The Best Studio Monitors Around $1000, RANKED [$600-$1600] -- SonicScoop

11 Auratone Super Sound Cubes (Winner: Best Cube Monitors, $800. Runners up: Avantone, Reftone, Angry Boxes at various price points.)

This article on the best budget studio monitors is also available as a video and podcast episode.

We'll be looking primarily at studio monitors priced at $1,000. But, because there are so many options above and below this target, we will consider and touch upon models priced as low as $600 and as high as $1600 or so.

My focus here is not to merely help you find speakers that you like "like the sound of". Rather, I want to help you find studio monitors that give you the results you are looking for: Great sounding mixes that translate across a wide variety of systems.

Remember, simply liking the way speakers sound in a quick sip test doesn't mean they will give you great results. As a general rule, your mixes will tend to sound like the inverse of your speakers.

This means that bright monitors tend to yield dark sounding mixes. Bassy monitors tend to yield thin sounding mixes. And "impressive" sounding monitors will often leave you with mixes that sound dull, flat, lifeless and veiled.

Keep this in mind as your consider your choices. If you're ready to spend $1000 on speakers, you'll probably want to choose monitors that will help lead you to mixes you like the sound of.

If you want to know la little bit about my background, and why you should trust the picks here, then hi! I'm Justin Colletti, and I'm a platinum mastering engineer who has heard and compared a truly ridiculous number of studio monitors in a variety of settings.

I've also interviewed countless major producers and engineers, and have coached countless clients, helping me learn what has and hasn't worked for them.

So all this is to say that this article is not A.I. generated slop. It is the perspective of real working professional who you can know and (hopefully) trust -- and who is interested in helping your find the monitors that will work best for you, personally.

With all that said, I've got winners and runners up in several key categories for you, so let's jump right in.

The Kali Audio IN 8 is easily my top pick as the best all-around full-sized, full-bandwidth studio monitor for $1,000... if the sole criteria is that they be truly useful for getting great sounding mixes.

Arguably, there are other studio monitors in this price range that look fancier, sound prettier, use even higher end components, and so on...

But if you want a a studio monitor for $1,000 that can be used as your sole mixing reference, allowing you to make great decisions about lows, mids and highs that will translate everywhere, then I will not hesitate to recommend that you just get these speakers and call it a day.

There, I just saved you another 3,000 words for reading! Check them out here, and you're all set. You're welcome!

Of course these aren't the only speakers I recommend. In a moment, I'll offer my caveats and talk about who might prefer different sets of monitors instead and why. But for now, let's start with what's great about these speakers, and why I put them in the top slot for mixing in particular.

First off, these are NOT speakers that are voiced to "impress" or to flatter your mixes. Instead, they are studio monitors that are voiced to be as neutral and flat as possible, encouraging you to make your mixes sound more impressive.

Like all of Kali's monitors, the IN-8 won't fool you or lull you into a false sense of security through sheer flattery. They won't whisper sweet nothings into your ear while misguiding you into crafting mixes that come out overly bright, or overly dark, or excessively boomy or tinny or harsh.

Because these speakers are so uncolored, unbiased, unexciting, and (arguably) "uninteresting" in and of themselves, they encourage you to make your mixes sound more exciting and interesting instead!

Where the IN-8 really stand apart from the rest of the competition is by offering a very good quality 3 driver speaker in this price range. I can't underemphasize how huge this feature is from a mixing perspective. And it's practically unheard of at $1,000. Other speaker brands, take note!

Going from two drivers (a woofer and a tweeter) to three drivers (a woofer, a dedicated midrange driver and tweeter) is a huge leap forward when it comes to getting great mixes that translate everywhere. This is because of how much of better job they do than basic 2-way studio monitors in presenting the all-important midrange.

A lot of producers, when shopping for studio monitors, obsess about how "low" they can go. And, while this can be important, when it comes to mixing, it's nowhere near as important as how accurately your studio monitors represent the mids.

With an ordinary 2-way speaker design, there's a major tradeoff here: A bigger woofer will allow the speaker to go lower, but at the expense of having more and more of an empty, scooped, and "hollowed out" sound in the midrange.

By adding a third driver, we can have the best of all worlds: The IN-8's 8'' woofer allows the speaker to extend down to 37 Hz. Their 1-inch "coaxial" tweeter takes care of the highs, and the added 4'' midrange driver forces you to understand what's really happening in the heart and soul of your record: the mids.

