I'm sure you've had this happen at some point:

It's getting late, you've got a good session going in your DAW, mixing your latest record or working on a production.

You don't want to bother the people around you so you switch to headphones.

Nice and cranked up. Everything is sounding awesome.

Flow states ftw.

It's just you and the music.

The next morning you eagerly put up the song on your speakers. #excited

Aaaand it's a total disaster.

The levels are WAY off.

Like to-the-arctic-and-back off.

How can that be!??!?

You check the headphones again.

It's sounding OK. Not quite how you remember it, but surely not THAT bad.

Are your headphones really missing the mark that much? Does this mean you simply CANNOT trust your headphones for balancing a mix?

Well.. In my experience that's a solid yes and no.

There's definitely a learning curve to mixing on headphones

It has a lot to do with just how much the tonality, aka frequency frequency response, can vary not just between different headphones, but even different sessions!

But there's one very basic thing you can do every time you put on your headphones to make that a whole lot more consistent.

That's what I want to share with you today.