shasha
Fractal Fanatic
I'm a fan of the HS80M's and an owner of them. Yes you can get them for about half price if you are patient and lucky with price matching (Music123 is great for me). I A/B'd a bunch of monitors and they were the ones that enabled me to pick out every instrument in the mix. It may just be me, but the seperation between instruments along with a relatively flat response was really important for me. Everything else I listened to after them sounded either boomy, boxy, muddy or crappy. Everything. And I was set to drop some coin.In another thread I detail my move from the $300 range of monitors to the $900 range. There was a big difference for me. That said, the HS80m that I started out with can likey be had for a couple hundred dollars on sale or used. It was a truly fantastic monitor and you should hear no blanket over the axe with it. I don't think you need to break the bank with the monitors you buy, however, you don't want to buy a Mercedes AMG and put the absolute cheapest gas in it. You likely should bump up your monitors just a bit.
But they aren't very pleasant to listen to for music if I was to be 100% honest. They don't sound bad at all if you've got a pristine source feeding them. But I can't listen to about half my MP3 colletion through them because every single imperfection stands out. They are absolutely some of the most unforgiving monitors I've ever used. When its good they're great, when it's bad you'll know it really fast. I think that is the point of a good monitor. For listening to music for enjoyment its love/hate for me a lot of times. Luckily I've got a good set of cans and use them most of the time so its not that big a deal.