I can't overstate this enough: The addition of a dedicated midrange driver is just awesome for adding clarity and detail without adding excess brightness. It is currently VERY hard to find this feature at this price and quality.

The detail you get out of the third driver is not the kind of "fake detail" that you get out of an overly bright and sparkly sounding 2-way speaker that fools you into thinking your mix already sounds clear and engaging when it doesn't.

Rather, it provides the kind of honest detail that lets you hear all the true grit that's really in your record -- warts and all. It's the kind of detail that encourages you to improve your mix, instead of fooling you into believing that it already sounds great.

This is not to say that the Kali IN-8 "don't sound good" themselves. They do! They just don't go out of their way to sound unrealistically flattering. They aren't biased in favor of exuding the kind of "hype" that wins quick sip tests between speakers (...but which generally leads to lousy, flat, lifeless sounding mixes.)

My other favorite feature here is the "coaxial" design of the tweeter, which places it right in the center of the midrange driver. This helps with phase and time alignment, and acts as something of a natural "waveguide", improving stereo imaging, off-axis frequency response, and widening the sweet spot.

In this price range, if you want to do good work that stands up easily across a wide variety of systems, the Kali IN-8 are THE monitors to beat. Platinum mixing engineer Jeff Ellis used these for years, literally ditching his $10,000+ speaker system for these monitors, which cost 1/10th that amount. And that's truth, not hype.

With that said, those who are producing music from scratch more than mixing may want a more "exciting" sounding monitor to keep them inspired through the creation process. For that, I'll mention some more "hyped" sounding picks found later on this list.

Additionally, some producers may need a smaller speaker, or are working in rooms that can't handle all the lows that an 8'' model like the IN-8 can put out. For this, smaller, but even higher quality 2-way designs could be appropriate. (Those kinds of designs can also be ideal for those who prefer to get their lows from a sub instead.)

We'll look at some options on that front next:

ADAM Audio is easily one of my favorite speakers brands at every price point where they make speakers.

Their A Series are some of the most popular monitors for truly serious project studios for good reason. They have a flat and unhyped voicing that sounds full without ever being boomy or losing detail in the highs.

There are perhaps some speakers out there that may sound a bit more "pretty" or "airy" or "big" in the same price range as ADAM's A series... but there few that I have encountered that lead to mixes that sound anywhere near as good. And that's what we really care about for these selections today.

If you're going to use a 2-way speaker for mixing, a 4'' to 5'' driver is often the best bet for getting midrange you can truly trust. They can even sometimes outperform a larger 7'' or 8'' driver for presenting a more forward, less scooped and more trustworthy midrange.

At the same time, the 4'' driver here goes remarkably deep for its size, extending down below 58 Hz at -3dB and 56 Hz at -6dB. For most mixing purposes -- especially in less than perfectly treated rooms -- this is exactly what you need. Enter the ADAM A4V.

I mixed on the prior A5X model for years with great results, and this new smaller version has effectively the same low frequency extension in an even more compact package. It allows you to make good and honest decisions about 60Hz and slightly below, which is excellent from a mixing perspective. (This is assuming your room is even treated well enough to tell you the truth below 100Hz. Many, if not most, home studios aren't!)

If you can handle the extra low end in your space, then adding on a subwoofer to a speaker of this size effectively turns it into a 3-way design. This gives you extremely deep low frequency extension, as well as extra flexibility in placing your dedicated low end driver for best acoustic results, and a pair of extremely high quality 4'' midrange drivers and full-size AMT "ribbon" tweeters in a smallish box that are easy to fit anywhere.

Another of my favorite features here is the onboard DSP. It not only improves frequency response, phase and time alignment, but also allows you to load up Sonarworks SoundID EQ correction profiles right into the speaker itself -- offloading this task from clumsy plugins or systemwide apps running on your computer.

If you have a bit more to spend, the large A7V are excellent as well, and can be found a reduced price in their limited edition white color that fits our target. The larger A44V add on a second woofer and are an excellent choice for environments with multiple listeners.

OK, I have to be honest. It was REALLY hard to choose the ADAM A4V as my top pick in this category, because there are so many truly great compact 2-way monitors from excellent brands at this price point.

