Recording without Monitors?

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ericchuu

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Hey all, just a quick question, I am on a very low budget here and I was wondering if mixing and recording a song can be done all through headphones as the output and without having to buy monitors? Like leaving the outpout chords on my preamp empty and just hearing everything through my headphones?
 
The recording phase is normally done using headphones, not monitors anyway.

Mixing is a different situation. Yes, of course you can do it via headphones. However, the downside is that it is much more difficult to get a mix that sounds good on a variety of systems. Have a search through these forums and see how many posts start "I did a mix that sounded great on my headphones but in my car/on my stereo/at my friends house/on my iPod it sounds terrible with too much/too little/no bass and harshness/woollyness/no clarity on the voice. This is because the human ear reacts very differently to sound sources near the ear compared to on speakers.

You CAN train your ears what something needs to sound like on your cans to sound good elsewhere. Just do a mix, burn it to CD and listen to it lots of different places. Being honest, even with good monitors you need to do a bit of this--but it's easier to judge on speakers.
 
Just to add a bit of my own opinion, I find that it only takes about 15 minutes of listening to headphones, before my ears get completely fatigued. It is like I am not even in the same room as the music. There is an unnatural feeling that is surely based upon the human brain not being accustomed to isolation from things going on around us. That being said, I love to listen to a final mix, or any well mixed recording on headphones, but when I get up and move around afterward, I feel a bit off balance. That in itself says something to me.

Mixing in the real world, as vague as that should sound, should be in an environment that is comfortable. Importance added to that, would be accuracy. The levels of accuracy are dependent upon how well you can get your mixes to translate on others listening systems. You could mix on the crappiest set of monitors, and get good at it. You would likely get there quicker with a pair of monitors that were more telling of what you are hearing. To expect great results from even a decent pair of headphones, makes me cringe in the fact that I know what they do to my head. Some say they can do it with them. Most people that 'are' capable of this, have spent more $ on headphones, than I have on monitors.

To answer the original question, I would say, 'In my strongly versed opinion, based on my personal experience, there is no friggen way I would ever even attempt to think that it was possible to ever even come close to getting a reliably translatable version of a decent mix, that I would even show my Grandmother, even if it was her last wish, with using a headphone mix alone.". There is just more going on between 'left' and 'right', that headphones do not allow to be heard, due to the isolation.

If your mixes are only to be heard by others using headphones, then sure, mix for that. I doubt it. Most people live in an ambient room society. Use tools that work there. And, get out of your own head-headphone guyz....

Just my 2.5 cents. Probably worth .2.
 
Many years ago, I read an interview with Billy Joel and he made a very interesting comment about his album, "The nylon curtain". He said that he wanted it to be mixed in such a way that you'd want to put headphones on to listen to it as he regretted the fact that by then {1982} people didn't really make what he called 'headphone albums' anymore. So that's stayed with me all these years and I think that headphones are very useful when mixing. I also think that you could mix exclusively on phones as over a period of time, you'd get to know those phones and how stuff mixed on them matches up on speakers outside of your head.
But do you want to take that time ? Monitors enable you to hear in a different way.
I understand low budgetary concerns, but even a cheap set of monitors or a fairly decent stereo system plus headphones can make for a good start. There's a guy on here called RAMI and I've been waxing lyrical for a while on the quality of his mixes. Then I read in a thread a few weeks back that he mixes on a home stereo with stereo speakers. Things like that are wonderfully encouraging as they give you a glimpse of what is possible.
Going back to phones mixing, the only way you'll ever know for yourself is to try. So have a go and see what you come up with.
 
I've tried mixing on many types of headphones alone, and it's a losing battle. As others have mentioned above, you are better off mixing on cheap "monitors" than headphones. Even my old KRK Rokkit 5s were decent if the room wasn't a concrete cube. Now I mix through a Technics receiver and floor-standing technics speakers in a medium-sized room and everything translates quite well. Bought the entire system for 150 bucks, as it is a Technics stereo system from the late 90s.
A lot of people will tell you, find a system that you think sounds "good" when you listen to the kinds of professionally produced music you know well, and work on that system. That's what led me to start mixing on the Technics system - it sounds better with no EQ for just about every type of music I listen to than anything else I've ever listened on.
 
Do it until you can afford to do otherwise THEN do otherwise.
 
If its your project you can do anything you want. The results however may not be to your liking. The problem I've come across is that many headphones, especially cheap ones will process the audio on their own (bass boost for example). So what you are hearing isn't exactly what you are doing. If bass boost is an example, you will mix the bass really low because in your headphones it sounds loud. Then when you get it all finished and throw it in a cd player the bass is gone.

I myself am ballin' on a budget too so I feel your pain. I do my mixes with headphones and stereo speakers. Neither is ideal, but if you know the weaknesses you can compensate for them. What I'll do is mix something that sounds good on both. Then I'll bounce that out and listen to it on a few different systems (car, laptop, old stereo, etc) and get an idea on how it sounds on those systems. Then I'll go back and tweak what needs to be tweaked. It's a long, and crappy way to do it, but its the best way I've found to do what I need to do without being able to afford a lot of room treatment, and monitors. Over time you get used to where the problems are with the sources you are listening for and you can compensate for it earlier and get the sound right faster.
 
I used to mix with my headphones alot untill i could get monitors. It sounded real good in the headphones but like the others said once i put in in my car my vocals were way to low or loud and i'd have to do it all over agian. I believe it really pays off to get monitors in the long run.
 
rayc said:
Do it until you can afford to do otherwise THEN do otherwise.
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Rayc hit it on the head. At the end of the day, use what you've got and learn it until you can afford to step up. I've noticed a trend lately on homerec where people start throwing out suggeztions that don't factor in OP's budget whatsoever, and the advice is rendered useless (in the context of the OP's question, anyway)
 
cusebassman said:
I've noticed a trend lately on homerec where people start throwing out suggeztions that don't factor in OP's budget whatsoever, and the advice is rendered useless (in the context of the OP's question, anyway)
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It's not a recent thing, it's been going on for a long while. Sometimes, you can't help it ! I think that inspired the "Are there any straight answers ?" thread.
 
grimtraveller said:
It's not a recent thing, it's been going on for a long while. Sometimes, you can't help it ! I think that inspired the "Are there any straight answers ?" thread.
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Yea, to be fair, I haven't been reading every thread that gets posted on homerec, so my broadsweeping generalization may have been ilinformed. I also didn't think you were telling this guy to go drop 10k on monitors :D I'm thinking in particular of the thread where some kid asked about getting better sounds from a practice amp and people were telling him you couldn't get even halfway decent sounds without a tube amp. If you can't help, move along.
 
Okay. In the interest of "straight answers" here's the one sentence answer to the original question.

"Yes, you can mix without monitors but you will find it much more difficult to judge what you mix will sound like on a wide variety of systems."
 
Bobbsy said:
Okay. In the interest of "straight answers" here's the one sentence answer to the original question.

"Yes, you can mix without monitors but you will find it much more difficult to judge what you mix will sound like on a wide variety of systems."
Click to expand...

Best answer ever here! ^^

By the way, anyone notice that the OP has been gone for 5 days? Hope he is ok....
 
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