Today's the day

[Monk]

You'll have to be prepared to give it some time and also really work at learning your new monitors....

Your post is irresponsible but I'm sure it's unintentionally so.

There will be 5 things you don't know during a mixing session from your laborious trial and error festivities which arguably make your advice extremely counter productive:

1 Is it the monitors?
2 Is it the room?
3 Is it the DAW
4 Is it Noise Induced Hearing Loss?
5 Is it a combination of all of the above factors in varying amounts?

Sure, you can run around like a chimp, slapping your mix on different playback devices. But how will you know what they are telling you if none of them are a controlled environment with decent frequency responses and are unfit for critical listening purposes?

Then you run back to your challenging space, trying to remember what mix issues you think were present from those other fake, highly coloured environments with horrendous RT60's.  Your space will be messy too, but it will be a different mess, just to help with the confusion and clouds of uncertainty.  Welcome to the game of fools!

If you think “referencing” will compensate for all these things (and more besides, I'm simply scratching the surface), then are you deluded or gullible?

Learn your speakers? The truth of the matter, to those in the know, is that you won't learn anything!  You will however, find that fact out sooner or later, most likely it will be much later.  By then you will have invested so much time and energy you won't be able to give up!  You don't have to believe me, because you will be here years later going around in circles for the exact same reasons I've listed above, wasting valuable life chasing your tail and going nowhere fast. But hey, at least it makes good click bait but it's not for your benefit unless you are being paid to do what you are doing?

Using headphones or buds contributes to Noise Induced Hearing Loss. They quickly cause fatigue, fatigue encourages louder levels over the mix session/auditioning/entertainment period. Louder levels add to fatigue.....which begets even louder levels. Hello hearing damage! You cannot judge loudness in a pair of headphones or buds because loudness is a perception.  You should note too that software cannot compensate for any of this. Nor can it fix the design issues created from slapping a transducer against the pinna! There are [deluded] folk who think otherwise and one has been posting in this forum since day 1. Good luck to them, I say.  And let's not forget the brain loves to hear music louder because it's more exciting and engaging.......another reason for them being a hazard and why they are creating a pandemic of Health issues today which nobody wants to discuss.  Oh, but what about noise cancellation buds/phones? No more than a rouse..... the Industry makes big money from you and will try anything to make things appear safer even when they aren't.  Irrespective of gimmicks, buds for example, create colossal SPL's at very low playback levels due to physics and anatomy.  One of your moderator mates (he's operating in stealth mode for some reason), claims to have been using them for years......and he can't assess frequency response to save his life, perhaps for this reason.

The answer? Give your production to someone who has the necessary pre-requisites for a critical listening environment, with decent speakers chosen specifically to work in that room. GRK or no GRK, it's IMPOSSIBLE to absorb bass.  Bass must be “managed” and that takes know-how that most musicians have neither the time nor the energy to learn, even if they might have the budget!  Headphones don't do bass, nor do buds sufficiently accurately for mixing purposes. Citizens can think otherwise, that's fine.

So, what are the “Opportunity Costs”?

This is one simple post that will be lost in the noise of many thousands herein. And yet it's perhaps the most important.....