I prefer the ADAM sound, and have been a fan of basically everything they've made for 20+ years now. I've used their S and AX series for mixing with great results, and so many of my best mixing clients have gotten amazing mixes out of their A series monitors.

I just know, like and trust the brand, and the results I've heard from them so much. They suit my biases and tastes, and lead me and some of my best clients to do great work from a mixing perspective. But if you have slightly different tastes and preferences, you might prefer other brands and models.

A couple of notable standouts have some of the ADAM DNA baked into them: The HEDD Type 05 A Core and Eve Audio SC205.

Two others use more traditional soft dome tweeters and are even more compact than the A4V: The Neumann KH 80 and Genelec 8020.

The HEDD Type 05 A Core were designed by ADAM founder Klaus Heinz, and are basically an updated and improved version of the ADAM A5X that I knew and loved for so many years.

At $1600 (just $400 more than the most comparable model from ADAM), the HEDD Type 05 A Core get you a larger driver with greater low frequency extension, and a slightly more open, and dare I say, "prettier" sound.

These are easily some of the most gorgeous sounding 5'' 2-way speakers you will hear, but without the misleading overly flattering hype of some other brands. Even without DSP, their performance and quality is exceptional at this price point.

If you like the ADAM A4V, but wished you could have a slightly larger driver and some even more upscale analog components, and you don't really care for DSP in your speaker, then the HEDD A Core could be a great way to go.

The only reason I couldn't give HEDD the top slot is its even further distance from our $1000 ideal target for this roundup, and the lack of DSP for potential onboard room correction.

Honorable Mention: Eve SC205

The Eve SC205 is also a great option for those who like AMT "ribbon" tweeters.

Eve make great monitors in this style as well, and compared to ADAM and HEDD often sound just a little "tighter" to my ears at similar sizes, which some users could prefer.

The Neumann KH 80, like the ADAM A4V, is an exceptional compact studio monitor. If I had slightly different preferences and tastes, I could easily see giving this one the top slot.

The only thing holding back this Neumann relative to the ADAM is also one of its strongest suits: Its exceptionally small size.

Even though the driver size is basically the same, the Neumann KH 80 is built more like an ultra-compact desktop monitor, while the ADAM A4V is built more like a smaller full-size monitor.

The slight additional height, depth and weight of the ADAM do work to its slight advantage in perceived performance for my tastes, while the Neumann deliver quality that's quite on par with much lighter weight polycarbonate material that fits even more neatly on a desktop.

My personal preference is for the effectively larger AMT tweeters in the ADAM, which give great detail without excessive brightness, but for those who prefer soft-dome tweeters, the Neumanns are quite good, and offer a pretty robust wave guide.

If you prefer the Neumann's sound to the ADAM or have a smaller sized space to work with, the KH80 could be an excellent way to go.

Honorable Mention: Genelec 8020

The Genelec 8020 share a similar ultra-compact form factor with the Neumann KH80, but with their own aesthetic and sound.

Although they are very close in sound to the Neumanns, the Genelec veer ever so slightly brighter, tighter, and leaner in the lows to my ear.

If you tend to mix too bright, or need a compact monitor that is even more revealing of minor noises for editing purposes, they could be the even better bet for your work.

The Focal Alpha Evo are remarkably good speakers at their price points, offering larger sizes and lower lows than all of the higher end 2-way speakers we've looked at so far.

While not quite to the same level of quality seen in ADAM's A series, Neumann's KH series or the HEDD or Eve lines, the Focal Alpha give you a LOT for your money.

They are real step up from many lower priced monitors, occupying a sweet spot that falls somewhere between ADAM's T and A series.

I've found these speakers to be extremely fun to listen to while not being overhyped for mixing purposes like some of the other speakers we'll see later on this list.

In a word, these speakers sound FAT, with incredibly deep lows for their size, complemented by a little shimmery boost of high end above 10kHz to keep them from ever sounding overly cloudy, dull or boxy.

Relative to other speakers that drift toward sounding "impressive" relative to flat, they don't tend to yield mixes that sound dull and lifeless and underhyped.

Something about the fatness here, and the relative lift in the highs relative to the upper mids tends to encourage mixers to scoop and hype their mix up appropriately, something that most more "hyped" monitors simply won't do.

