Mixing With Headphones Vs. Mixing With Speakers

When you’re at the mixing board, do you use a set of calibrated mixing monitors, a set of regular old stereo speakers or bookshelf speakers, or a pair of headphones? Maybe you use both headphones and speakers to get a feel for the mix in the air as well as directly in your ears. 

What sort of situation are you mixing for ? If you’re like me, you tend to listen to a lot more music over your computer and on your iPod than on a component stereo system with high-fidelity speakers. I’d venture to say that in general these days, more music is being listened to on headphones and earbuds than on open-air speakers. Maybe a LOT more. So that begs the question when I’m at the mixing board: what situation am I mixing for?

The short answer you see everywhere is this: mixing with headphones is bad. Mixing with monitors in a controlled room is good. I have to agree that when you hear a killer mix on open-air speakers, it’s guaranteed to sound good on your iPod. On the other hand, sometimes a mix sounds really cool on headphones, but when you move it to speakers, it sounds like garbage. So that must mean that mixing with speakers/monitors is the only way to guarantee a good mix, but I don’t think that’s true. I think you need both, especially when the final product will most often go directly into listener’s ears via earbuds or headphones. 

Here’s a good quote:

“Good-quality headphones are useful for revealing some details that even the best speakers gloss over. In particular, I often find that it’s much easier to hear edit points in the audio when using headphones — edits that sound perfect on speakers can sometimes be really obvious on headphones!

On the other hand, stereo imaging and panning information is much harder to judge on headphones, as is equalisation sometimes, and stereo mixes which sound impressive over headphones can sound very wrong on speakers, and vice versa.” ( http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb06/articles/qa0206_5.htm )

I prefer mixes that have some sense of adventure in them. I like it when instruments and noises are panned way off to the left or right. I like a mix of totally dry sounds mixed with really wet sounds. I was in a local market picking up some beer the other night and over the beer case were some gigantor 1970’s wooden speakers set about twenty feet apart. There was some jazz on. At one end of the beer case, the drums were right in your face and the guitar was far away. At the other end, the opposite. All guitar. In the middle there was a solid mix grounded by the bass. Cool. The next day I was listening to the “Sound Opinions” podcast ( http://www.soundopinions.net) and they played “To Sir With Love.” In one earbud I got drums and bass. In the other earbud I got a string section, and Lulu right down the middle. Cool. The Beatles did a ton of stuff like this too of course.

Doing hard pans really messes with your monitor mix, though. Here’s another quote: “One of the major problems you’ll encounter is panning: Let’s say you want to pan the hi-hat over to the left. Having done so, you lower its fader so it sits further back in the mix. A couple of hours later, you listen back through your monitors and… you can’t hear it!” ( http://www.thewhippinpost.co.uk/mixing-music/mixing-with-headphones.htm ) This messes with my mind all the time. To help correct this “really cool panning effect” syndrome, I keep a set of small monitors hooked up, and do a review of the mix at a low volume on those once in a while. It’s really important  to listen to your mix at a low volume and see if you can hear everything. If you can clearly hear the bass, drums, vocals, and little noisy bits in a low-volume mix, you’re on the right path.  

EQ is the other monster. You have to learn your headphones. Again: listen at a low volume, not cranked all the way up, because you get a distorted image of EQ and blend at a high volume. How do your particular headphones color the mix? Mine have a lot of bass and they tend to leave out some lower mid-tones. So while a mix might sound OK on my cans, when I move it to the computer or home stereo, there’s not enough bass and too much lower midrange, so I’ve learned to adjust for that. I couldn’t figure out why all my mixes sounded like mud when they hit speakers. It took some ear training. Hard panning also messes with EQ. A soiid-sounding bass line run straight up the middle will sound crazy and annoying panned to the side, for instance. 

Ultimately, I’m mixing for other people who listen on headphones or earbuds. That’s why I mix on headphones: I want to hear what they’re going to hear. But just in case a mix of mine hits the open air somewhere, I want to be sure it sounds solid. I’m not completely happy with everything I’ve mixed in the past, but once in a while I hear something that holds up. When a mix works, it sounds good no matter where you hear it. I try to remember the good bits and keep building on them.  

 

There are a zilliion-and-one articles on this topic. Here are a few of the sources I looked at:

Really technical but good:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec03/articles/mixingheadphones.htm

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan07/articles/mixingheadphones.htm

Some excellent home-recording tips for headphone sluts:

http://www.headwize.com/articles/lxh2mix_art.htm

Some more good, general mixing tips:

http://www.thewhippinpost.co.uk/mixing-music/mixing-with-headphones.htm

And of course, the holy grail of recording advice and insight:

http://www.tapeop.com/