Headphones/Speakers: Things You Need For A Home Studio

So you’ve got your audio interface, audio software, and room squared away, what’s next? Well, it might help if you could actually hear what you’re doing on your computer! The next thing you need to build out your home studio is a pair of headphones or speakers.

Photo by Alphacolor on Unsplash

Headphones Or Speakers: The Decision

If you’re just starting out and don’t have anything, including headphones, I highly recommend you start with one pair of headphones.

In fact, even if you have a pair already, I suggest you get a second if you plan on recording somebody else.

There’s one huge benefit to having headphones as opposed to speakers: the microphones can’t pick up the sound coming out of them. With speakers, also known as monitors, not only would you have to battle bleed from the speakers into the mics because you’re in the same room, but you also have to battle feedback like what happens in live sound.

Feedback occurs when sound is being picked up from a microphone, goes out the speaker, the microphone picks it up again, and the cycle continues. Eventually it builds up and can be super loud and also potentially damage your equipment or ears.

With headphones, you can record whatever you want, even the quietest instruments or voices, without needing to worry about bleed. If you want ONLY the acoustic guitar on this track, playing the rest of the song through speakers for the musician wouldn't be possible and would allow the microphone to pick up everything else in the song that has already been recorded.

Even if the volume isn't terribly high, it can cause your song to sound weird because the microphone is picking up the sound at a slightly different time, causing what’s called phase issues. It’s just not a battle you want to fight.

I’d say once you have one or two pairs of headphones depending on if you’re recording someone else or not, go for some speakers! They can help you get a more accurate representation of the sound inside your computer.

Monitors (Speakers)

Monitors are pretty dependent on your room. Since sound can bounce across the room, reflect off walls and come back to your ear, it can make listening difficult; but also more natural and you can know if the sound will sound good in other places too.

If you have a poorly treated and designed room, headphones may be your better bet for making things sound good. If you need help with designing your room/treating your room, check out the links included from previous articles I’ve written!

Room Treatment

Speaker Placement

Once you get a good sounding room, monitors can help you shape your sound to translate into other environments better than you could with headphones. Headphones make panning exaggerated, making it very easy to pick out things; which may work in or against your favor.

If the sound sounds clear in your headphones, you may not make the decision to clean it up; over enough moves like this, overall you will have a less clear sound than if you had made those moves because you were listening on monitors.

Not only because of the room sound, but since the monitors are more “mono” (seemingly coming from one place as opposed to two, stereo), this also makes it more clear to see what instruments are clashing with others. If one instrument is on the far right and another far left, if you listen on headphones you may think it’s fine as is. But if you listen on monitors, you might be able to tell some of that sound could be cleaned up to make for an even wider stereo image.

Headphones

As mentioned before, headphones are great for recording; but they can also be used for reference after the heavy lifting has been done on monitors.

Since headphones can make it easier to spot things out of place, it’s a great tool to use for checking things out of time, clicks or pops, etc that go unnoticed while listening through monitors.

If your monitors are slightly bright, and your headphones are slightly warm, you can use the difference to your advantage!

Since your monitors are bright it may be easy to spot things out of place in the brighter end of the spectrum. On the contrary, warm/muddy things may be easy to spot on headphones because they will stick out. Using these together, you get the best of both worlds!

One big benefit when building a home studio for cheap though is that headphones are usually much less expensive than monitors. Some of the most common headphones are priced around $100, and monitors of the same caliber are often in the $300-$400 range.

Which Will You Choose?

I think the biggest deciding factors are: what do you currently have, and what’s your budget?

If you want to be mobile, record with a microphone, not annoy roommates, headphones are the way to go. If you need to record someone else, you should get a second pair as well; one for them, and one for you so you can listen to their performance in context of the song.

If you have those things checked off, go for some monitors! You can get some good sounding ones for a good price; I personally love the Kali Audio LP8’s for the bang for their buck. They’re big, but offer a great sound with switches you can use to shape the sound to counteract where you placed them in a room.nThis isn’t sponsored by them, but wouldn’t mind if they wanted too!! (Hey Kali Audio! 😂)

All in all, you’ll get used to the sound of your speakers/headphones anyway, so it really doesn’t matter all that much to how they sound. Hell, the mixer for Kings Of Leon, Jacquire King mixes their stuff on KRK Rokit 5 Monitors! ($150 monitors).

All this to say you really don’t need really expensive stuff to get a great sound; all you need is some equipment that gets the job done and that’s it. The difference is the person behind the equipment, so learn all you can and you can get some killer sounding stuff coming out of your speakers!

Catch ya on the next one!

-Michael