10) When recording, would you utilize headphones to listen to your music or would you prefer to listen to an open air environment?
As Nim said definitely both. A good neutral set of monitoring headphones lets you listen as closely to what is recorded as possible without room acoustics misleading you. But you also want to hear what your tune sounds like blasted out over speakers.
I once had an issue with standing waves which accentuated the bass when I listened through monitor speakers. So I’d then mix it to reduce the bass. Lo and behold the final mix would be too thin and trebly when listened to anywhere but in front of my speakers. So I made sure to always listen to mixes both ways, as well as doing some studio rearranging to try to solve the wave problem itself.
