Headphones Aren't Stereo

 

I use headphones all the time now. Rarely use speakers. 

My tiny music studio isn't acoustically treated as it is just too small. The same size as the walk in closet next to it. I mostly mix on headphones working their too, using SPAN set to mastering, and check on speakers a little. I almost don't drive now, so don't have a car I know well to check a mix in either.

I use headphones to listen to music all the time. Have a small stereo, with some Yamaha tower speakers, but it just makes too big a sound for general listening. So headphones it is. AKG-702 in the studio, and JBL earbuds or SHOKZ OpenFit out and about.

So am very aware that headphones aren't stereo. I also have a long time interest in binaural sound and how that sounds so much more interesting that standard stereo on headphones. Have a few VSTs to use headphones for monitoring in the studio. JB ISONE PRO and dearVR MIX among them.  

The piece of music here is just something I came up with after doing some refinement to the NUT slots on my 7 string Ibanez guitar. A sticky nut makes tuning really tedious, and this was done during the, is it easier to tune now? testing.  

Then did the binaural mix, and came back and did the crosstalk version to make this demo on headphones. There is also a SHORT version on YouTube.

This is related to the topic of hifi being dead now, as far as the mass market is concerned.  From sales figures you would have to say earbuds are the predominant listening device now.  It is what I use all the time. I know my kids don't have any kind of stereo now, unless a game system plugged into a TV with stereo speakers in it.

The supermarket and cafes have wall and ceiling mounted speakers, and that is probably the main place to hear music over speakers outside the car.

Until retiring,  the daily car commute  was the main place I heard music. Being stuck in traffic for about an hour morning and evening was a lot of hours.  Now I don't have any commute and rarely drive. The longest I drive now wouldn't be more than 15minutes, and more often all of 5 minutes. It isn't long enough bother to cue up music to play.

Such a change from when I started in the 1970s. But I have changed a lot too.

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