It's been asked in the home recording forum whether it's best to track with headphones, studio monitors, or other speakers while recording. This quick blog will discuss the topic of monitoring while tracking.

Young engineers are always interested in recording the “right” way. While there are right ways of doing this or that in a recording studio, seldom is there a right way that works 100% of the time. For every situation, there are rules and there are rules that are made to be broken. I feel that headphones vs studio monitors are great example of this.

I want to make it clear that we are talking about tracking here. While I sometimes check mixes with headphones, it's extremely rare for me to actually mix with headphones. In this blog we are simply discussing the tracking side of things.

The Rules

There are a few situations where there is not much gray area when it comes to using headphones vs speakers or studio monitors.

1. When bleed from speakers or monitors is undesirable, we use headphones. For just about anything else, I stick with studio monitors.

2. When the volume of the instrument is louder than my speakers / studio monitors, I use headphones.

That's it! That's the rules. Done!

On plus for headphones occurs in those times when an electric guitar player should be next to his amp, and not playing through the mic'd sound in the studio monitors. Sometimes, the natural sound of the amp needs to be vibrating the guitar. In this case, headphones are a must.

I personally hate headphones. Yes, isolation is sometimes necessary for a million reasons. However, I find that making a musician comfortable with headphones on is a pain in the ass. Getting a great mix in a pair of headphones can be difficult. Some singers think that headphones sound weird, especially when they are used to using floor wedges for their monitoring.

I find that headphones are just unnatural by design. I don't know of many guitar players that are used to hearing themselves through headphones. When you do, it's kind of weird. I'm used to hearing my amp in the room and hearing the drums in another part of the room.

Headphones Loose Localization

Headphones have a way of dumbing your sense of hearing down. The brain can localize. In other words, based off of reflections and such, the brain can figure out where something is. Imagine a person screaming in your ear. Now imagine that person screaming in a school gym 50 feet away from you. You can picture the distance in your head based on the tone.

Well, this isn't that important for tracking, but we can use this localization to hear ourselves better. It works the same way that mixing in stereo does. You can make lots of room in the center of a mix by hard panning certain instruments.

It's tough to get this same feeling out of headphones, sometimes.

Conclusion

Headphones are great in any situation where the bleed from an instrument can be considered a bad thing. If you automatically consider bleed to be a bad thing 100% of the time, you are mistaken. Instruments bleeding into other tracks is one of the best ways of creating a natural ambiance in recordings. With few exceptions, I don't care if little bit of the already recorded tracks get into the vocal mic, for example.

Just about anytime that I don't care about bleed, I use the studio monitors. Singers sometimes love this method. Sometimes, it's the best route. The fidelity does not go down just because you monitor with speakers instead of headphones. It just means that there is more stuff in the mic than the vocal. This can be really good or really bad depending on what stuff is getting into the mic.