Also, in keeping with the personality of Focal as a brand, these are easily some of the best looking monitors at this price point. They have a bit more personality and more luxury appeal than the standard utilitarian pro audio fare.

From a design perspective, my only significant concern is how minimal the waveguide appears to be. Surprisingly, in person, when sitting in the sweet spot, these speakers have a very wide sounding presentation, which is shocking for such a minimal waveguide around the tweeter.

However, the design leads them to suffer a bit in off axis response, with a differing degree of dispersion between higher and upper mid frequencies that separates them from the higher end 2-ways we've looked at so far. Their performance when it comes to THD may not quite live up to the higher end ranges as well.

But with this said, I was amazed at just how well the Focal Alpha compared next to speakers that cost substantially more for similar sizes.

If you are looking for 2-way speakers with a white cone that are good for mixing, then THESE are those speakers.

The Avantone CLA-10 are essentially an exacting remake of the original Yamaha NS-10s, which are some of the most famous mixing speakers in history. And for good reason!

Despite their flaws (which are plentiful), the original NS-10s led countless mixers to make great sounding mixes. And the CLA-10 can do that for you today, especially if you are working in rock or up-tempo pop genres.

Do not be fooled by imitators -- even if they carry the Yamaha brand name. If you want a truly PROVEN speaker for mixing, then what you are looking for is expressly NOT the Yamaha HS series.

I repeat: The current Yamaha HS series have effectively NOTHING to do with the original NS10 monitors (aside from visual aesthetic), and in no way performs the same role in the studio.

After all these years, this is still misunderstood with shocking regularity, so I repeat again:

If you are looking for a great speaker for mixing, the Yamaha HS series are expressly NOT in my top picks for that mixing. (We'll talk about what they could be good for a little later on.)

However, these speakers, the Avantone CLA-10 are indeed some of the best dedicated mixing speakers ever made to this day.

These are the epitome of "they may not sound great, but if you can make them sound good here, they'll sound good everywhere".

What do they sound like? Well, in short, the NS-10s and CLA-10 sound midrangey as all get out.

They roll off a bit above 2kHz, have a roller coaster of a frequency response above that, and then there's a slight rebound in the high highs that caused some users to put tissue paper over the tweeters on original models.

I'll be honest: If you can get 200Hz to 4kHz sitting properly in your mix, then everything else pretty much falls into place pretty quickly.

Relative to more "full range" 2-way speakers that can sometimes hollow out the midrange relative to lows and highs, the NS10s push the midrange forward in all its ugly glory, requiring you to make hard mixing choices about what goes where, and making you figure out how to EQ things so that your bass and kick can be heard on ALL systems -- even if they have no hope of ever reproducing 60Hz.

The NS10s are also amazing at taking the weak points of your room out of the equation. Unless you add a sub (don't!) you won't be constantly second guessing yourself over the lows. With the NS10s, you'll just be mixing, making good choices that really matter, and that really translate. (That is, once your mastering engineer or a secondary reference helps you tweak just how much low end your final master should have.)

The NS-10 / CLA-10 also have remarkably good transient response due to their lightweight cone and non-ported design, making it easier to hear and make choices around the attack and release and overall dynamics of your sounds.

Buy these speakers if you want to learn more about mixing. Like the Auratone Mix Cubes, they are practically a cheat code to better mixing in the midrange

My personal preference is for something like the Mix Cubes, coupled with a fuller-range 2-way design (or just going for a more expensive 3-way speaker design). But for generations of mixers and counting, this model can yield great results in many genres.

KRK are the original "Hype Machines". Their speakers are notorious for looking and sounding FUN. They amp up the lows, they amp up the highs, and people who love them often really love them.

Whether their inherent "hype" is a pro or a con is up to your and how your mixes turn out on them. But I will say that the KRK monitors have been getting better and more useful over the years, with the Series 4 being their best of this style yet.

While these are not speakers I would actively recommend for mixing, there are some users who need speakers that will keep production and writing sessions more fun and inspiring than some of the flatter models I've recommended so far.

If you want speakers that retain some "fun" while still being reasonably useful, the V6 are probably the most useful "hyphy" sounding speakers out there. They have enough fun factor to be inspiring in production sessions, and just enough neutrality not to lead you too far off course.

