Speakers and Headphones: When and How?

[Navyr]

So I'm building up my home studio finally after months of putting it off and decided to finally spend a little money on a couple M-Audio AV 40's to have a more inclusive sound. They should be here within the week. I've pretty much always produced with headphones (Sennheiser 280 HD Pro) and I think that's a big reason that I haven't been able to get that "professional" quality mixdown on any of my songs. I can get really close and they sound great with headphones, but the moment I open up the mix on an open speaker, it sounds like garbage.

I understand that a mix should be listened too and tweaked mostly through an open speaker system, but are the only instances where I need to use headphones just to make sure that my mix sounds good on multiple platforms? I know from experience that one does not represent the sound projected through the other, but are there more specific instances where I may need to use specifically one or the other for the most part?

 

[Free Spirit]

Do the majority of the mixing on your nearfields.

Then once you feel you have that down, double check the mix on

1. your headphones
2. a cheap, mono speaker.

You'll most likely find several things still poking out unduly or not sounding how you want. A humbling experience.

Keep adjusting and double checking on all 3 listening systems until it sounds good on everything.

Regarding specific instances where u should switch listening systems: always check the mono compatibility of your mix.

A lot of vsti's that have stereo information and sound great on your nearfields actually have phase cancellation issues that will cause them to sound off when you listen back through a mono source(one speaker system). So be sure to double check that.

Also, leave any panning/stereo imaging mixing for your nearfields, don't do that on your headphones. Your headphones operate on a much wider sound stage than nearfields and will screw up your mix if you adjust everything using those.

And again, once you adjust the stereo image of something be sure to double check that it sounds acceptable in mono.

Cheers!