Mixing on headphones

L

Lomas

New member
So I know that this is not recommended at all.

But. I've read some discusssions about monitors and importance of quality etc. (here and on other forums.)

Something that often comes up when talking about having to mix on cheap/inaccurate monitors is "learn your monitors", "listen to a lot of music through your monitors so you know how things should sound" and so on.

To my question: Why do most people say you should avoid mixing in headphones? Wouldn't the exact same advice be fitting for this?

Learn your headphones, listen to a lot of other music through them so you know how things should sound. At least on headphones you won't have the room to worry about.

I'm guessing since this doesn't come up much, there's something I'm overlooking.

No?
 
Lomas said:
To my question: Why do most people say you should avoid mixing in headphones? Wouldn't the exact same advice be fitting for this?
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well, for a start headphones offer you TRUE stereo which doesn't mirror what speakers do, so you'll end up not panning stuff anywhere near as much as it should do. you'll also have a pretty hard time getting reverb and compression levels good!



but i've heard some pretty OK stuff mixed on 'phones - just make sure you check yer mixes on speakers too, no matter how shitty they are.
 
Yea, I'm not really planning to mix a lot in headphones anyway. It was more theoretical. But I see, stereo field is different. But then if I listen to a song and try to pan my instruments the same, wouldn't that translate too?
And if so, isn't it too a matter of knowing your headphones, similar to knowing your crappy or not so crappy monitors?
 
Yes, if you really know your headphones, you can mix on them just fine.

Ideal? No.

Possible? Hell yes.
 
Aha, cool. I just wanted to know if it would make sense to say the same thing about phones that I hear a lot of people say about bad monitors in bad rooms.
 
Using headphones to me gives a false sense of quality... I have decent Sony studio headphones, but they take a lot to get the bass up to a decent level. Even now, after having them for years, and listening to professionally recorded music and comparing it to mine on them, I still wind up with mixes that are too bassy because I keep trying to compensate for these headphones that require more-than-usual bass to get an even tone.

I switched to KRK RP-5 studio monitors, and now I am having that problem less and less. When I go back and listen on those Sony headphones, things sound just a little thin at times, but everywhere else it sounds fine. I did try to just avoid adding bass, but nothing seemed to help - even when I got my stuff sounding as balanced as those pro recordings, it still didn't come out right.

So, in my experience anyway, getting to know my monitors has been far easier than getting to know my headphones... no concrete reason why, its just how things worked out.
 
I see. My phones seem to be bassy, and one thing I noticed was that if I add drums while listening in phones, and then switch to monitors, the drums are way too loud.

I'll keep trying to get to know my crappy monitors. We've only hardly been introduced and we've only met in a really bad room so far. I'll have to take them out for a date in a fancier place! (a nice room). Try to find out what their interests are, what turns them on etc ;)
 
It's also tough to feel the critical 200-350 range properly on headphones - while on decent speakers, you can really hear the thwunk of percussion and guitar in that range.

Also the bass thing - really hard to adjust bass levels using headphones - most of the time.
 
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