> There's a big difference, though, between the heightened sense of
> objectivity that you have forged through years of trial and error and
> a beginner's judgement. You can quickly distinguish the key
> problems, strengths and extremely subtle qualities that overwhelm
> beginners' ears.
Oops! Yes, indeed. You make some very good points throughout your message Rob.
I was not thinking of that aspect of it all.
> There are many ways to skin a cat and headphones are becoming the
> norm. I suspect this makes listening standards less uniform, not
> more.
Perhaps, yes. They certainly take the room out of the equation, both in
monitoring and playback, which removes a couple of layers of ambiguity from
source to listener. I'd also say that from a frequency response point of view,
a pair of headphones for under $1000 will outperform a speaker/room system
that's priced in many thousands of dollars. But you're absolutely right in what
you said earlier - I *am* an experienced listener, I don't need to 'feel' the
sound through speakers to know what I need to do.
> I'd relegate the monitoring question to chance and fate had I
> not supervised many awful mixes through the years that had to be
> redone from scratch because beginners or even a very skilled
> listeners fell in love with what they could hear in expensive
> headphones. :-)
And that's probably something that only people who teach sound recording can
fully appreciate!
Come to think of it, my own audio students have produced some terrible stuff
using just headphones. It sounds great in headphones, but not in speakers. A
pair of speakers to cross-reference the headphone mix through is always
worthwhile, and they don't need to be too elaborate or expensive. A combination
of the two is probably a good approach these days.
Years ago we always had to check for mono compatibility; these days I think we
need to check for speaker and headphone compatibility as well.
- Greg Simmons
P.S. There are actually only two ways to skin a cat - successfully and
unsuccessfully. As long as you get the skin off, I don't think it matters how
you do it... ;-)
|