I am amazed at the difference a sound system can make. Depending on what you use, you will hear completely different "artifacts", for lack of a better word, in the audio. Up to this point I've been listening to my songs in 2 different systems; A set of Alesis M1Active 320USB's and Sennheiser RS120 926 MHz Wireless RF Headphones. I also received a free Gear One G40DX headphones with the monitors, now a $10 value on Amazon, but only recently started listening to music with them.
Here are my findings so far:
Wireless headphones -- I use them primarily. Yeah I know what you're thinking now, and you're probably right. These are not ideal at all for mixing and mastering. There's no consistent volume. There's a volume knob on the headphones, one on the monitors, and another one on my audio interface. It'll clip in the headphones or pop whereas it's probably TOO QUIET on another system. It's far too inconsistent to properly mix and master with them, so I will be using other methods starting soon.
The Alesis monitors -- I don't use these to actually mix or master. I've tried listening through them, but at a low volume the mix just isn't consistent, even with professional stuff real bands have made.. Low volume, very weak bass... seems pretty weedy.. Then at higher volumes it's better, but again, stuff sounds way too piercing at that volume.. too present, and still more muddy than it should. Just not good for monitoring I guess..
Gear One G40DX headphones -- Now here's where I was kinda surprised, because these are cheap and free. They've got an 8' cable which is nice. The frequency response is something like 18Hz to 20KHz or something in that area. They have great bass, and the mixes I've listened through them sound very consistent. The spots where there were flaws in my mixes were extremely obvious.
The reason I started noticing how different all of these were is because I recently used my car as a monitor... yea, for the first time.. I know, I'm a noob, but I never thought to do that. Mainly because I don't drive a lot, and if I just sit in there running songs, I'll run the battery out. It's a Honda Element, a 2003 but it seems to have all of the modern features.. a CD player, AUX plug for phones or ipods, even a subwoofer with controls for all that stuff. Needless to say the speakers sound very good. I was able to audibly hear compression for songs I'm working on for my new acoustic album, not the pumping kind -- I tend to avoid that form of compression completely. Nobody likes pumping, unless it's like, techno or something. I heard it more in the general thickness and muddiness of the mix itself. I listened to a little more than half of the songs, and a couple of them stuck out to me as having compression that was too strong, the others were ok. It may have even been the multi-band limiter I was noticing, not too sure.
So to anyone this wasn't obvious to (which is probably nobody but me), take a look at your various sound systems. See which ones give you the best results. And if you wouldn't mind, post what you've used and your experiences with them.