Monitor: Speakers or Headphones?

[Evan Cosman]

Hey guys, so my monitoring headphones broke a couple days ago, and that’s my main way of practicing guitar by playing through an amp sim, but now im not quite sure what I want, I don’t know if I want to get headphones again or speaker monitors, I feel like its a lot more fun to play guitar and have it actually coming out of speakers instead of just headphones, it just adds more energy, but then again I also use them for listening to music and I like to blast my music haha
Thank you, hope you guys have a great holiday season!

 

[Joey C]

Hey bro,
To be completely honest. I would say go with a set of nice speakers. It will be a lot better. Plus I don’t know if you have already been doing it, but if you eventually get into recording, it will be a lot a better. You will just hear things a little bit different and in the end, sound a lot better. Plus, I get annoyed with headphones, I sweat like crazy with them on for long periods of time. I recommend the KRK Rockit 5 or the Mackie CR3. The KRK’s are pretty popular, great sound range. I’ve had a pair and I really enjoyed them. They aren’t crazy expensive. And the Mackies are cheapier but still have pretty good sounds. And of course you can always go bigger and better…If you’re budget allows it but for these prices, you really get a bang for your buck. I know there are probably more knowledgeable people on here than me but this is just my 2 cents on it.
Shred on man!!
KRK Rockit – https://www.amazon.com/KRK-RP5G3-NA-Generation-Powered-Monitor/dp/B00FX7MMRO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&redirect=true&ref_=as_li_tl&linkCode=sl1&tag=studiomonitorss-20&linkId=836b43230885afb0f4dc1bd0aac505a7
Mackie CR3 – https://www.amazon.com/Mackie-Studio-Monitor-3-inch-CR3/dp/B00KVEIY4E/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1545318314&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=mackie+cr3&psc=1

 

[Filip Tomiša]

Yeah I agree with Joey, I would go with speakers as well. But you have to keep in mind the size of your room, if you have a very small room and you buy large speakers your room will be drowned in bass and you won’t hear anything clearly. And like he said you will eventually want to record something or mix and speakers will do a much better job than headphones. Krk are great speakers but they color your sound so you won’t hear exactly the same thing you are playing or recorded but you will hear a colored sound and it will sound better. So krk speakers are great for listening while yamaha hs are great for mixing and recoeding and you get a very flat sound, what comes in goes out exactly the same. So i would recommend you yamaha hs5 if you have a decent sized room and if you have a big room that is acoustacly treated i would go with yamaha hs8 cause they have more sub. A lot of studios use those speakers. So if you want speakers that color your sound and make everything sound better get krk (keep in mind that not everyone has those speakers and they will hear the sound differently) and if you want ato hear the thing that you recorded exactly the way it is get yamaha.

 

[Jak Angelescu]

Oh gosh I must be the odd one out. I notice everyone seems to be answering from a sound engineer’s perspective. And while I agree 100000% with them, I like having the option of both. I usually have headphones for when I need to really hear if i’m on time or if i’m learning something. It also seems to compress my noise and I can really hear if i’m sounding terrible. With headphones, it really helps me hear if i’m lagging behind the metronome and helps me hone in on difficult-to-hear parts.
But yes, they are extremely annoying to deal with. I’m investing in a different pair of bluetooth phones to get rid of the cord problem.

 

[Ben Thorpe]

I’m going to post here because I can’t on the forums. There seems to be a bug where whenever I go to the community forums, it logs me out for some reason. Anyone else getting this? Sorry it’s not related to the topic, but I can’t post any topics with this bug.

 

[Jak Angelescu]

Is this a recent problem? I saw your post about amps from yesterday

 

[Ben Thorpe]

Actually, it works now. Just tried it. False alarm!

 

[Evan Cosman]

Thanks so much for the help! I don’t really do too much recording and mixing at the moment and mostly use it for listening, I think I’m gonna go with the KRK rockit 5s. Even though the KRK alter the sound that you hear, would it still be decent for mixing?

 

[Filip Tomiša]

yeah they should work just fine but when you will play your mixes on different speakers you will find them a bit different cause you will get used to that color that it gives.

 

[Filip Tomiša]

oh and btw, keep in mind that when you are buying those speakers that it will probably show you the price of only ONE speaker and not two.

 

[Evan Cosman]

Ah okay thanks for the tip I guess I got some saving up to do then haha