So while wife and children were visiting her family in Scotland last week, I was working on a new song, a cover of Cars by Gary Numan. When they came back on Tuesday evening, I allowed my two teenage boys to listen to my first stab at a master, but because it was late I made them listen on my headphones, one using my HD580’s and the other using my RS180’s, both open back. I said to Mrs Fubar afterwards ‘do you want a listen?’ Her reply, without any hint of sarcasm, ‘Do I really need to? I’ve just heard it leaking out the back of two pair of headphones’. Ah well. I only spent one full day umming and ahing whether one of my Mini Moog synth brass lines should be 1dB higher or lower, and how far apart I should spread my double-tracked vocals in the stereo image. From a HiFi perspective this is probably the equivalent of me yelling from the living room, ‘come and listen to these amazing new speakers!!’ and she shouts back, ‘Don’t need to, I heard them from the garage’.