Studio Monitor Controllers

Home studios are growing hugely in popularity. Smaller budgets for projects and far cheaper professional equipment are making the home studio more and more appealing for many engineers today. We do quite a bit of Yosh mixes at home. We wanted to talk about one important component of a studio: the monitor control section.

The monitor controller has a number of important jobs in a DAW based studio. It allows the engineer to control the volume at which he listens, select reference monitors, select inputs, provide talkback, cut the speakers, listen in mono, and (maybe most importantly) convert the audio to the analog realm.

An engineer’s ears are his greatest tools and he has to be able to trust what he hears. This is why engineers buy very high quality monitors and keep them around for years after they “get used” to them. It is also why high quality processing is key. A signal path is only as good as it’s weakest component. Here at French Beach Studio, we use the PreSonus Central Station. One of the main reasons for this choice is its completely passive circuitry. It provides a very clean signal path, allowing the listener to trust the mix being heard is the actual mix, not the mix through another box.

The Central Station also allows flexibility to use powered monitors, a power amp with passive monitors, a cue system …whatever the studio requirements are. We use their digital input and high quality converters to feed our powered Adam A7 monitors.

Before we get too carried away selling one particular unit, however, there is one issue with it. We have used the Central Station in many studios, including our own, and have been very pleased with it. Nevertheless, we recently purchased a second unit, and found the folks at PreSonus made a change. The “dim” feature, and single button to pad the output, now attenuates the monitors by a whopping 20dB, rendering it pretty useless. It’s very convenient to listen on dim and then press one button to listen loud for a while, and go back to the previous level, without moving the knob. With a 20dB attenuation though, there’s just no use for it. If you start at a reasonable volume it’s practically inaudible when engaged, or blasts your ears if you disengage it. It is a severe disappointment in the unit, and PreSonus was less than helpful with the issue.

When shopping for a control section, it’s important to find a product that you can trust to process your audio and has all the functionality and flexibility that you need in your studio. Thankfully, there are many great products available today. Besides the PreSonus we have, there is the ever popular Mackie Big Knob, JBL makes a handy little desktop model with built in “room mode correction technology,” and there are even really affordable models such as the Samson C-Control. Whatever you choose, the unit has to work for you and aid in how you work, have the right inputs and outputs, be easy to use, etc. We’re mostly happy with the PreSonus, except for the new one. It doesn’t adequately aid in how we mix music, in the workflow.