Feedback please! Infographic on studio headphones & monitors

We see so many questions from beginners around studio headphones & studio monitor speakers, we thought it would be fun to create a helpful infographic.

Any feedback? Think a beginner would find it helpful? Both the subjects can get complicated and we have full buying guides dedicated to them, but thought the graphic would be easily digestible.

Does it get your thumbs up or down? 👍 👎 Be honest!

Here's a preview, click on it to see the full size version :)

just NO, needs more work... you can do without headphones if you aren't overdubbing in the same room as a sound moving real air but you can't live without monitor speakers and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong and confused and ahs gotten lucky so far or thinks they have... there is no situation creating recorded music where you can do without decent speakers, period. I will shout this from the rooftops while being pumped fulla bullets by the post-rave DJ headphone mafia!

good choice of budget speakers though, rokits are alright and Yamaha kicks ass at studio speakers and has since I was a boy

seriously dude, I didn't come at you trying to secularize your music, do me the favor in return and leave me alone with the god stuff

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, understood. I think in part this graphic is to help the ever-growing contingent that might not have the funds or space for monitors, and/or who cut their teeth producing "on the go."

But hey, all paths on the diagram do lead to getting monitors eventually ;)

monitors ae not optional for finished music you wish to disseminate to the public wgih is what so many people are about, disseminating what amount to sketches to the public

What's funny is you follow my soundcloud and I just use white ipod headphones. Not dissing and please don't unfollow lol, my point is, I spent 4 years as the sound board operator in highschool. I've spent years listening to music on different headphones, comparing and contrasting. The whole point of some genres of lofi hip-hop are based on not being able to listen to bass heavy music in your house because you're poor and live with 5 other people. But I've made music through headphones at night, then mixed/mastered through monitors and subwoofers in the day. Sometimes you choose to mix through headphones knowing it's gonna make it worse because you don't want to sound like everybody else. But when it come to suggesting what to produce through, yeah probably should stick to rokits, yamahas, there's some other good ones that I can't think off the top of my head.

I don't know a lot about underground hip-hop even though I have worked on a lot of it as an engineer and programmer over the years to pay the bills... I certainly approached it from a non-DJ angle that is probably way different than the guys these small tie MCs were used to working with, but they were always happy with the finishes records, moreso than what they were doing at home with a cheap drum machine, DJ rig, cans and 4 track... but on your stuff, I like your textures, but if you gave me stems to mix my mix would sound a lot different without compromising the core sounds.... my use of the dynamic range and bandwidth would be geared around filling a room in a non-fatiguing way, even at low levels... I'm not sure I could do my kidna mix on cans alone, you're making me want to try now.... the last time I did though it was a disaster to my ears. I didn't get what I thought I had when I played the mix on speakers or even thru different sets of headphones.... it was very listenable I guess, but it wasn't what I was trying to do and that pissed me off

thre are no rules, but you should have the tools to do it the "right" way so its a choice not to.... so when making a buying guide I would always favor speakers as a 'must-have' and good headphones as a 'maybe'... and then depending on what you are doing ith them there are lots of options... for doing whacky heafphone mix effects I like my open-back AKGs because they are speaker like in their bass and low mid response or sometimes cheap earbuds that came with my iPad, lol whereas for overdubbing I want isolation and like big overear DJ cans (I'm an audio technical guy usually but have used the smaller and lighter sonyy cans too over the years where a little spill is not big deal) even though the suck a rat for anything but listening to already-mastered music

the truth is if you have the ears and artistic sense you can do this with whatever's at your disposal but if you are a beginner starting out the right way will help you train those ears to do it all wrong later

the flow chart's not bad though, good ideas, but I wouldn't even b proposing a speakerless setup as an option.... #1 should be to get speakers regardless of your situation, once you have those more professional cans become something to consider and you can start deciding if you need to tolerate closed backs or you can get away with the acoustically more accurate open back designs

also, headphones are terrible for your hearing even at low levels.... spending lots of time with little speakers next to or worse still IN your ears is way more damaging than playing some 8" monitors loudly all the time. Its even worse than playing in a rock band without ear protection, believe it or not. You are destroying your top end hearing with cans.

