283: The Only Gear That Actually Matters (Monitoring Explained)

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Episode show notes:

We can’t believe we haven’t done an episode on this yet! Monitoring is by far the most important gear-related topic in music production. In fact, it’s really the only piece of gear that truly matters.

Why? Because everything you do goes through that filter - your speakers, headphones, and room. Every single decision you make depends on it. 

In this episode, we’ll break down the essentials of monitoring. Not in theory, not repeating what we’ve read online, but from our actual experience: 

Mixing thousands of songs professionally, working in countless studios, learning from Grammy winners, acousticians, and top-tier engineers, and building our own optimized setups over the last 15+ years.

This isn’t the “end all, be all.” But it is the most helpful, practical way we know to explain what really matters when it comes to monitoring. 

Think of it as a checklist: By the end of this episode, you’ll know exactly what you might be missing in your setup, and what’s worth investing in first.

We’ll cover:

• Choosing the right monitoring gear
• Headphones (open vs closed, what to look for, recommendations)
• When and how to add speakers
• Room treatment (and what to prioritize: bass traps, early reflections, and The truth about foam and egg crates)
• Speaker placement
• Big vs small speakers
• Audio interfaces, headphone amps and converters
• Learning your system vs having the “perfect” system
• Mixing on speakers vs. headphones.

This one’s packed. If you want us to dive deeper into any specific sub-topic (headphones, room treatment, speaker placement, etc.), let us know and we’ll make a dedicated episode.

👉 Also: check out our conversation with Jesco Lohan on this show, and his work online, for next-level acoustics insights.

🎧 Listen now and finally get clarity on the only gear that truly matters: your monitoring setup.

 

For links to everything we've mentioned in this episode, key takeaways, as well as full show notes go to: theselfrecordingband.com/283

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