If you've been following my speaker roundups for any length of time, then you may know that I generally do not recommend the Yamaha HS Series for mixing.

In general, they all have the same issues: In one way ore another, they are voiced to sound bright and present in the upper midrange so that they can win quick "sip tests" against other speakers that are actually better suited for mixing.

Listen to a flatter or more balanced speaker and it will often sound "dull" when quickly and directly compared to a similarly sized and priced HS monitor.

Listening to a record through a HS series monitor can make it sound like it has more "clarity" or "energy" or "detail". Snare drums "pop" out more with greater "crack", and the vocal may seem more lively and nuanced and engaging.

But here's the problem.... YOUR MIXES WILL SOUND LIKE THE OPPOSITE OF THAT.

That's just how monitoring works: Your mixes will tend to sound like the inverse of your speakers.

Bassy speakers lead to thing mixes. Bright speakers lead to dull mixes. Midrangey speakers lead to hyped mixes. Scooped speakers lead to midrangey and boxy sounding mixes.

And the HS series? Well, depending on the model, they tend to have some degree of a perceived lift somewhere in the upper midrange, which tends to lead to exciting sounding monitoring -- but dull, flabby and lifeless sounding mixes.

With all this said, the HS-8 are absolutely the best of the HS series monitors, hands down. They do not exhibit the same low frequency rolloff and frequency skew of some of the smaller models, which helps bring their tone more into balance. And they are generally more trustworthy than any of the other HS Series speakers I've heard.

So, these are the best of the bunch when it comes to the HS series being neutral and useful enough for critical listening decisions.

...but that's a little bit like being the cleanest dirty shirt in the hamper.

In this case, they are a nice-enough button down shirt with no prominent stains, no foul odor, and wrinkles that you can cover up pretty easily with a jacket.

While you can probably get away with wearing it, unless you are sentimentally set on wearing it for some reason, I'd generally recommend you look through the closet further first to see if there's something better to wear instead.

Don't get me wrong: You CAN learn to mix very well on these speakers, and some people have. But unless you compensate by mixing brighter in the upper mids, all the detail and excitement you experience when listening to them will come at the expense of having less excitement and detail in your actual mix.

With that said, if you are primarily writing or producing or recording rather than mixing, these are smaller concerns, and again, the HS-8 are absolutely the best of their series in these regards.

If the little bit of extra lift in the upper midrange helps you stay focused and excited when producing or recording, have at it! And if you want to learn to mix well on them, you can know in advance what to watch out for.

I won't lie: I love classic Cube-Style monitors, and I prefer them over NS-10s. For mixing purposes, I'd rather have these along with some good 2-way speakers, or some truly excellent 3-way speakers.

What these kinds of monitors lack in full extension from the lowest to the highest reaches of the frequency spectrum, they make up for with very neutral and resonance-free performance where it matters most: in the all important midrange. Get this right, and you get the record right!

They also have the benefit of taking the room out of the equation to a greater degree than more full-bandwidth speakers -- a welcome advantage in relatively untreated spaces and in travel situations.

The reissued Auratone Super Sound Cubes are the most like the originals, with the most limited bandwidth and very flat and neutral response within it. These are currently my personal favorites because they are most familiar to me. But any of them could serve you well!

The Auratones offer slightly greater bandwidth, and a lightly more scooped character, where the Reftones open up the frequency response further still, offering more meaningful low and high frequency reproduction without sacrificing what makes single driver closed box speakers worthwhile. The Angry Boxes from Tantrum Audio seem very promising, offer a variety of modes, and I have a pair coming in the mail that I'm looking forward to testing soon.

Here's the truth: We are in a golden age of speakers today, and the options available for just a thousand dollars today blow away most of the speakers for double or triple the inflation-adjusted price that we had access to throughout the 20th century.

Any of the speakers here could serve you well. But you'll never get the most out of them unless you properly treat your room!

We have plenty of articles and videos on that. But until you do, another great option is headphone mixing.

In recent roundups, we've covered the best open back headphones for mixing and mastering at any price, and the best headphones for mixing under $400.

I hope you've found this roundup and buyer's guide useful, and I hope to see you in the next one!

Justin Colletti is a platinum certified mastering engineer, a mix coach and author of the Breakthroughs series of mixing courses. He runs SonicScoop.