Quote:
Originally Posted by DBMusic
If mixing and mastering with a tin can and string makes you happy, then to it. There are no rules.
DB
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I rant, therefore I is
Over the last few months I have read a lot of threads on this subject (as I was headphone shopping) and it amazes me how polarizing an issue it is.
For a lot of us I think it's simply a cost/quality issue. While I doubt many professionals would choose the headphone route over a well designed monitoring/room combo for some very good reasons, the "You can't mix in headphones' faction seems, IMO, just as off as the 'Skrillex did it and won Grammys" faction.
The order of progression seems to go like this:
"You have to/don't have to mix with monitors."
"John mixes/doesn't mix with headphones and got great results."
"It would have been better/worse if he did it on monitors/headphones."
Then there is the quality issue of the hardware/room itself:
"Bill mixed "Death Puppies from Planet Cocaine" on monitors in an anechoic chamber/with Stax phones, and got great/horrible results."...or...
"...mixed it on KRKs/ipod buds and got great/horrible results."
I read those type of responses and I think "OK, so I can't afford ProAcs and Brystons, but my stuff is a little better than Wal Mart quality... so what should I do...give up altogether?"
Personally, my room is small and no expense is going to change it. And moving isn't an option. So should I and many others like me justdp totally inacurate mixes, not use headphones and/or find a new hobby? Now granted, most of the people here if not all would say hell no, do the best you can with what you have and work toward improving your situation however you can do it. But on some of the other forums I read, some posters really think that mixing on headphones is impossible and that good results cannot possibly be had. Even when examples are posted proving it can, they always find nits to pick when no one else can hear them.
I think there is a strong element of expensive monitors/room treatment as an extension of the penis syndrome at play there and good old fashioned one-upsmanship. Is a good room with good monitors the 'better' solution? In many ways absolutely it is IMO, and many professionals prove it daily. However, one needs to also consider that the way we (the collective we) hear things -has- changed because of ear buds. Like it or not, many, and more by the day, are becoming accustomed to listening to music on buds/phones. And the way music sounds through them.
Many old school guys rail against mixing to the lowest common denominator, and for good reasons, but it has to be considered. When the majority of your potential audience does a thing one way, it makes sense to adapt to their (for lack of a better word) needs. See the Betamax/VHSstory for why.
Whether or not it sounds 'worse' is besides the point unless you are doing it for personal enjoyment because 'better' does not always make the sale. If anything, the loudness wars proved that the buying public (or the pirating public, as the case may be) doesn't have a problem listening to flat, distorted music. So in comparison to the squarewave hell that is the modern mix, a shifted stereo field seems to me to be of little relative consequence.
Just my take on it. Others definitely don't agree.