One of the biggest weak spots in every recording chain is usually right in front of you, and it's a very obvious one – once you think about it. How are you monitoring the audio that you're working on? Speakers? Headphones? What sends the signals to these devices? What amplifies those signals to power their drivers? How are these playback devices affected by the room they're in? If you are not constantly questioning every aspect of your listening system in this way, you are likely making your life much more difficult. If you can't properly hear the work you're trying to do, how can you make decisions? How can you make an effective mix? How can you pick a microphone?
As the pandemic began, one of my upcoming (and eventually cancelled) Recording Workshop attendees, Frank San Filippo, suggested, "Amateurs and semi-pros are going to be using their home studios a lot more in the next few months – maybe you can offer mix evaluations remotely?" At Jackpot! Recording Studio we had been looking for ways to ensure some sort of income and activity to make up for the lack of attended sessions, so I began to offer song-by-song "Mix Reviewing" – a service I've since put on hold. Doing these reviews was interesting, and identifying trouble spots in a mix quickly was a great exercise for keeping my ears trained and ready. But, outside of suggesting the many small changes that could lead one towards improving a mix, I realized that a lot of people were not taking their monitoring situations as seriously as they should.
In some cases, people were monitoring and mixing only on headphones, and I could tell. After evaluating on my main monitors at Jackpot!, I would switch over to a pair of headphones. In many of these types of mixes, I would have been struggling to make sense of the balances on the monitors; but as soon as I heard the same mix in headphones, it all made sense – levels and placement seemed better, and the mix usually had better clarity. But, as experienced mixers know, headphone mixes rarely translate when played back over speakers, where the sound coalesces in the air.