I think I might have stumbled upon one of the reasons that my home recordings sound like utter shit. One of the many, many reasons. Turns out my headphones suck like no headphones have ever sucked before.

I think it was 2003 or 2004 when I bought myself an 8-track recorder and a 16 channel board. I bought a pair of headphones from radio shack at the same time. I didn’t buy their cheapest cans, but I didn’t buy their best either. All I wanted was something better than the cheap crap that came with my portable CD player. Over the years I went through a few pairs of headphones, but I never invested in anything terribly good.

Today I was recording guitars on my iPhone and iPad so I used my radio shack cans. I didn’t think anything of it. At least not until a few minutes ago when I brought up the music app and tried to play the indie rock genius mix playlist.

Uh oh, thinks I. This sounds freakin’ terrible! 100 times worse than the Apple ear buds. What the hell?

For Christmas I got my beautiful wife a pair of Bose QC 15s. I plugged those into my iPad and low and behold! It was like listening to 90’s indie rock in heaven. I swear, Urge Overkill and The Breeders wouldn’t have sounded that good if they were in the room with me.

Yeah, definitely time for an upgrade in the headphones department. I’m not talking about getting QC 15s or anything like that, but the time for decent headphones has arrived at last.