Dear Ear Masters,

I've begun producing electronic music and, over the last four months of
reading about mixing/mastering, monitors, etc., have found that I am
not subject to many of the woes that rockers, jazzers, etc. and others
recording "from out there" are subject to. In otherwords, most of my
work can be done in headphones with great success as I've found using
my current ~$100 Grados and then comparing against Event 20/20's in a
sound conditioned room. In case the question has entered your mind,
"Why don't you just do your work in the studio?", the answer is simply
that it isn't generally convenient and I will not have it at my
disposal for much longer.

I noticed that my levels were pretty close to what I expect excepting,
of course, the bass. That is not a concern as I'm learning how to
compensate for this in situ. A few things were curious to me, however:

1) The individual musical components were more distinct with the
monitors, and
2) The stereo seperation was much more robust with the monitors (which
actually blew my mind. My intuition screamed that headphones are as
_stereo_ as you can get).

What explanations exist for the above? And, would better headphones
help to alleviate some of the difference I am noticing?

Thanks,

-Christopher

The stereo seperation was much more robust with the monitors
(which actually blew my mind. My intuition screamed that headphones
are as _stereo_ as you can get).

Your ears will place sounds in a given point in space not only based on
amplitude but also depending on delay/difference in phase as well as
tonal content (absorption of certain frequencies by your head).

When listening to a set of monitors, the sound of the left monitor will
arrive at the left ear a bit before it arrives at the right ear, and
will contain slightly less high frequencies, thus adding positional
(mis)information that would not exist with headphones. This results in
a stereo image that seemingly has more 'depth' than headphones.

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The stereo seperation was much more robust with the
monitors (which actually blew my mind. My intuition
screamed that headphones are as _stereo_ as you can get).

Your ears will place sounds in a given point in space not
only based on amplitude but also depending on
delay/difference in phase as well as tonal content
(absorption of certain frequencies by your head).

Subject to the caveat that the ears really don't have any
way to sense timing changes above the midrange.

Instead, timing differences create tonality changes at the
ear, and the ear can be quite sensitive to those changes.

When listening to a set of monitors, the sound of the
left monitor will arrive at the left ear a bit before it
arrives at the right ear, and will contain slightly less
high frequencies, thus adding positional (mis)information
that would not exist with headphones.

Even though a room may be sonically treated, unless it is a
true anechoic chamber, there can still be reflections. Those
reflections can interact with the head effects mentioned
above, to create other tonality changes at the ear.

This results in a
stereo image that seemingly has more 'depth' than
headphones.

The room or objects in the room might create some artificial
phasiness that the ear might interpret as spatiality.

To answer the headphone question (the others did great with the first
part) - I use two types of headphones. I have a liking for AKG 240's
for when there is no open mic needed and Sony MDR 7506 for when I am
tracking with a mic. The reason for the change is that the AKG's let
sound out in a big way and the sony's don't blead much at all. The
AKG's I think are a better sounding headphone so I use both.

I think there are lots of headphones to pick from but mine are most
likely the choice of old guys like me because they the headphones have
been around a long time like us :-)