These include bringing out the smaller details that can sometimes be masked by speakers like distortion, clicks, pops and hiss. First off, I would like to highlight that there are a lot of positive aspects to at least checking your mix over a pair of headphones on a regular basis. There is nothing worse, from a mixer’s point of view, than spending hours making painstakingly precise creative decisions, only to realise they have been lost when listening to the mix on other systems. The thing is, we are often told this is less than ideal what often isn’t discussed is why. I have been there myself many times, and it usually involves mixing way into the early hours of the morning in a home studio environment with less than understanding house mates or neighbours. It’s a reality of the producer’s life that, for a mixture of reasons and scenarios, many of us end up mixing on headphones at some point.
