mixing in headphones

[gottajibboo]

i haven't done this in a long while. i probably read that it was 'wrong' somewhere a while back and quit doing it. i got some new phones in the mail today and i guess i realized i haven't even used headphones much in a couple years. i forgot how pleasant it is to feel deep bass right in the earhole as well as experience stereo imaging right up close.

so anyway, just wanted to share my renewed enthusiasm for headphone usage and say that i'm going to once again include using them in my mixdowns.

so now, i'll use the home stereo speakers (haven't gotten around to investing in some nice flat monitors yet) in the studio, which sound really fantastic BTW, and then i'll probably drag the laptop out to the car, plug into the 1/4" aux input, mix a bit there, and finally balance those two with a nice mix for headphones.

i used to pretty much exclusively mix in headphones and i'm listening back to some of my old stuff and i'm enjoying how they turned out.

thoughts? anybody used phones a lot will mixing? not at all?

[wren]

I prefer using headphones for mixing most music, but I always want reference monitors as well, just to be safe and so I can double-check myself. If what I'm mixing is floaty and ambient, I use monitors because breathing room and separation or lack thereof is so important in that kind of stuff, but I'd never dream of mixing my band (or something like us) on anything other than headphones.

These days, though, most of the stuff that I mix/manipulate is sound effects for plays and such (I work in a theater as a sound tech among other things), and I always do that stuff on monitors. Headphones really give you a seriously false picture there.

[fakeplastic_eye]

I use phones to mix and i like it. I think if i invest in better monitors soon i'll switch just so that my ears wont be under so much stress for periods of time. I always make sure to listen to my final mix's in a reference system like my home stereo or my car is the best because i listen to music the most in there.

[veer chasm]

I use headphones to make sure pre-amps aren't clipping and removing bleedthrough during tracking, but I use nearfields to make sure the mix is good. Things sound great with headphones, but I can tell if my mix is poor using nearfields. Things that I can hear with 'phones will often get buried when I listen to them in an acoustic environment.

[Moo]

Originally posted by veer chasm
Things that I can hear with 'phones will often get buried when I listen to them in an acoustic environment.

This is probably why it's considered 'wrong.' I use headphones mostly because my speakers suck, and decent headphones are pretty cheap compared to decent monitors. I think it's a good idea to use both.