Tough
call... the Prestegious title would probably go to
FOH... I see
FOH as something you can do a really cheezy job at, making it sound "good enough" or you can work really hard on it and work to make it sound "excelent". The latter can be as hard or harder then monitors, in my opinion. Monitors on the other
hand, you tend to either do a really good job or an absolutely terrable job. It's not as easy to just squeek by on monitors, there are too many things going on, that if you mess up a few things all kinda stuff can go haywire.
Right now I usualy jump on monitors over
FOH if given the choice, I usualy setup an extra
speaker as a mix for myself and use that to go through after each artist seems happy and see if i can gently tweak the sound to improve each mix (just like the
FOH guy is doing with the main mix).
Back on the prestege thing.. ya, the audience usually recognizes the
FOH guy, but the band is much more inclined to the Monitors guy, simply b/c of who each group is listening to.