Professional vs. Consumer speakers

I agree with both previous posts .Most of the pro studio monitors I have heard are designed for "near field" placement, where your 3 or 4 foot from the speaker since they are many times placed on top of the mixing board. Yes they are accurate but most engineers are more concerned with details and levels in the mix rather than the soundstage, bloom of the instruments, air, etc. Put it this way, I have heard some of the best and have never felt I would like them in my home. As Sean mentioned, I can see why the audiophile labels would go to a high end speaker. I have not heard them all however so there may be some exceptions. Tom G

My Westlake monitors sound fantastic to me...MUCH better in fact than any "HiFi" speaker I have ever heard.

i have a home theater with pa gear. on live dvds like riverdance and feet of flames it is awsome. i have seen feet of flames live, and i can tell you i have not heard a home speaker that will take me to the live performance like the pro gear i have. also for movies i love it as well.

People. Lets go a little lighter on the recording engineers shall we? Couple of broad generalizations made here, Engineers care more about what you hear than you give them credit for. Not only are there things like time constraints, artist who can't or haven't learned to perform in a studio, or who just never have before, studio's that you are called into that you have never used and you are told you have 3 days in which to record 6 tracks, accompanying artists who literally want to phone their part of the recording in, feature artist and producers that don't care if they do, the difficulties go on and on. Then there are producers who just want it done, labels who are the same way, artist that have tour dats, etc, etc, etc. I would suggest to you that most recording engineers would love to have all the time and all the help in the world in order to do it right, and they love being in a studio and with a label where they can. They are no different than most, they would like to work in the best studio, with the best artist, have freedom to do it as many times as it takes, use only the best sidemen and the best equipment. But business enters into it, and there are usually 100 people+ involved in the production of an recording, and a lot of them aren't going to slow it down while the engineering makes it an audiophile recording. On most big labels, about the only person that can really do that is the feature artist, and they usually don't know what it takes to make a
audiophile recording and are under so much pressure time wise that it can't always be done.
Now having that off my chest, don't go blaming all the monitors either, a lot of the time its the associated equipment as well. Good audio people know its not just the speakers, but the rest of the gear down the line, and a lot of it does not get matched, and even then differnet amps mikes guitars effects etc wind up getting used. Most studio's do not have Neumann mics, tube preamp stages etc, not cost effective and difficult to maintain. I have had and used KROK ROK monitors on my home system, and I consider them a steal in good small monitors, studio or home, home on a tube amp especially. Incredible how good they are, and there are others

I use pro monitors for HT and small project studio both with SS gear. For classical music I have a tube system with home speakers. Anything I produce in the project studio gets a first listen on the classical setup and then the HT and finally on my car CDP. The idea is to learn to translate what one is hearing in the studio to other environments. Many hits have been mixed near field on Yamaha NS-10Ms that have a serious dip in the midrange and produce world class ear fatique, but as an engineering tool can be useful.