Can't have monitors, am I doomed?

[Pelecaras]

I see a lot of advice on here about monitors being the essential purchase for any aspiring producer. I cannot in any way have music coming from speakers due to next doors baby and living in a modern terrace where the walls are like fookin' crepe-paper. (sound-proofing is out of the question too)

My question is.......will I ever make a decent track using headphones alone? or do I have to move?

[Hepta]

Proper monitoring is essential over any other hardware that is true. Will you be able to make a decent track with just headphones? Absolutely.

If you know how your headphones translates then it shouldnt be a problem. Listen to a lot of music in your cans and get to know them fully.

[dubdub]

Palms Trax made major underground club hits on Iphone earbuds.

You don't NEED anything. (except something to listen and make music with )

That said, from what i've read on here, good studio headphones with software like Sonarworks actually come pretty close to your average monitor setup, since most people don't exactly have perfect rooms and/or lack acoustic treatment.

[SFBM]

Palms Trax made major underground club hits on Iphone earbuds.

You don't NEED anything. (except something to listen and make music with )

That said, from what i've read on here, good studio headphones with software like Sonarworks actually come pretty close to your average monitor setup, since most people don't exactly have perfect rooms and/or lack acoustic treatment.

Wow, on iPhone earbuds? Really? I mean I can imagine that being done if you used them all the time and had a decent knowledge of mixdowns before approaching a track, but I'm guessing the mastering engineer played a decent part in making those tracks sparkle . I think I've heard a few of his tracks, and they definitely sound like they've had a 2nd mix on monitors or headphones, if not, were translated to other speakers very well in the mastering stage.

[TvSkY]

check everywhere

cars

friends houses

work

cross reference as much as you can

and buy the best studio reference headphones you can afford

suggest akg 712pro

[samnatur]

You'll be fine lol. People get down to music that sounds like it came from a potato ran through a microwave, you don't need a studio or monitors or anything to make a track to dance to.

[samnatur]

Of course it might help to have monitors though

[Barfunkel]

You can get decent results with good headphones that you know thoroughly. Maybe not super world class productions, but good enough for a release, especially considering the mastering engineer is gonna listen with proper speakers anyway and do some final adjustments.

[Lost to the Void]

If you have your production skills down you can do good work on anything as long as you understand how it translates.

Its harder if you are still learning to just work on headphones.
Even the best headphones cant cure bass pressure problems, there is simply no room for the basswaves to unfold. Stereo is tricky, and distance is more difficult as the mid range stuff causes fatigue more quickly.

There are plugins that will help to some degree.

You can do a good mix for sure, get some great cans (I swear by AKG701, I have a pair in both studios) and reference loads of stuff, not just techno, aim higher and listen to some really professionally mixed stuff and train your ears.

Reference whenever you can on proper speakers. (take your music to a music shop and demo a bunch of monitors)

A sub pac can help to deal with bass pressure.
http://subpac.com/what-is-the-subpac/

With care and attention you can get stuff to a level where the master engineer can tune it up (of course, the better the mix, the better the master).

[Pelecaras]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

[msl]

youtu.be/WD73a1trdJ0



yeah get some monitors

[The_G]

check everywhere

cars

friends houses

work

cross reference as much as you can

and buy the best studio reference headphones you can afford

suggest akg 712pro

Was just about to say all this as well. If you don't have access to good monitors, you at least need good monitoring headphones, and should test out the songs on as many speaker sets as possible.

[Dattington]

I'm moving soon and having to sell my main monitors (a777x's) which I'm not overly happy about. Will still have a small set of focals to test but not ideal.

Instead I'll be using a phonitor 2 (once monitors are sold..) and a subpac. The phonitor 2 (and the mini) both have amazing reviews and are really the top solution if you can't use monitors.

Would also love some audeze headphones but that will take a long time to save.

[juxtpose]

Ive got a little sony xrs x2 speaker, one of those tiny portable speakers for around a $100. A pro audio guy I know was raving how flat the repsonse in them are and I use it for monitoring occasionally. Works pretty good. That with some headphones to check bottom end and you could pump out something decent. Though like someone said before, if you are starting out learning to mix and you dont have monitors that can be hard. Mixing in general is a fucking nightmare, monitors or not. Its take me years to pull out something relatively decent

[juxtpose]

Instead I'll be using a phonitor 2 (once monitors are sold..) and a subpac. The phonitor 2 (and the mini) both have amazing reviews and are really the top solution if you can't use monitors.

Subpac! interesting stuff, would love to try

[Dattington]

Instead I'll be using a phonitor 2 (once monitors are sold..) and a subpac. The phonitor 2 (and the mini) both have amazing reviews and are really the top solution if you can't use monitors.

Subpac! interesting stuff, would love to try

I got mine last week and it's blown me away. Within a few min had identified loads of low end issues in the track i'm currently working on. It's really hard to describe why it works.. it just does.

Will still take a bit of time to get used to but I am really impressed so far.

[juxtpose]

great stuff, I met a top flight producer and he was right into them

[Alume]

Be aware of the headphones volumes. You def dont want tinnitus

[TMobotron]

Be aware of the headphones volumes. You def dont want tinnitus

This would be my main message to you as well. I have monitors but spend a lot of time in headphones. I was definitely guilty of working with volumes that are too loud for too long at times in my early days. Sometimes it's hard to resist that volume knob in order to hear more of the "oomph" you're expecting.

I own a subpac now and I would praise it for how nice it makes listening to music/producing at a lower volume over anything else.

[christianmdp]

I think that headphones are pretty much ok to do arrangements, setting up drums patterns and even some pre mixing.

But you definitely need speakers to "feel" how the sound is spreading in the ambient. Even more to get to know your bass parts.

And of course, if the speaker is not so hi-fi, you better listen to a lot of refference tracks to learn how things should sound.

Ok, I'm a newcomer and can be def wrong, but i think these are some obvious things.