into the speakers creating that noise, ie you have a bad ground somewhere. your gain is too high on your preamp etc. or if the speakers are powered the amps are flaky and maybe a capacitor has gone bad. also you may have rf interference from lighting or wifi etc..

 

Last edited: Apr 20, 2024

What we want and what we can afford are not always the same thing.
Based on a moderate budget - Anyone with a moderate budget can get a decent set of monitors , with a mix that should sound good on nearly everything. As for hardware keys, these days, it is possibly money better spent getting a great 88 note MIDI controller as most of the sounds are available in vst synths, rather than a couple of dedicated name synths. I have seen live bands where the keyboard player used a MIDI controller and a laptop sent to his amp. If you did not know that, you would not know the difference. Just an observation. If you want to build a Pro studio, I already assume you have at least half a million to spend as the desk, amps, monitors, wiring and acoustic design alone will cost most, if not all of that, possibly as much as double when you add in outboard gear as well.

Simply, if it does the job well and it's affordable, get it.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 20, 2024

I know what you mean, but no,
it's a known "design limitation", confirmed by Kali Audio, they cheap out anywhere they can, and higher self noise (roughly 12dB over ambience) is what they did try to improve with second generation of their monitors now,
and I "feed" them with RME ADI-2 Dac, fed from optical ADAT of RME HDSPe AIO, so there's no grounding/electrical issues anywhere

 

I would say is that the 'music itself' it's my #1 priority
Of what will come out of your studio that's all that matters
I'm on the side of using and midi keyboard and laptop and pluging it into an amp and Do creative and 'efficient' and 'actual music work'
I have seen enough laughable videos from future music mag videos and people In real life with a lot of expensive gear and wall of equipment and 0 music
The gear on it self does not proof anything if it's not used for any purpose rather than making music,

I'm not saying there's no deference between a home speaker and a pair decent monitoring speakers

The most cases are actually the quite oppossite and this is a generational thing of gap between real life experiences/internet hypes and between hobbist/newcomers and Experienced/professional studio guys
And we are witnessing issues that are not oraganic it's based on a 'false if' in the first place...

To be honest back then I was really into hardware stuff specially so called classic synths from the 80s and 90s
After a couple years of living in that hype('you need that gear for that sound')
and a bit of vintage gear nostalgia
I ended up with my PC and my earbuds and using my studio speakers only for mastering and leveling and some final touch...
As same said by many small and big names

So i put it into a test and moved my PC from the studio to the living room using only my earbuds and my PC for year and half and abandoned my whole gear to notice the deference in music and my work flow and final results and the results was noticble on the mixing and mastering and final product part of my creative process
i was not even using my pair speakers and music sounded more experimental and more underground in very funny and interesting way it was a very multi sided experience that liked it a lot..

For nowdays: a decent pair speakers+laptop+some audio and output gear works fine...

We have almost identical clone of every piece of gear from tubes to synths etc. Both as plugins or as hardwares + those of software/hardware integrated ones..
We have anything we want.

the problem is somewhere is and not in the gear
It's problem of skills,education,talent,intentions and so on it's a very multi sided story in my perspective...or this is only the matter of personal preference and choice...and not to seen as problem to be solved...

For those who know what these hypes are they are already aware of 'studio equipment snake oil fairy tales' and they are actually working in the studio with no extra time, money or energy to spend on hype and mind games and distractions rather than making music...

 

Last edited: Sep 19, 2025

Coming from someone who ownes a wide range of external gear synths, guitar pedals i would rather spend the extra money on a premium item that will hold its value.. know the knobs and faders arnt gonna just fall off or Crack off one day *cough behringer .. i know my matriarch is solid built peice of kit ill be able to either pass down to my kid or sell it for around what i payed for it in 20 years

 

every single new thing you buy depreciates something like 25% the minute you open the box and use it, like a car driven off the lot.
It loses something like 10% when it leaves the store or retailer; because if there was no discount to buy it from you, someone is better off buying it from a store with a return policy, etc. If you sell something used to a store; the max you will get is about 65%, and goes down from there. Reverb.com sales are usually in the median of that. EBay is like rolling dice, the prices people put on stuff "buy it now".