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I listen to music mostly on my computer and in the car. The car system is nothing special. I listen through either some ATH-M40fs cans, or Presonus Erie 3.5 monitors, which are honestly glorified bookshelf speakers, but decent for the price, IMHO. All running from my (older gen2) Focusrite 2i4 interface.
I used to listen in the train/metro/bus a lot more, but I now work remotely. That’s where I used Bluetooth stuff. No need to worry about the cable getting stiff in the cold or stuck in my winter jacket. I had a pair of Beats Studio 3 I paid less than $100 for that were pretty decent for the price I paid. The sound was as bass heavy as you’d imagine from the brand, but not terribly overpowering for casual listening, and the ANC in particular was pretty impressive. I also had some Anker wireless earbuds I got with a coupon on Drop (formerly Massdrop) that were good enough for listening to podcasts and having background music.
In terms of platforms, YouTube Music mostly, and a hand picked selection on Plex for stuff that’s not on there or that I want to have always available. The music discovery algorithms are completely useless for me though. It’s the one thing Spotify did better than YTM for me. The “My Mix” playlists and artist radios have been pushing me the same artists for months on end now. Want to know the ironic part? I discover most of my music on YouTube (not Music) nowadays…
Honestly as far as cheap small monitors go, I really don't mind the Eries. They're not perfect for sure but they give a generally balanced sound and I paired them with a nice mackie sub to get pretty decent frequency coverage. Certainly perfectly decent for producing a variety of music and generally for listening to things.
I’d put them in that gap between general purpose computer/multimedia speakers, and “proper” monitors. That product range used to be a pretty terrible place to be in, but these surprised me for sure. They’re flat-ish enough that I don’t feel like I’m shooting myself in the foot using them for light production work. The bass is indeed not quite it, but what can we really expect from drivers that size. I don’t have great experience using subs for production, but that’s probably me. They’re surprisingly good for the price point and form factor, at the very least.
Yeah I think flat enough is the right phrase. Their bass is definitely lacking but with a well configured sub (I set the crossover at about 80Hz I think) you can compensate. My only feeling about producing with a sub is unless you're in a very well acoustically treated room, it's worth checking your mix on good headphones and a few sets of speakers to make sure your interesting sub bass parts are actually coming through nicely. They are good though to really work out what's going on in the sub frequencies of your mix. Also makes it really obvious when those areas are getting muddy.