The Headphone Tier List Nobody Asked For

Small, cheap instruments have a way of forcing decisions. With four knobs and eight steps you stop tweaking and start writing, and the limitations become a sound of their own.

Headphones and monitoring matter more than any synth. If you cannot hear the low end clearly, no plugin will save the mix, and you will only find out when it plays on a real system.

Hear It Properly

Buy used, learn deeply and sell what you do not touch for a month. That advice is free and will save you more than any sale.

• Closed-back headphones for tracking
• A controller with real knobs
• A drum machine with swing
• Decent cables, labelled

I made the whole album on a machine that fits in a pencil case.

Gear talk can get expensive fast, so here is the honest version: most of the records we love were made on modest setups by people who knew their tools very well.