alright so i dont have decent monitors and have shitty computer speakers and the only decent thing i have to listening with is headphones.

i use a sony v6, good cans but not too much on the low end and the treble can sometimes be piercing.

i have a koss portapro which is excellent and listening to music with these feels like you listening to the band in front of you. you can clearly distinguish the individual panning of each recorded instrument.

and i have a sony earbud type.

i cycle between these but most the time im on the portapros cause i can have em on all day and not hurt my ears.

onto my question...is there any way to just do the final mastering process without using a monitors? any tips?

I master with headphones. its wrong but i have a cube room(worst possible acoustic dimentions) so monitors are just for getting it going then headphones for detail. Make sure you listen on every single stereo you have access to after and make the proper adjustments. there are also monitors designed for acoustic;y challenged rooms. oh ya never cheap out on cans save up 250-350 and do some research and cop something good. Ear buds are a no go!!!!

If you make money from your music then the best way is to pay and go to a pro studio...this is the only way for true mastering...
Also the past few years there is the option of "e-master"(by internet)
In your home studio it's pointless speaking about mastering...You have to tweak the acoustic of your room first and have a pro gear,especially for monitors....lot of money and useless(for me!)....
So with nice headphones and a decent hifi(not a 5.1 computer shit) you can tune your track and at least avoid common mistakes such us boomy&too loud bass or overcompression....But you must listen it to as many sources you can...

Mixing on headphones is a great plan for someone with an untreated room and most pro's recommend this for beginners from a few of the books on mastering that I have. With whatever playback system you have, if you learn it inside and out, A/Bing pro mixes that you like as you go, seeing how it tranlates to other systems once you're done, etc, you can get a mix that translates well and sounds good.
I agree that mastering should be done by a pro, but that doesn't mean you can't practice getting better at it, because maybe someday you won't need/want a pro anymore. The important thing is to clearly seperate the mixing stage from the mastering stage, which is hard to do if you master your own stuff.

switch between speakers and headphones, keep your recording levels cool and then bring everything up after for the most dynamic sound, im working with someone now who records ultra cool to, as aposed to how i sample and record usually ultra hot,

100%quote guys



another good point here; i personally understood that after 1 year and half of mixing my stuff...



that's cool too.

i own audiotechnica fs40 monitor headphones, not the best (but flatty however) and fostex pm04 monitors; they're very little, i make music in a very shitty place (a low and humid basement, see my youtube videos) so i tought not to buy something bigger and very exspensive.

good stuff. what im wondering is if a headphone has a frequency range of 5hz to 30hz (my sony v6 for example) then surely that would mean that if it sounds good using these headphones then it must also sound good when the music is played on any other headphones, speakers, whatever you have to listening with. Since it has a wide frequency range then it should be a good reference to what others may be hearing also.....??

More important than the frequency range is whether or not the headphones have a flat response. If you can create a solid flat mix then it will translate well to other speaker systems and it can be more difficult to do this if your headphones have a hi-fi frequency curve (boosted bass and treble). You can really technically mix on anything though if you take the time to really learn what a good mix sounds like on your headphones.

flat response! that was the word im looking for. i guess that would be the next thing ill be looking for the next time i buy a headphone or maybe not headphone, but some monitors. thanks everyone for the input.

oh and since we're on the topic of headphones, i read somewhere that some headphones have whats called a break-in or burn-in period. with my headphones sony v6 it's around 100 hours or so. so i tried it out having my cd player on repeat playing noises. after that whole ordeal my headphones actually does sound a lil better. the treble wasn't as piercing as before and the mids aren't damp and i only did it for less than 20 hours of continuous noise.

The most important tip given in here which no one followed up on is using a reference mix, as Chess said in his first post.

Sound is gonna behave a certain way in your space, you cannot control that, so you have to figure out how properly mastered sound behaves -- this also applies to headphone mixing...what you are hearing isn't really ever gonna be a flat response in headphones b/c of the physics, it can be flattish but it's a cup around your ear...so you def need to check references

also people using monitors in a bad space, I really urge you to drop a couple hundred bucks and cop some sound treatment material, some bass traps and hi/mid panels...this won't make your space sound perfect like a studio but it will help you get rid of major reflections and help you mix more effectively

this is my case man.
until now it's ok, i use very little monitor in a little space; but often i relisten what done on other systems (this is important too).
for what concerns sonic tratments on the place where i do the things, it's not that easy i think, i have to call someone which do this as his own job...
the only thing i done is to collect egg boxes , but i still didn't put them on the walls...

I saw your space...it's pretty awful, I wouldn't even try to treat that space, but if you have a reasonable room it's an option. lol

I think if you can recognize how your headphones are lying to you, you can compensate accordingly. One good advice I read was to master at a low volume. At high volumes, you are getting lied to.

Cool topic.

I think what is being discussed is not mastering, but mixing-down.

With that said, this article from a few years ago in SOS says it all:

"Mixing On Headphones" by Martin Walker
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan07/a ... phones.htm

They go deep. You might want to print it out to re-read a few times.

good thing is headphones pick up reverb more if you used too much on your monitors but couldn't hear it. bad thing is they don't paint an accurate stereo field. monitors are supposed to sound like you're at a concert hearing the individual instruments as they are placed across the stage. not a big deal for hip-hop.

i'd say don't use all flat response gear. mixes are likely to be too bass heavy. rather, switch between flat phones/monitors (pro grade) and colored ones (hi-fi, consumer grade)