From monitoring during recording to being able to work without disturbing others, headphones have many roles in the world of audio. When it comes to audio mastering though, things change a bit. If you’ve ever wondered if you can effectively master on headphones, whether you should be using them for specific parts of the mastering process, or if there are certain makes or models that are better suited than others, then this one’s for you. Five mastering engineers at the pinnacle of the craft generously agreed to chat with me and lend me their views on how and when (or when not) to use headphones for mastering.
In this piece you’ll learn:
Whether or not five industry experts regularly reach for their headphones when mastering
Which tasks they feel headphones are particularly well-suited to
Which makes and models they prefer
Let’s dive in and see what they have to say!
Continue reading on iZotope Learn.
When it recently came time for me to choose a new music streaming service, I decided to go full nerd and compiled a spreadsheet that scores each service on twenty-five criteria. Then I added user-adjustable weighting for each criterion so that the overall scores reflect what’s important – or not – for different people. Of course, no spreadsheet is complete without charts to help visualize everything. My wife knew it was bad when she got home from work and I was excitedly ranting about a spreadsheet.
But here’s the good news: now that it’s done you can use it to help choose the music streaming service that’s best for you, and if you’re just curious about my take and how I got there I’ll share that too.