budget solution: active monitors. which are better?

[Measax]

A little sidenote about headphones.
Headphones are definitively not good for doing mixes, since you perceive the audio in a different way because the sound pressure has a short way to your hears. Some people do but it’s not so good. Stereo imaging will be affected too.

Another factor agains headphone, I think the most important but most disregarded, is the hearing damages that headphones can cause because source the sound pressure, unlike with loudspeakers, is very near to the hearing organs.
It’s widely known that long exposure to loud sounds damages the hearing. With headphones this goes quicker! Maybe not everyone knows why, that’s it:
At the end of our ear canal there is the eardrum, and after the eardrum there is this spiral organ called cochlea. In the cochlea are the haircells, which are hair-like cells which vibrates when exposed to a sound pressure.(at the beginning of the cochlea there are the cells for high freqs and at the end the haircells for the lo freqs). Too much vibrations cause an hardening of such cells which at the beginning need more pressure (loudness) to vibrate and after a while they stop functioning, and you are no longer able to hear given frequency. If the cell no longer vibrates it can’t trasmit information to the hearing nerve which then carries the signals in our processing areas of the brain. This is also why the hearing loss first happen in high freq. domanin, lo-pass filter like. Loud bass will cause vibration of hi-freq cells too, so it’s a myth that loud bass will degrade your hearing in low freq domain and vice versa.
I’m working in a company which makes hearing aids, so I have learned quite a few about human hearing and related damages, and I tell you it’s not funny to need hearing aids, and you can’t immagine how difficult becomes social life if you have impaired hearing, immagine yourself asking every third word „could you please repeat?“
Studies have shown that hearing impaired tend to isolate themselves because of the difficutly they have in understanding the world.
So, dudes, take care of your hearing because once is gone is gone, no miracles will make haircells grow again, despite some internet sites advertising some laser pointer-like devices or voodoo trickery there is nothing which can fix a dead haircell. NOTHING.
Get yourself used to make music in studio at low level, wear ear protection at the parties, do not every day to mp3 player of such devices, if not you’ll regret it soon or later.
As a rule, more than 4 hours at 80 db SPL (Sound Pressure Level) really fatigue your ear and in order to prevent damages your ear need a week of rest. Rest = nothing louder than 60 dB for one week. 60 dB is the loudness of a normal conversation.
To really rest during your sleep you shouldn’t be exposed to background noise higher that 50 dB, if not part of our brain remain 100% active to process the signals.

this may be true if you blast your headphones. But I don't. Ultrasones are built to give your ears space also so the speaker is pressed on your ear...they have a nice room feeling. Its decibales that kill ears. So it depends on the headphones....but I agree that you can do a mix in headphones...Just some of the creative aspect, making some beats....etc. Thats why its nice to have both good headphones and monitors...

[Measax]

mmh, I see the point of this engineer.
But I trust more people who study human hearing since lot of years more than an engineer when it comes to what damages more the ears.

Fact is that with good monitors you don't need much loundess to get good sound. And with good headphone is the same.

Well...here is a fact for that also...The lower the volume the more midtone you will hear...as you raise volume...mids drop back in the mix and highs and low end push out....so volume does matter to a degree.

[oe]

I wonder if there is some information available on SPL for good headphones.
I mean a SPL wich would allow a person to hear everything in detail and still inflict minimum harm to ears.
But that is worth a separate topic.
Okay, that was a really interesting sidenote anyway, thanks!

So, lets get back to my last question:
is it possible to hack ($-wise) a problem of quality monitoring with goood headphones and not so good speakers?

[sorgenkind]

[quote="Measax]Well...here is a fact for that also...The lower the volume the more midtone you will hear...as you raise volume...mids drop back in the mix and highs and low end push out....so volume does matter to a degree.[/quote]

sure since the shape of our ear canal produces a resonance exactly between 2 and 6 kHz (roughly).
Starting from 60 dB our brain compensates this natural resonance.
In fact our ears are not very linear, we have a bit of enhancement in the hi-mid range.