Getting studio monitors

[audiodef]

I have two Alesis Sumo 100 stage speakers I've been using for years as studio monitors. Not sure now why I never got studio monitors in the first place. Trying to be economical, I guess. Well, now I'm looking for a nice pair of studio monitors using some holiday gift money.

Here's my question: I know how a studio should be laid out, but in my current setup, the only place I can put studio monitors would be either at head level four or five feet away from my head, in front of me on the wall, or closer together, but above head level. Which one would work better?

[A E J O T Z]

Speaker positioning matters most with higher frequencies. They are very line-of-sight. I keep mine near ear level and one actually pointed at each ear for optimum stereo separation.

Close together above head level would not be good. It could tend to make you exaggerate stereo effect (more than what you want, anyway) and it would not resemble most listeners' speaker positions.

My speakers aren't "good" monitor speakers, professionally speaking, but they closely approximate the sound of the system in my car. I would think it would be one's goal to approximate the sound of listeners' systems.

And I may be wrong about this but I don't think you want the most popular "pop music" monitors because pop has to sound OK as MP3s through ear buds. I would expect fans of electro-music to have good quality speakers at home. (That's the part where I might be most wrong.)

[audiodef]

Thanks - that helps me decide. I'll put them at ear-level and further apart.

I don't do pop, so to mastering for pop.