Monitors vs headphones in bad acoustics

I think it is all about knowing your hardware. You can do prefect mixing and mastering on literally whatsoever if you know your headphones of monitors or regular speakers PERFECTLY…Soooo if you work hard, and analyze your sound on for example: Hi-fi, car sound sys, iPod…etc you will learn from mistakes and you will become quite good in knowing your shitty speaker or headphones. It will certainly take more time than just doing it in perfectly threated room, but you will also learn quite some things.

Hope that helps
El

You can not make a good mix on headphones as a general rule. It’s easier to play a track you know well and determine how far off the sound in that particular room is. Trust your ears, if it is really a bad room, try finding another spot or take some basic measures to improve things.

Greetinx,
C.

And yeah one of the most important things imho, if you can have your “production desk” with your monitors in the centre of the room. I dont mean in the actual centre but it should be in the centre of the wall so your left and right sides of the room should be mirrored. If you can do that it will help you alot. If. You cant afford that just dont place it in the corner. Even if you have your room set in a wrong way right now, take your time and change it in most perfect and suitable way you can. Also if you dont need them remove all hanging pictures away from the places on walls where first reflection is happening, put your bed to the wall right opposite to the wall where you have your desk, because it will work as an absorber(or sofa or something). You can get yourself carpets or wall carpets. Try to have as low amount as possible of flat reflective and not massive object in your room.

You can also (for the cheap guys of us) assemble a speaker stand from an ikea wallboard cut in 2 and monted on adjustable height kitchen feet (also from Ikea) for about 10 bucks. Place a sound decoupling foam beneath them so those stands do not dance on your production table (another 10 bucks) and you are set.

You experiment. Mix and master a track, and then try it out on different system, than compare, if you heard to much bass then eq low a bit, and so on. The point is to know your room and speakers. And you will only achieve that with month, after month after month, even years of listening to your mixes and than comparing them. I am doing the same thing right now and it is a bit frustrating.