[linux-audio-user] Re: It's music time again

[Mark Knecht]

On 2/9/06, Tim Howard <tdhoward at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 05:11:54 -0800
> > From: Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] It's music time again
>
> > On 2/9/06, james at dis-dot-dat.net <james at dis-dot-dat.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > One day, I'll spend some money and get a soundcard that costs more
> > > than 20 quid and speakers that were meant for more than Doom.  Then
> > > maybe I'll stick with a track long enough to produce something
> > > polished.
> > >
> >
> > You know, it probably isn't as necessary as you think. All studio
> > monitors do (IMO) is give you a good listening environment when you're
> > mixing. However, they are not 'required' to get a good mix. If you
>
> I have a "home bedroom" studio with wierd acoustics, which makes it
> very difficult to get accurate sound, even from the highest quality
> studio monitors.  So I use a set of high-quality headphones to do my
> mixes.
>
> It is much easier to get high-quality, accurate sound from a smaller
> transducer closer to the ear, rather than having your speakers moving
> a lot of air through a longer distance.  It's also a lot cheaper...
> :-)
>
> -Tim
>

Hi,
   I would agree that the sound is probably better, but I would
strongly disagree that the sound space is accurate.

   With speakers, no matter the quality, each ear hears some of the
output from each speaker. With headphones this is not the case. With
headphones you have no mixing and hear left on left and right on right
only.

   I would suggest that it's quite wise to do most of the work most of
the time using speakers, even if they are not great speakers. Over
time you'll learn the sound of the speakers and how to make a mix that
sounds good elsewhere using them. Granted, it's not as much fun, and
it woun't sound as good, but it will (eventually) lead to better
results.

   It's certainly OK to use cans for casual and critial listening.
People use them all the time and you want to make sure your mixes work
well there also. I use headphones many days, but I find I get better
mixes using monitors vs. headphones.

Cheers,
Mark