Can I Mix on Headphones

B

Backspacez

New member
Straight up, I can't afford monitors, I couldn't even afford them if they were 40$. I have a pair of monitor headphones, AUdio Technicha M45WH, what do you think about that? I use PC speakers, 50$ Logitech commercial speakers, and earbuds for references.

Is it really a necessity to use monitors in a treated room? I make hip hop, it's not the kind that would get cranked in the club or on a radio station but maybe some college radio, internet radio, and just mostly internet plus any physical copies.

Can someone shed some light on this?
 
The main problem with headphone mixing is your stereo imaging is off, and you'll often wont have much of a stereo sound. You can do decent mixes without fancy monitors, just check your mixes in your car or in a stereo system. A lot of people get way too ahead of themselves when it comes to making music and think they need high end equipment the second they start producing. Work on your arrangements, workflow, music theory, etc. Then worry about actually making your tracks sound good. There are plenty of awesome tracks out there that I've heard and have drawn me into liking a new artist where the mixing is very sub-par. Your musicianship can go a long way.
 
Yes, you can mix on a decent set of headphones. It's just not as easy or desirable as a good set of monitors in an acoustically treated space.

It's not so much the stereo field that's hard to judge--the human ear processes frequencies differently when they come from headphones in direct contact with your skull (ear buds are even worse) compared to sound travelling through free air.

However, as Captain471 says, you can teach yourself to compensate. First, find a commercial recording you like, preferably in the same genre you'll be recording, and listen carefully to how it sounds on your headphones. Then do a trial mix of you own material, burn a CD and play it on as many different systems as you can, again listening critically to how your CD sounds compared to what you heard in your cans. Take a note of what changes you'd need (more bass, less treble, whatever) to sound like what you had in your cans. Repeat this exercise until you're confident about how mixes have to sound in your headphones to sound good everywhere.

FYI, even with a good set of studio monitors, you still have to go through a process of "learning the sound". It just that the monitors will likely get you closer even on the first try.
 
Backspacez said:
Straight up, I can't afford monitors, I couldn't even afford them if they were 40$.
Click to expand...
Then get saving !
Seriously though, even a good set of hi fi speakers will do for now.
Backspacez said:
Is it really a necessity to use monitors in a treated room?
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No, of course not. Neither is it a necessity to have two eyes, two arms and two legs. But you'll be a better basketball player that way, you get me......?

Captain471 said:
The main problem with headphone mixing is your stereo imaging is off, and you'll often wont have much of a stereo sound.
Click to expand...
Although alot of people say this, it sounds illogical to me. Because I grew up in the walkman age and before, I've been listening to music on stereo headphones regularly since the 70s. So I've made a point of studying stereo imaging for 36 years. Long before I ever thought of making music. And there is such a huge variety of the ways engineers have mixed, that is, where things have been placed in the stereo spectrum. Then when you hear the same on speakers in a room, well, it's different from phones but still the same variety exists.
 
grimtraveller said:
Then get saving !

Although alot of people say this, it sounds illogical to me. Because I grew up in the walkman age and before, I've been listening to music on stereo headphones regularly since the 70s. So I've made a point of studying stereo imaging for 36 years. Long before I ever thought of making music. And there is such a huge variety of the ways engineers have mixed, that is, where things have been placed in the stereo spectrum. Then when you hear the same on speakers in a room, well, it's different from phones but still the same variety exists.
Click to expand...

I suspect it's more a case that the headphones exaggerate the stereo field possibly causing the unwary mixer to be, if anything, too conservative. In my youth I used to love putting on headphones and hearing favourite tracks ping-ponging from one ear to the other in a way that you didn't get on speakers.

However, as I say, the big difference is the skewed frequency response you get with the transducers in direct contact with your skull so the sound (particularly at the bass end) is transferred directly to the bones of the inner ear without the usual free air space in the middle--sort of a human proximity effect!.
 
You'd be surprised how good you could get with studio headphones. I personally love mixing with headphones. Mainly cause I love how music sounds through a good pair of over the ear headphones. I agree with Bobbsy though. Get some good reference tracks close to the same style and try to make your mix as close to that at possible. It'd be good to find a track that maybe only have guitar during one part of the song and use a frequency analyzer to see what part of the spectrum it's hitting and then get your guitars as close as possible. Not much, but at least it'd help a little :)
 
I still think headphones are best suited for checking your mixes, rather than to base mix decisions on. In your situation, where you only have poor speakers in untreated rooms, vs headphones, I think you have got no choice - I'd go for the headphones. But do constantly compare your mix with the pro recordings, and do also do a "PC speaker test" at every stage where you think you're satisfied with the mix.
 
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