06/04/2026
Let's talk monitoring!
Redoing this post since it seems a handful of our recent posts did not show the text we wrote (?)
There are probably hundreds of ways to go about monitoring, but generally we boil it down to two.
The first ideology is the original old-school plan where the engineer controls the entirety of the mix in the headphones. With this control, the engineer can give exactly what they believe the artists need to perform their best, and can influence the performance. For example, a singer who hears themselves a little less in the mix is likely to sing out a little more, benefiting the performance.
We have an amazing system by Arcane Audio that has served this studio for many years now, that allows for this kind of interaction between engineer and artist. This is how our vintage studio, Studio C (aka Frisson) operates.
The second way of thinking is giving full control of the headphone mix to the artists. This allows them to judge what they need for themselves, and adjust accordingly. It also allows for each artist to have their own mix, that can then adjust at any time without bothering anyone else! This tends to be significantly more flexible, and much faster to set up. For shorter sessions, this can make for a dramatically shorter setup and get rolling sooner.
We have had a Hear Technologies system set up for a number of years now, and it is the primary way that Studio B handles monitoring.
Two different mentalities, each with their own advantages and drawbacks, and we use both at our studio!
