Don't Let Go

[Pedaling Prince]

The question about headphone-listening is quite interesting and important. I haven't seen any statistics of people's listening habbits, but I'm quite sure nowadays music is much more consumed through headphones.

The proliferation of portable music players is probably in large part responsible for the shift towards headphone listening among the music listening public. I myself tend to listen to music more often on my iPhone than my stereo at home.

Personally I listen quite much with headphones, but I prefer to mix with speakers if it it's possible.

I actually use a combination of both. I do my first rough mix of a song using headphones then switch to speakers to fine tune the balancing. Actually, that's just a general rule; I often jump back and forth between speakers and headphones throughout the process. It is important to me, though, to get the mix working well on both since I'm looking both to please other people to whom I might show my work and myself who listens mostly on my iPhone as I said earlier. Mixing with both in mind helps me remember that in the "real world" mixes should be compatible with both as much as possible.

But panning decisions are totally different for me in those two listening modes.

Actually, I tend to make my panning decisions with the headphones. That probably seems odd on the surface but there's a method to my madness. I use my headphones for panning choices for two reasons. First, I've learned what effect panning decisions make on both headphones and speakers and find I can judge panning position better on headphones because the unnaturally wide stereo image brings them into strongest relief. Second, listening on headphones allows me to make sure I haven't created a hard pan that's uncomfortable to listen to on headphones, which as I said is an important consideration for compatibility with both listening modes.

Maybe for the same reason I have never dared to use real LCR-mixing decisions. But many top mixers use it, and they certainly know much more than a sunday driver like me. But on the other hand, there's also many top mixers that don't use it.

I suspect that those top mixers who don't use it are not using it for the same reason I'm not; it's useful to know how the mix sounds in the same configuration as the average listener with headphones will hear it.