Ear Buds

[wado1942]

You can't go wrong with stock iPod ear-buds, because almost everybody has them. Don't overlook the $25 Skullcandy jobs either, which are quite common and unlike the iPod buds, actually have some bottom end... quite a bit actually.

[ZED Sounds]

Checking mixes in low quality headphones is a great Idea, however don't forget that they only show a very small percent of the sounds in your mix.

Your priority should be making the mix sound great on a big system and THEN make it sound good in low quality listening environments, not the other way around

ZED.

[polybonk]

I would suggest that if you have a great reference sound system, then you would check in low quality earbuds only for things that sound bad, not to try and make music sound better in them.

IMHO unless you spend the time listening to a bunch of great reference tracks in them and get used to them, I don't see how the information coming out of them is going to be particularly useful.

[daveybasso]

ok...good advice then =) thank you all who replied. i had just been hearing some people starting to insinuate that since 90% of everyone listens to music now in earbuds/ headphones that i need to be doing some kind of special mixing/mastering in those but now i see thats not true

so thanks again =)

[SASMastering]

I purchased what was a typical set of ear buds, they are now in the bin, that was how useful they are in mastering IMO.
The DT-770, soon to be DT-880 (or my trusty AKG K-240) is what I use when it comes to 'on ear' listening.

This is why mastering engineers use reference grade monitoring, something which transverses mean reproduction. Thus more likely to work on the 1,000 variants of ear buds end users are using. (or any speaker for that matter).