303abuser The main drawback is if you want to ever play out anywhere. For home mixing it’s fine, but once in a club or festival or the like it will cause issues. Very few headphones will be able to block out the noise of the sound system, so in your headphones you will be listening to track A, track B, and a slightly delayed and muffled version of whichever track is currently being played to the crowd. It might not sound like that big an issue, but in reality it will do your head in, make it a lot harder for you to be accurate, and you’ll probably deafen yourself by turning up your headphones to block out as much of the sound system as possible. You could turn up the monitors to drown out the sound system, and then mix in your headphones, but again you would have to crank your headphones to get the balance correct, at which point you may as well just mix with one ear on / one ear off, like a normal person. Plus, for a lot of gigs, you will just show up and use whatever mixer they have, and their mixer might not have the option to mix in headphone, then you’ll be really fucked.
I’m not really aware of any pro djs who mix all in headphone, which is probably the best indicator of why you wouldn’t do it if you want to play out anywhere, the one ear on / one ear off using monitors just works.
