Question About Audio Enhancements

[Byron Dickens]

And a proper audio interface.

[Andres Medina]

1 hour ago, cubic lights said:

This is a bit beyond my budget. Do you think a pair of open back headphones would be good enough? (I'm just making music for a relatively simple rhythm game in the Unity Game Engine that I plan to release on Steam.)

Well, you probably will head to see how frustrating is to take your hours of work down the drain when you realize that your perfectly well balanced mix is sounding horrible in your car, or elsewhere... not a good experience. 

I think that the other fine tool for mixing, as John stated before, is your brain-ears training. Listen to Pro tracks in your headphones A LOT and try to get the same overall sound. But the brain is tricky too! Try mixing late at night, with your brain drained after 4 hours of mixing, and finding next day that you made all the wrong decisions..

[Byron Dickens]

1 hour ago, cubic lights said:

This is a bit beyond my budget.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but how do you know? Have you priced any?

1 hour ago, cubic lights said:

. Do you think a pair of open back headphones would be good enough?

If they are really good, reference quality headphones.

1 hour ago, cubic lights said:

(I'm just

Never let "I'm just..." be an excuse for putting forth anything less than your best effort.

[jackson white]

20 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

compare it against commercial releases

This  is the key imho. Racking up a reference track or two in a DAW to compare with your existing mix can be pretty helpful.  Something like Metric A|B works very well.

[John Vere]

If your end goal is mixing for games then you would want a few of those commonly used systems to proof on. No point proofing a gaming soundtrack on a car stereo ? 

As it is a set of gaming headphones might be perfect. And might as well turn those awful enhancements on because guess what they were made for!