Signal Boost: Six Professionals Share Their Monitoring Chain

The path an audio signal follows may not be visible but it is important. Whether that path is tens of metres long — going through walls, up and down mixing desks, and in and out of patch bays — or short and sweet — with just one device connected to a soundcard — it is crucial to ensure that the playback is the best it can be, whether you're recording, mixing, mastering, or just listening.

In the professional world of mixing and mastering, a monitoring chain is the path that audio takes from a playback device to your ears and can involve software, digital-to-analog converters, hardware processors, amplifiers, monitor controllers, and ultimately speakers or headphones. Like so much in the world of engineering, monitoring and mastering chains are often the result of personal choices and thus nuanced, suited to the tastes and needs of the engineers. For some, keeping it simple is what works, and for others the monitoring chain is an important element with each individual unit and step in the path subject to consideration. 

Budget, functionality, and technical capacity are the typical key factors in how to construct a monitoring chain. While many people will have written, composed, or produced music without giving much thought to how the audio reaches their ears, when it comes to mixing and mastering it can make a big difference in what the music ends up sounding like. Following our recent conversation about how different engineers approach working with headphones, we now take a look at what monitoring chains look and sound like for these professionals. 

Katie Tavini, Mastering Engineer - Liverpool, UK (Arlo Parks, Nadine Shah, John Glacier)

My monitoring chain has evolved over time in some ways, and in other ways not at all. I'm using the same PMC speakers since 2018 and I've gotten to know them really well, and I'm also now using the HEDDphone in conjunction with those.

I previously used a monitor controller fed from my interface, before my monitors, and for a while I was using two sets of speakers, but I quickly found that I didn't really need that many options. I think one set of speakers, and a pair of headphones, that I trust fully is better than two sets of speakers that I don't know quite as well, and as I mastered more things I realized “I'm not changing the volume, so why do I need a volume control?”

I think with mastering, you want to know your room really well, and if you're changing the volume to get new perspectives that's fine, but then the room is going to impact how that sounds. I monitor really quietly because I work on a lot of material, and that's something that I had to teach myself how to do. It's not natural when you're excited about the music — you want to listen to it loud, you want to feel it — but it's not really practical with the amount of music that I work on every day. I had to learn to monitor really quietly and I just felt that with a really simple monitoring chain I can trust that more.

“I had to learn to monitor really quietly and I just felt that with a really simple monitoring chain I can trust that more.” - Katie Tavini

I tried a few different monitor controllers to see what they sounded like, and how they impacted the sound, but actually when I took them away it didn't sound hugely different but it was different enough for me to not want to use one again. I feel like having a really simple monitoring chain suits me so I go out of the converters on a Lynx Hilo 2 interface and straight into my speakers. I use the headphone output on the Lynx as well - it's really, really simple.

TIEKS, Mix Engineer - London, UK (IAMDDB, Jax Jones, Florence & The Machine)

For my monitors, everything is run by a Universal Audio Apollo 16 recording interface, which deals with all my hardware. I then have a Dangerous Music Liaison control which handles general monitor controlling duties and then all my digital audio is handled via a Crane Song HEDD 192 which is an old converter by Crane Song but sounds absolutely amazing, I love it!

That was my general setup, but as I'm in between studios for the last seven months I've switched to just using the HEDDphone ONE going into a headphone amp and fed from my laptop. I've got a couple of UAD boxes to take care of all my huge plugins, and that's kind of it at the moment. Right now I use an RME ADI II Pro FSR as my headphone amplifier. I just think it goes really well with the HEDDphone. Personally I keep everything flat, I don't like to play about with anything but those two teaming up sound incredible and I've mixed about 60 records on that combination. Everything will be done on that and then if I've got to do some basic referencing — when I know a record is about to go to market and I want to hear how it's going to sound on Spotify — I will crack open the Apple Airpod 2s.

I am in the process of building a new studio which will be a bit more like a traditional studio: an Ampex tape machine, a small Solid State Logic desk, and a couple of bits of outboard, nothing crazy. But the HEDDphone will still be playing a big part in that studio. I definitely have those thoughts of “everything is fine”, and not just fine — it's sounding amazing as is! The HEDDphone ONE are brilliant and not only have they saved me in a lot of situations but they've also been very good financially because you're getting high quality at such an affordable price.

Michalis "MsM" Michael, Mix Engineer - London, UK (Skepta, James Blake, A$AP Rocky)

For headphone monitoring my chain involves a Neumann MT48 interface getting a digital signal from the DAW and handling all my headphone EQ. That then gets sent digitally out to a Chord Dave for its crossfeed function and Digital to Analog conversion. I’ve not heard anyone do crossfeed in the box that can match the Chord’s for what I need.

I'm also using a Chord Alto amp with the Dave for hungrier headphones. This is then all being upsampled with the Chord Hugo M Scaler. It’s safe to say I can hear flies f***ing in the background of songs!

