Pt.8 - Studio Monitors or Headphones? Audio Monitoring for Beginners

• 8.1 Headphones vs. Studio Monitors
  
  

We’ll start this lesson off with “it depends”. A lovely way to answer a question right? The reason I say this is because it really does depend on what exactly you’re trying to accomplish. At the bare minimum, there are 3 different ways to listen to or “monitor” your audio.

1. Closed-back headphones
   
   
2. Open-back headphones
   
   
3. Studio monitors (speakers)

Each is used for a different reason. Though, you can get away with just closed back headphones for all purposes. We’ll get into why to use each and what the pros and cons are of each.

• Open-back vs Closed-back headphones.

Let's address the difference between open-back & closed-back headphones. While it may seem obvious to some, I was unaware of open-back headphones for a long time. When we think of headphones 9 out of 10 times we’re imagining closed-back headphones. A solid outer shell with a logo of some sort on them.

Open-back headphones are exactly that, they have an open-back, exposing the speaking within the headphone. This allows both sound and air to travel freely outside of the headphones to provide a more natural sound by incorporating the ambience of the room around.

 

These two distinctions are crucial to understand.

When recording audio, you want to use closed-back headphones! Otherwise if you use open-back headphones, your audio will bleed into the microphone. This is a no-no. Open-back headphones are designed for mixing, not recording. 

Closed-back headphones isolate the audio to just your ears. Open-back headphones do not!

Imagine you were sitting on a bus, plane, or in a cafe. Somewhere public. Normally you put on your headphones so you can listen to whatever music, podcast, or youtube video you want to while 1, not disturbing anyone else, and 2, with the confidence that no one around you can hear what you are listening to. This is a result of closed-back headphones. 

Now imagine the same situation, but this time you’re wearing open-back headphones. The whole cafe will be able to hear what you’re listening to. Whoever is sitting next to you on the bus or plane will be able to hear every word of the podcast you’re listening to. This is a direct result of open-back headphones.

Now you might be wondering “why on earth would they make open-back headphones?” The answer is space. They allow the outside world to get in, as though you weren't wearing headphones at all. This makes everything sound more natural and “open”.

Open-back headphones are designed for mixing. Closed-back headphones are designed for recording and isolation.

When recording audio, we only want to capture the thing we are trying to record and nothing else. Otherwise our recording becomes tainted by other sounds, making it either harder to work with or entirely un-usable.

Here’s another scene for you to imagen. You’re in a recording booth that's sound proofed and acoustically treated to isolate your voice as best as possible. You put on your closed-back headphones and the engineer hits the record button. The music starts playing in your headphones and you start to sing. Because you were wearing closed-back headphones. The music stayed isolated inside your headphones while the microphone picked up only your voice.

Imagen the same scene but this time you put on open-back headphones. The engineer hits record and all of a sudden the music is playing and you can hear it double up and start to loop, creating feedback because the microphone picks up the music and then plays it back in your headphones and then back into the mic and through the headphones again and again until the engineer finally turns it off. This is because the open-back headphones don’t isolate the audio.

When you’re recording it's vital that you use closed-back headphones. 

When you’re mixing you can use either or! Some people prefer closed-back all the time. Maybe you’re in an apartment and you have loud neighbors. Closed -back headphones will not only keep your audio isolated to your ears, they will also keep the outside world from getting in. Creating a “sound proof” environment.

Open-back headphones create a more ‘open’ feel. Allowing the sound to ‘breathe’. Some people prefer these due to that fact. They tend to sound more natural as though you weren’t wearing headphones at all, allowing you to hear your audio as well as the environment around you which can be a more accurate representation of the sound in the real world.

• When to use headphones versus studio monitors.
  
  

Which to use, Monitors or headphones? This is an age-old question that really boils down to preference and familiarity. 

First and foremost, if you have monitors, you’ll want a pair of headphones. After all, you don't want to record with your speakers on for the same reason you wouldn't want to wear open-back headphones in a recording booth. Monitors are great for mixing and mastering and listening to music in an open environment. Sitting between 2 speakers is one of my favorite places to be and a lot of people have never actually sat in a true stereo field.

Having studio monitors prevents you from having to wear headphones for extended periods of time, which can end up giving you a headache or causing your ears to get tired faster than they normally would. Wearing headphones for 8 hours isn’t fun but sometimes, it’s the only thing we have! Studio monitors can be a great asset because they allow multiple people to listen at the same time. While a single pair of headphones might get tossed back and forth between 2 people.

If you aren't recording audio and you’re only mixing and mastering then a pair of good monitors will be all you need. But if you plan on recording anything, you’ll definitely want some closed-back headphones. It’s important that you turn the monitors down or off whenever you’re recording because we don't want to create feedback or bleed unwanted noise into our recording. So again, even if you have a pair of monitors, you’ll still want a pair of closed-back headphones in order to record.

• 8.2 Understanding Stereo and Mono
  
  
• Explaining the concept of stereo and mono.

Let's get one thing straight. We as humans have 2 ears. A Left ear and a Right ear. Without getting into physics just yet, each ear can hear the same sound differently. This is how we as humans are able to detect direction. Simply because a sound that came from our left side hit our left ear milliseconds before our right ear.

Headphones have 2 speakers, a left speaker and a right speaker. Studio monitors (though sold individually) are normally paired with a left speaker and a right speaker.

Stereo means left and right act independently of each other. Giving us the ability to sense direction of sound e,g. “That sound came from the left speaker or, this sound is coming from the right speaker.

Mono means one. In other words, if we only had one speaker, there would only be one source of sound. We lose the ability to hear direction because its all coming from one place. 

This being said, if you have the question of “can i use one monitor?” while the answer is a very-very-very hesitant yes. It is very un-recommended. Simply put, music is in stereo, and further into this course we’ll get into how, why, and when to use stereo vs mono. For now, It’s most important to understand that we need a speaker for each ear.