should i be monitoring with headphones

[epicpenguin]

Hi Guys,

I have a problem and I am sure that someone hear will be able to help.

I am building a mini home studio and am unsure what to use for monitoring when i am mixing.

I am petty much settled on an audio interface. The saffire pro 14 as it seems good for the price, has a decent I/O and i am on quite a tight budget.

I don't think it would be practical to get a set of monitors because the room i am in is not acoustically treated. so i may get a pair of good quality monitoring headphones like the Sennheiser HD 280 PRO headphones and using them to mix.

Do you guys think that I am going about this the wrong way and I should spend more money on some monitors or will the headphones be fine for the job?

 

[Tommy Evans]

Personally, I'd go for some monitors.

 

[diegocasmo]

I like to do my mixing with monitors, but I do definitely record everything with headphones.

 

[Terminus]

If your room will be untreated, I'd say yeah go with headphones (a decent pair not cheapies) because mixing in a room with no acoustic treatment is a headache and phones will at least take that out of the equation. You can always go for monitoring later and still have a good set of phones to boot.

 

[ManFromMars]

I am in a similar situation and have been monitoring using a good pair of headphones (Beyerdynamic DT 880 Pro). I recently got the Sapphire Pro 24 DSP, which has VRM built in, so you can get an approximation of different speaker/room setups through your headphones. It's not perfect, but better (and cheaper) than using monitors in my current room situation.

 

[AD Chaos]

Go for the 24 instead of the 14 - it's even cheaper on Amazon, at least it was this week.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

It all depends on the room, some untreated rooms don't need much treatment or any. If the acoustics are less than stellar, then yes it would be better to get cans, but that is not without its own issues, as you cannot judge how both channels interact with each other nor can you simulate or hear what a mix would sound like in ambient listening conditions (house, car etc.). That is why I personally would use monitors over cans in a room that isn't treated but isn't that bad, you can always use cans together to act as a second reference.

 

[epicpenguin]

Thanks for the replys Guys

I have taken it into consideration and decided to get the pro 24 dsp (because of the vrm) and some decent phones.

 

[bragamarcelo]

I use the saffire 24 DSP + a good Akg phone that i forgot the model right now.
You can get some pretty decent work with these guys, vrm works fine.

But if you have the money to buy monitors go for it, i usually get headaches pretty fast mixing with phones.