I don't know about the technical reason, it's just my personal experience that I never damaged HiFi monitors with Hifi music, only by playing synths and drum machines but I never damaged studio monitors with music directly from synths and drum machines.

A reason I could imagine would be the untamed impulses of raw synths and drum sounds.

 

Not disputing your experience. ;)

But what would the difference be?

 

Maybe forged by Elves in Eregion?

 

Ah, I had forgotten about that! ;)

 

Music played through Hi-Fi speakers has already had the transients tamed, been eq'd, compressed and limited.
When you are making music these aspects of the sound are raw and can be extremely dynamic. Dedicated monitors are made to work in this environment for long periods of time, while a Hi-Fi speaker can generate a lot of heat from the movement of the cone and will sadly expire from the stress. A condition I frequently experience myself. Thank god for valium.

 

speakers for a certain daw? Just when you think you've seen it all...

 

Kali LP6 is the new kid on the block for budget studios @ US $298 a pair.

​

 

Last edited: Feb 18, 2019

To make it easier replace the word sound with Energy
Sudden spikes in Energy can kill the electronics of a speaker
everything is rated for a certain energy threshold.
Monitors if they are any good have a higher threshold than most "normal" hifi speakers
maybe it isnt as bad as it used to be

but for the most part you will fare better with a Monitor than a hifi speaker
Especially with guitar music. That and high spl without distortion are the reasons for Studio Monitors inception;)

As for Op.
I always liked the 2nd hand krk6 not super clean but FUN and cheap!
As always best of the cheaper (new) ones are the jbl 305

 

my HS7 is really GOOD .. No REGRET ! the best sounding for my small studio

 

hi, here active or passive monitors:
https://www.adam-audio.com/en/

 

Bach, Rachmaninoff, Vivaldi, Greg and Holst's compositions are not compressed, are highly dynamic by nature and never blew out my not monitor speakers. It must be for some other reasons that hi-fi speakers get blown up.

 

Just make some EDM for some month, crank up the volume and you're well on the way to saying bye bye to your HiFi speakers.

 

The 808 kick and 303 bass in the second movement of the Brandenburg Concerto killed my Celestion hi fi speakers. But I agree about Greg's music. Greg Lake from Emerson, Lake and Palmer never gave my speakers any trouble. Lovely guitar and vocal.

 

Just got the Mackie CR-3s for under $90 shipped with coupon from Musician's Friend. They're great for the money!

 

I am a big fan of Mackie. I think they make outstanding gear for the money. I have a Thump 12 I use as a stage monitor and two Thump 15's I use for mains, stereo keys, or they can be used as a bass amp, no sweat. https://mackie.com/products/thump-series

 

i dunno...seems a lot of people saying you can't hurt hi-fi speakers playing live music through them but I have killed a few that way...way back in the day. Playing with live drums everything tends to get cranked loud. I've bought them at pawn shops and even thrift stores and all eventually died. I remember a pretty great-sounding pair we had for a short time, but unfortunately they stopped working. One stayed working for a while and we got a couple of wedge stage monitors cheap. We ran my brother's Helpinstill through an old tube hi-fi amp into the surviving speaker for a while and it sounded great ...better than when we ran it through the mono mixer into the stage monitors. Soon it failed but i remember that as being a sweet setup. (usually only vocals going through the Peavey XR-600B PA on that, guitars & Bass using their own combo amps).
I remember the PA speakers we had sounded OK while live playing, but we would fiddle a long time with our basic EQ trying to play back a mix through those same speakers. Through headphones or taking the tape upstairs to a decent hi-fi stereo sounded much better, even after we supplemented the wedge monitors with bass cabinets. Probably just too much sound in a small space. We had dampened the basement room to decrease leakage and it did seem to suck up the sound. There was probably a sweet spot to listen to playback but i never found it Anyway, live drums are a big factor.
There are various speaker protection methods, using limiters and/or fuses and it's a good idea. I soldered in fuse holders to the PA monitors after blowing the tweeters and buying some decent ones. We had and never had them blow after that ... maybe the tweeters were tougher.
It would have been great to have a pair of self-powered PA speakers that would sound nice for instant playback too, but I don't think they existed back then.

 

I have 30 year old NS-10's which were originally a bookshelf hi fi speaker. Of course they are now ubiquitous in studios as monitor speakers. But true to their home market heritage I have blown the tweeters many times. Luckily you can smell the five inch cones starting to burn before they go Fukushima on you.

 

But what is actually different between the "monitor" and the "hi fi" speakers - in terms of hardiness (which is what the issue was)? Monitors are intended to critically listen to music, hi-fi to make it enjoyable to do so. But other than that......what? I don't see anything that makes monitor loudspeakers more hardy. They *might* generate less heat, and they *might* have better amps......but how will cheap monitors have a better amp than an expensive hi-fi amp? And why would cheap monitors be more resistant to heat than expensive hi-fi ones?

I wasn't suggesting monitors and hi-fi speakers are necessarily functionally identical, rather that there's no reason to assume monitors are more hardy and resistant to damage. I would suggest it's rather more about "you get what you pay for".

But an expensive "hi-fi" paired with some expensive "hi-fi" speakers will almost certainly outperform cheap monitors on that measure.

"Monitors" is just a name, not a standard. It's the *sound* that they produce which (vaguely) defines them, not that they are more robust or hardy? Expensive hi-fi speakers will probably do a better job than cheap monitors in all respects - accepting that they are designed to colour the sound and flatter the listener's ear, rather than exactly reproduce what sounds are actually playing/recorded.

Playing ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz on your five grand stereo........surely stresses the drivers much less than playing it on cheap monitors.

Any speaker (or any thing at all!) is going to get "hurt" if it is pushed beyond its physical limits. The question is whether "monitors" have different physical limits to "hi-fi speakers".

The answer is surely that is entirely dependent on the specifics: cheap monitors (with cheap amps) won't be more resistant to "damage" than expensive speakers with expensive amps - and cheap monitors with cheap amps won't be more 'transparent' than expensive, transparent "hi-fi" speakers and amps.

The distinction is surely a more functional one - "monitors" are for critical listening (in a small space), but "hi-fi" speakers are for the enjoyment of the experience. Watch the volume, put a suitable high- and low- end cut on your main output and what can go wrong?

BTW, I have never blown a speaker in my life. :D Amongst others, I have some Xarus 5000s, try blowing those? As for transparency, those Xarus have their very own soundscape lol. Instant party. :D

 

Some recommended reading:
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/monitors-vs-hi-fi-speakers-part-1
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/monitors-vs-hi-fi-speakers-part-2
I agree that the issue is not one of a Hi-Fi speakers inability to withstand high SPL's. But knowledge of the basic understanding of why monitors are used for critical listening as opposed to high fidelity home systems will stave of a future desire to use 1000 watt PA speakers for mixing. Sure, they're loud and will impress your friends, but are totally inappropriate.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 20, 2019

Did you know that Greg Palmer and Edvard Hagerup Grieg are distantly related, hence my flub. I guess their mental images criss-crossed in my absentheaded mind.