Gear of the Year 2015 – Best Monitor: Focal Alpha Range

Our winning monitor is the unrivalled Focal Alpha Range, a phenomenal product….

Best Monitor: Focal Alpha Range

Details
Price  £185-£259
Contact SCV Distribution: 0330 122 2500
Web www.focal.com – www.scvdistribution.co.uk

We always say, when it comes to buying monitors, ‘throw most of your budget at a decent set’. Monitors are the most important thing in your signal chain, the two things (sometimes more) that you listen to the end results of all of your hard work on.

You might own the finest analogue synths known to mankind and the most expensive microphones. You might be recording the finest Welsh choir in existence, or a complete orchestra at Abbey Road. You might even be going out with Adele for all we know. But if you insist on recording the finest things in life you should always listen back to your efforts with the finest monitors. It’s obvious, so that’s why we keep saying it…

But then someone always comes back to us and asks ‘but what if you haven’t got much money?’ which is a fair if slightly annoying and repetitive point. Well, fear not, we have an answer and it’s these, the winner of our 2015 Best Monitor Award.

Focal has one of the best names in studio monitors, but has resisted the cheap monitor route until now. With the Alpha Range, it has used its considerable expertise to produce a low-budget set of monitors that deliver the goods across a range of low price points.

Reviewer Huw Price liked the 80, the largest in the range, but he loved the 50, writing: “Critical listening is where the Alpha 50 really wins out. The clarity, accuracy and sheer audio quality this monitor provides is rare indeed at this price point.”

And get this, since the review the mid-range 65 has found a home in the editor of MusicTech’s studio, a welcome low-cost addition, which has been there for a year now with some great results.

And you lot voted in spades, too, so while the results were close (there was little between first, second and third-placed Unity Audios), the Alphas edged it. Finally we have an answer to that ‘what is the best budget monitor for less cash?’ question.

Read the full review of the Focal Alpha Range

Here’s Ian Young accepting the award from our editor Andy Jones

Be sure to read the complete list of winners in the current issue of MusicTech Magazine and check back tomorrow for another winner…