be very careful about spending loads of cash on near-field monitors or high-end microphones or extensive sound treatments in your room. I am no expert but I have produced some nice recordings using a decent pair of headphones and LOTS of running around testing on other sound systems like my car, my stereo, my local audio store, etc.

one problem with expensive gear is the law of diminishing returns kicks in very quickly. is a $10,000 Neumann mic really 100 times better than a $100 Shure? Nope. Probably not even twice as good. So you can easily end up spending a ton for very minor improvements in your gear.

and anyway, even if you buy the best pair of near-fields out there, you still have to test/listen on a variety of other systems cause people listening to your music almost certainly will not have the monitors you have and every pair sounds a little different.

with that all said, I am probably gonna buy a pair of KRK Rokit RP5 monitors for under $300 very soon. decent monitors and they won't break the bank!

oh, and if you are gonna stick with headphones for mixing, I recommend VRM box (http://us.focusrite.com/usb-audio-interfaces/vrm-box). it does a decent job of emulating various monitors through your headphones as well as trying to compensate for the stereo isolation in headphones that you do not experience in monitors. I have found this to be a useful addition to my bag of tricks for around $100.

Last edited by JohnJohnJohn; 11/15/13 12:34 PM.