You may have set up baffles to help with soundproofing and are able to mix in a reasonably acoustically dead room that doesn’t have too many reflections bouncing back at you from the walls, but it is still difficult to create the perfect room at home for your mix. Many people have to compromise and this requires getting to know what those sounds coming out of your monitors actually mean. More on this later.
So I’ll mix with headphones you say to yourself? Well I personally use my standard monitors, headphones, little old stereo cd players, car stereo and headphones. I guess what I’m attempting is to ensure my recording will sound good under as many conditions as possible.
For people living in flats or for those that record and mix late at night headphones are a necessary item. We all use headphones at some stage for overdubbing, hearing back one track while you record your second track, but will using headphones alone give you an accurate picture of the true sound that you need? Well at the end of the day no, but!
As I say I combine a number of ways of listening to my mixes but I must say a good pair of headphones can go a long way to reaching that final mix the one you will be happy with so yes headphones can be part of your mix but I wouldn’t rely on them totally.
If you mix using headphones for too long your hearing becomes coloured (or is that discoloured?) the tonal niceties of your music are not quite as apparent anymore. To avoid this when using headphones I listen at a low volume and not for too long. This also goes without saying, but listening to loud music on headphones for long periods of time will damage your ears and may even a few years down the track prevent you from ever mixing well.
Another problem I found in using headphones was getting a good stereo mix. What you hear is sound coming to the right ear and another sound to the left ear. Whilst listening to speakers you are hearing a really different form of that stereo mix as both ears are picking up the right and left at the same time.
I quite like using my headphones for working on tone, for equing, checking some of the subtleties in the sound but as I say not for too long as it becomes a little pointless if your ears are no longer able to pick up the tonal accuracies.
It’s also important, and this will come to you the more mixes you do in your particular environment, to understand what your headphones and speakers are really telling you. What I mean by this is that you learn as you go along in a not so perfect acoustic environment to double check for example the accuracy of your bass frequencies. They may sound perfect in your current environment but muddy on other speakers (your cd player for example).
It may be a compromise to work like this but when I have had a less than perfect environment to mix in, learning what my speakers are really telling me has been the only way I could be sure of a true sounding mix, that and the comparisons on other speakers, in the car, cd player etc.
It’s almost as if nothing is giving me the perfect mix but my brain is memorising what each system tells me and eventually giving me the combined answer. A fiddly way of doing things but it is surprising how well you get to know the accuracy of the sounds coming from your monitors.
So what are the best headphones to use? Well there are basically two types, closed back and open back. The closed back encloses the speaker (transducer) into the headphone, the sound doesn’t escape. These are good for overdubbing but for me the overall sound tends to come across as quite dull, not perfect for mixing. With open back headphones you can hear the sound coming from them whilst you are wearing them and therefore these are not the best when you are overdubbing as you will generally end up with the mix from your headphones being recorded along with your vocal for example. Open backed headphones I have found are generally nicer /more accurate in tone. You may find some of the more expensive closed back headphones adequate, up to the individual I guess, but I prefer the open backed headphones for mixing.
You may get fooled when using headphones into thinking your songs eq levels are tonally accurate and be disappointed when you hear the song back on your speakers. This gets back to learning what the headphones / speakers are telling you and adjusting the stereo mix / equing accordingly. I find the mid range in a headphones mix the least accurate and I spend a fair amount of time getting this right.
One more thing I would say is don’t scrimp on money when it comes to buying speakers or headphones. After your synthsesiser, sampler, guitar, other outboard gear etc monitors should be figured in as one of the major costs. You do really get what you pay for and although you may not be able to afford top of the range solutions there are plenty of brands in the mid price range that will serve you well.
The stereo mix is where it all comes together or disappears, it’s one of the toughest areas in the studio process to come to grips with and can be quite frustrating but a good set of speakers and headphones will take a little of the sting away as you while away the hours getting that sound just right.