I think the flow chart should make mention of potential eharing loss caused by prolonged use of headphones. Kids need to be aware that this is another reason why most pro studio guys avoid headphones whenever possible. Prolonged mixing on cans will tire your ears for sure nand you will change your mix to ease your ear fatigue without realizing you are doing so. Loud speaker monitoring can be fatiguing, but it takes a lot longer to set in if you are properly removed from the speakers and they are spaced well ;-) and with speakers you can leave your mix playing and back up, leave the room with the door open etc to get another sense of how it sounds AND to rest the old eardrums

ugh, I gotta stop puttering on the internet today.... I am supposed to be accomplishing some stuff today and instead I got sucked back into EB chat world.... this site is addictive

Bubble burst approaching!!!! $250 Australian gets some pretty ordinary monitors KRK Rokit 5 $215 for 1 and $415 for a pair... and that is this month. $250 scores you Behringer Studio 50 pair or MS40 pair, or some fluid f4's or C5W's.... nothing remarkable. Prices change and that will date your infographic pretty quickly. Choosing headphones... close back, open back, half open, all serve various purposes.... open or semi for monitoring and mixing over long sessions for less ear fatigue, closed for isolation work where zero sound bleed is optimal... then monitors need to consider positioning in a room... rear or front firing bass ports, what kind of bass response (KRK are a notoriously bass thick monitor more suited to electronica, where guitar work lends more to something much flatter.

The concept is worthwhile, but needs to be more targeted, making it more diverse, while being less focussed on price.

great thoughts there as always, T

dn't frget low efficiency speakers, I love non-ported 3 ways powered with lots of clean amp juice.... they can be your flattest option with great abss response that's not hyped at any particular frequency range thus reducing the need for room treatment

....ummm... I love a good 3 way.....

you might want a king size bed in your mix room if you goo for 3 ways, LOL

If this is the home made traps you were telling me about!

Still giggling over amp juice... It's late

its 'early' here.... well, early to me since Lu and I slept in so I am still having my coffee and trying to get motivated to tackle all my weekend chores and such, ugh... I just want to play music and dicker on the web today but ti would be unwise especially since I am having family over tonight to see Lucian

(KRK are a notoriously bass thick monitor more suited to electronica, where guitar work lends more to something much flatter.

oddly enough I like to mix even house music on 'flatter' monitors with unhyped bass, which is maybe why I am always saying I don't like KRKs.... I just like monitors that are honest sounding and if I need to target the extreme lows I can hook up a sub for an hour of detail work down there or just look at it on a scope and get an idea if my sub frequencies are eating up too much bandwidth (when I hook up the sub doing techno-ish stuff I often get excited by the thump and get carried away hyping the bass instead of taming it LOL

nice flat speakers with fantastic midrange imaging like anything Yamaha has made since the 80s are just the best way to go particularly when you are learning... they won't flatter your mix and you will be trying hard to get it to sound good on them so that when you flip the mix to other setups it will sound fantastic... minor problems in the mids will jump out like crazy and you will be forced to correct them and again that will make the mix sound that much better on more flattering playback setups

okay jim, stop internetting and start your day, dude

check that email before you stop netting.. I am still undecided between Yamaha HS5 and the Fluid Fader F5. Both get me excited but don't have $900 for both pairs.

I personally am a Yamaha and Tannoy guy... I kidna like the expensive Adam stuff and I usually like dynaudio drivers and the few studios I've used the dynaudio powered nearfields in were pretty easy to mix in, though I found dynaudio's speakers to have some funkiness in the lows that threw me at first

danke schön everyone. I don't want this graphic to get too convoluted and text-dense, but I have an idea - I'll add a notes section for some disclaimers and explanations for some of the good points you guys are making.

preserve your precious ears, lay off of headphones

this site is addictive

http://i.imgur.com/MN9vs4K.jpg

yesss my master...henceforth I shall be known as Darth... COMPRESSOR