Headphone/Monitor dilemma

[mamm7215]

Go with the good headphones, mixes will be crap in a bad room on bad monitors.

[alyricalmind]

When I don't have access to a treated room, I mix on headphones, try the mix on all the major audio devices (car stereos, ipod, boombox, etc) then fix the problems I hear.

[Hoofer]

cool thanks dudes, now for my second question anyone have suggestions for headphones? I'm thinking Audio Technica ATH-M50. About a $200-300 budget.

[heisenberg]

Sennheiser HD600. You can jones around headphone geek forums for a week and come to the same conclusion, if you are talking about best bang for the buck when it comes to a neutral sounding but revealing set of headphones.

For sealed headphones Denon has a pair that are similar to the HD600s but they are a couple of hundred bucks more and the Sennheisers do give a more neutral but musical sound.

[cbc459]

I have lower-end monitors, and I just recently got ATH-M50's. These were my first pair of good headphones, and I found it really helped the quality of my mixing. I can't really trust my monitors or my room right now, which sucks, but by listening to headphones and monitors I can usually make better decisions.

[Idiophonic]

I love my Ultrasone PRO2500s...Frequency response from 18 Hz to 35 kHz...

They are open back and the low-frequencies are so natural, not hyped like a lot of other phones. Listening to bass heavy music on these is amazing because it sounds like a sub in the room, not loud mind you, just clear and natural ultra-low freq. extension.

Because they are open back, you can't mix in a noisy environment, but if you need closed-back phones, the PRO750s are exactly the same but with closed backs.

[donsolo]

I want to point something out:

If you have a crappy room and $300 is a lot of money, you shouldn't be mixing your stuff anyway and hoping for great results.

Mixing in an acoustically imperfect room with cheap monitors is like painting with a blindfold on.

headphones are a step up but you should probably mix in mono, headphones have a really messed up stereo field.

My vote is save $$$ until you can afford a really great set of speakers and proper treatment for your room.

[Hoofer]

in the meantime I'm gonna need to mix though. Thanks for all the input folks