I tell you, you are already doomed.
Why?
You asked about good sounding monitors and you have a small room...

Small room: translation or fun.

Still valid today:
NS-10s, Auratones.
Zero fun. Just the midrange + top notch transient behaviour = audio magnifying glasses.

I guess, if a small room is adequately acoustically treated (no nasty reflections, sufficiently low and even RT60 =< 250 ms) you should be be able to fully benefit from their transient behaviour, while not much "bass" masks the midrange.

"The sound is in the midrange." Truth. Nobody believes it, until probably he gets used to these speakers and experiences, what a good midrange also reveals about the low end - and in no insignificant parts about the treble range.
And they reveal even more than much better, flat monitor speakers: on the Genelecs you believe the kick sounds amazing, but the bass masks, how small the kick sounds on small speakers! The amount of saturation a kick lacks for an impressive small speaker presence? Easy on the Auratones.
And if you just produce the kick on the Auratones so that it sounds clean AND fat: switch on the Gennies and am still blown away after all these years how that is even possible...

Another aspect usually never discussed is the incredible importance of the time domain, the transient behaviour: to hear harshness in upper mids & highs, and the bass characteristics (also all kind of imaging related issues, like reverb quality and amount, chorus, side-signal problems).

If a mix at low volume and @85 dB sounds like a record on these speakers, in most cases the subbass can be fine tuned with decent headphones quickly, but usually a correct behaviour in the analyzer is enough to get the low end right.
IMO the low end is totally overestimated (maybe because it carries the most energy in popular music and most people try to get it right in small rooms with inadequate monitoring of the midrange) and the importance of the midrange is totally underestimated.


Small room: translation or fun.
Your decision.

 

Last edited: Nov 23, 2025 at 6:31 PM