On 2/9/06, Tim Howard <tdhoward@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 05:11:54 -0800 > > From: Mark Knecht <markknecht@xxxxxxxxx> > > Subject: Re: It's music time again > > > On 2/9/06, james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > > One day, I'll spend some money and get a soundcard that costs more > > > than 20 quid and speakers that were meant for more than Doom. Then > > > maybe I'll stick with a track long enough to produce something > > > polished. > > > > > > > You know, it probably isn't as necessary as you think. All studio > > monitors do (IMO) is give you a good listening environment when you're > > mixing. However, they are not 'required' to get a good mix. If you > > I have a "home bedroom" studio with wierd acoustics, which makes it > very difficult to get accurate sound, even from the highest quality > studio monitors. So I use a set of high-quality headphones to do my > mixes. > > It is much easier to get high-quality, accurate sound from a smaller > transducer closer to the ear, rather than having your speakers moving > a lot of air through a longer distance. It's also a lot cheaper... > :-) > > -Tim > Hi, I would agree that the sound is probably better, but I would strongly disagree that the sound space is accurate. With speakers, no matter the quality, each ear hears some of the output from each speaker. With headphones this is not the case. With headphones you have no mixing and hear left on left and right on right only. I would suggest that it's quite wise to do most of the work most of the time using speakers, even if they are not great speakers. Over time you'll learn the sound of the speakers and how to make a mix that sounds good elsewhere using them. Granted, it's not as much fun, and it woun't sound as good, but it will (eventually) lead to better results. It's certainly OK to use cans for casual and critial listening. People use them all the time and you want to make sure your mixes work well there also. I use headphones many days, but I find I get better mixes using monitors vs. headphones. Cheers, Mark
