Electronic Musician – August 2021

Learn the benefits of those fancy electronic earmuffs, and discover how to make the best of both worlds :

It’s a debate that pits two friendly foes against one another, siblings with opposite personalities. Both are built for the same purpose, yet they're continually placed in opposition in a debate that shows no sign of subsiding. So, how best to answer the question of which is best for mixing – speakers or headphones?

Speak to a mixing engineer, or a producer with an expensive studio, and they will mostlikely tell you that while headphones have their place and moment in the mixing process, the majority of the time you should be working with monitor speakers. And, if tradition is anything to go by, they are right. The vast majority of records in the music history rolodex were birthed from monitors, hurtling through the air and into the eardrums and chests of those in the studio control room. Headphones played a part in their first few fledgling steps, of course, but mostly as a referencing tool or a way of isolating rogue elements of the mix.

This modality of work has held sway in the music industry for quite some time as standard procedure, and as a result you will no doubt have seen a lot of advice out there telling you that it’s preferable. However, preference is subjective, and the industry is no longer confined to expensive studios with galactic analog mixing desks and platinum plaques on the walls. These days music is made and listened to in every environment imaginable: studios, rehearsal rooms, trains, bedrooms, basements, buses… and the demands of each setting are different.

Even the term “producer” doesn’t mean what it used to, as the advancement of music software has put studio grade production tools in the hands of those who mightn’t previously have been able to afford them. The influx of laptop beatmakers has brought with it a “headphone brigade” – a phalanx of beginner- or intermediate-level music producers who produced and mixed their first songs through headphones, and have stuck with them ever since. There are plenty of reasons why, too.

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Senn­heiser HD-25 140 €

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