Elaine Rasnake, Mastering Engineer - Philadelphia, USA (Boyscott, Chase Petra, Shallow Alcove)

For my headphone monitoring chain I use the Lynx Hilo 2's built-in headphone output with Goodhertz's CanOpener plugin inside the monitoring section of REAPER. This helps create some crossfeed so it sounds like I have monitors in front of me but not like I'm in a specific room.

I'm not exactly sure where I heard about CanOpener but it was commonly brought up whenever I talked to other engineers about monitoring and using headphones. Usually the initial question was, "Oh cool you're in headphones! Do you use Sonarworks or CanOpener?" And so naturally, I was like, “no but I'll have to check it out!” I found that I wasn't big into the idea of EQing my headphones — I'm a bit stubborn when it comes to that — but I loved the idea of making my listening experience feel more like sitting in a room in front of speakers.

I bought an RME interface as a part of my mobile setup, as my Lynx Hilo is a bit too bulky for my suitcase but the RME fits in my headphone case, and learned that it also had crossfeed capabilities. I tried it out for a bit and it was completely fine. However, since I use two different interfaces, I wanted to keep some form of consistency in my workflow and use the same crossfeed solution between both interfaces. So now I just solely use CanOpener.

One thing that I love about my current DAW, REAPER, is that there is a Monitor FX section. I am able to put the CanOpener plugin in there, set it, and forget it so that every time I create a new session it will always be active and ready.

“I like how the sound tucks in a bit and feels more natural with crossfeed while still sounding exciting and less physically fatiguing.” - Elaine Rasnake

Also, to create listening consistency, I will often listen to music casually through my DAW so I can listen with the crossfeed engaged which allows me to have a solid foundation in what a great album should sound like and what I should aim for sonically when I work on a project in the same space. Sometimes with standard L-R listening, the sound can be a little too wide and it can be hard to gauge how a mix is really translating. I like how the sound tucks in a bit and feels more natural with crossfeed while still sounding exciting and less physically fatiguing.

Before the Hilo, I used the Audient iD22. It was a great starter interface that allowed me to not only work on records but also create a few of my own. However, as time went on, I realized that I was lacking some headroom and the sound wasn't as clear as I knew it could be. After some research, I opted for the Hilo, especially when I learned that it was used by a lot of engineers who have been working decades longer than I have as their "one and done" converter.

Blue May, Mix Engineer - Los Angeles, USA (Joy Crookes, Kano, Suki Waterhouse)

For my headphones monitoring chain I use an RME ADI 2 Pro as the amplifier because it's got a really powerful headphone amp and a super clean Digital to Analog conversion. And that's it. RME plus HEDDphone and a Macbook is my setup. If I am in rooms with monitors it’ll be Yamaha NS10 and a subwoofer.

I do boost the low shelf on the ADI so I give the headphones a little bit more low end. I find that, at least through the RME, it’s a bit too flat for my taste so that gives me a bit of a safety net and I'm not playing to my own tastes mix wise.

“Monitoring chains are a hard thing to grapple with in traditional setups because as mixing engineers we are trying to please ourselves.” - Blue May

I think it is a really hard thing to grapple with in traditional monitoring setups because that’s what we, as mixing engineers, are doing: trying to please ourselves. I've always wanted to feel like I'm having fun. It's quite hard to do that in rooms because there are nodes and different resonances and stuff like that, so in the headphones, where there's no acoustic properties that get in the way, it means I can really just set the monitoring chain up in a way that feels pleasing to me, and it means that I can work towards just getting the track to a place where it feels really right to me. That’s in contrast to working on monitors, because depending on what room you're in you always have to remind yourself all the time of the room's idiosyncrasies and how they might affect what you're hearing. Working primairly in headphones, with a little bit of low shelf, I just know, “Okay, cool, past this point I really don't have to make any kind of extra considerations for my taste.”

Chris Lane, Composer & Sound Designer - Los Angeles, USA (Black Panther, Severance, Childish Gambino)

The primary interface in my monitoring chain is the Focusrite 16 Line, which I'm using for all my analog and digital inputs and outputs. That's where all my microphones and monitors are mostly run.

That's paired with the Focusrite RedNet R1 monitor control which gives you up to 7.1.4 monitor control, and you can switch through all sorts of settings. You can have a 5.1 preset, you can have a stereo preset, it's a really nice monitor controller and that works well for up to a certain number of object channels too, which is great for immersive audio.

If I'm working natively it's going to probably suit my needs, but I also have an Atmos renderer Mac Mini setup in my gear closet if I have a much larger session that really needs to use way more objects — or I just need to offload some of that processing to a separate machine. I can run out to that renderer machine, which has its own Focusrite PCIe card so we get 128 channels on that, coming back into the Digital Audio Denmark DAD Core 256, which I’m using as a super-powered router: receiving those render outputs, but then it also has some great, built-in options for room correction and speaker delays which aren't offered on the Focusrite. So I am using that DAD Core 256 box, which is just a digital box and it's a great workhorse for handling all of this Dante material between machines.

Photo credits: Blue May by Felix Zimmermann, Katie Tavini and main photo by Richard Tavini.