i was at work yesterday n my manz told me when im mixing down is good to use headphones rather then monitors cuz u gotta imagin urself as if ur spittin on the track cuz my tracks sound good on my monitors but i played a beat cd in his car n the bass was so high it was distorted or maybe he had his volume all the way up in his car i was wonderin is Headphones the best way when mixing down
What I learned in school is that you should use a variety of speaker sources to mix(headphones,monitors, house speakers, boom box etc). The mix needs to basically sound good on the various sources that the music buyer or listener uses. Notice I said "good" not great. It will never sound great on every source.
Headphones have there place! The main draw back with using headphones is that you won't get a good idea of how your low end is going to sound, but they are excellent for the high end. Also most headphones may say "stereo studio monitors" when in fact they are not. The circuitry just gives them a stereo effect but it's not actually stereo in the sense of the word. One good thing about headphones is that if your high end too high you'll know immediately. That's about the only thing I use them for.
After listening to the low end through your monitors for hours it's easy to lose focus on the highs. That bass will hypnotize you! When purchasing monitors you have to make sure they have the broadest frequency range that you can afford. In hip hop we love our bass! Most times we over do it because we just can't get enough of it. I found that when you have more than one bass source in your track that's when things usually get out of hand. IMO you should always tune your diff't bass sources to diff't frequency ranges i.e bass drum, bass guitar and synth bass etc. Bass drums, kicks etc can hang around the 40- 50 hertz range but tune your synth and gtr bass in the upper 100 to 200 hertz range to give the various bass sources there own space. However you initially set your bass and it sounds good to you, always go back and drop it down 2 or 3 db. And during the final stages of your mix have the volume waaaaaaay down. If all the elements don't sound good at a low volume most likely your mix is jacked!
Another trick is to mute your bass sources and check the mix of all your other elements if it's too bassy. Then lower all the bass sources and raise them slightly until it no longer sounds muddy. If the mix sounds good without your bass then you know for sure that the bass level or frequency range is your problem and it allows you to focus on just the problem area Works for me....may or may not work for you!
