Mixing on Headphones - anyone with experience

Tanx E,

As always, great advice!
{‘-’}

The style of music matters. For electronic and dance, headphone mixing is not an unreasonable workflow if great care is taken.

One trick I’ve found for headphone mixing is to find two pair that compliment each other.

For example Audio Technica ATH-M50s are flat in the mids and highs, but produce the low end well (by headphone standards).

So getting a muddy or boomy mix, that might sound okay on another pair of headphones, to sound well balanced on ATH-M50s can be a good start to taming low end.

Likewise, AKG K240s are bright in the top-end, so a mix that doesn’t sound too bright, elsewhere (like the ATH-M50s), can be checked on bright phones like these.

Dueling headphones, that are familiar and well understood, mixing at multiple levels, using reference tracks often, detailed metering to augment the process.

I have proper monitors, as well, but find I can make most of my decisions without them. They’re for checking / confirming only.

This headphone talk made me buy another set :-/ I realized I needed a pair that where closed, for editing work, but more natural than my Beyer DT770. Got the Shure SRH940 and I’m surprised to say they are really good.
On a side note my AHG K240DF are really neutral, that’s why I prefer them over the standard K240

I don’t understand. Why would you use closed cans for editing?

I don’t want to hear sounds from the outside world when I’m listening for pops clicks and other noise, I can keep the level down on closed headphones.

Oh, OK. That totally makes sense. I don’t think I ever tried to remove my dog barking from a recording though! :slight_smile:

What happens if the smoke alarm goes off? I’m worried about you! :stuck_out_tongue:

Is there any advantage to open-backed headphones, or just the disadvantage described by peakae above, that they don’t isolate as well as closed-back phones?

The main advantage is that open backed can generally be tolerated for much longer periods (i.e. when mixing), closed back will be more fatiguing and will usually become uncomfortable in a relatively short time. If you’re working in an environment prone to noise disturbance, I can understand why one might want closed backs. The above is of course a generalization, perhaps there are some models of closed back which don’t suffer from the aforesaid disadvantages, I’ve not tried them all. I’m fortunate enough to have a studio that is dead quiet.

Open backs are usually lighter and don’t give as much pressure on your ears as closed backs.
I can wear my AKG k612’s for a whole day and not notice they’re there.
I also generally prefer the sound of open backs, and I like hearing my environment. If I want to lock myself out I’ll use my inears.

Just to put some perspective on this, let’s just (for fun) try to summarise the task, so assume we have an analog signal (the output from our “soundcard”) for which we are seeking an acoustic transducer (headphones) and we want to achieve the most accurate acoustic representation of the digitally encoded information in our signal.

The astute will have already given up by now, due to the undefined variable “soundcard” and the undefined and subjective attribute “accurate” in terms of the relationship between the digitally encoded signal and the resultant acoustic event.

For those still reading, imagine you need to audition your mix for one of our genetically close primates, let’s say a silverback gorilla; you have no idea what the gorilla’s ear canal is like or what frequency response it exhibits, but you add a headphone which has another frequency response, and finally you connect the headphone to an amplifier without considering the impedance of the headphones or the drive capability of the amplifier (assuming that the headphone amplifier itself has a flat response – with modern equipment very likely, but not a given, and how many of us actually measure this?).

So … does the gorilla hear a good mix?

This is essentially what is being asked here. These type of questions are great time-fillers of a weekend, and we’re already onto two pages of forum posts, whereby I suspect the OP is even more confused, but great fun is had by all, as people expound the various theories from all corners of the internet. In addition, we all get to tell everyone else about our go-to headphones, and thus justify the obscene amounts of money we have spent in the process; I myself have about $700 worth of cans I will seldom, if ever, use again.

But I did find my sweet set, or rather a sweet combination, one closed and one open-backed. Which ones? I’m not saying – not because it doesn’t matter, but because you don’t have the same ears and hearing as I do. You will just have to find your own.

Now the short answer: for years my go-to headphone was a $70 set of Technics open-backed consumer phones until they physically fell apart beyond repair. The nearest I’ve found to date is the much more expensive DT990 but you really need to make sure your headphone amp can drive them properly as they’re 250 ohm.

[quote=
What happens if the smoke alarm goes off? I’m worried about you! :stuck_out_tongue:[/quote]

Had actually a close call last friday, a firefighter was pounding on my door. There was a grease fire downstairs, and I had to leave. Scary stuff.

No only shoes and the phone, ran down the stairs from the 5. Floor all in heavy smoke, when I got outside the fire chief gave the ok that we could return. But it still was a little unnerving.

Oh wow, glad you are OK!

+1!

Parallel discussion on merits/drawbacks of closed- vs. open-backed headphones at SOS:

http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1142768&page=0&view=&sb=5&o=&vc=1#Post1142768

I’d say if you must use headphones - get to know them - use them to listen to music you know well for hours - get tuned to their bass and general frequency response. I have bayerdynamics DT990s I’d say they are good headphones for this kind of application - very neutral and comfortable to wear for extended periods. when mixing make the panning sound slightly more extreme than you would with monitors you find stuff that sounds wide in headphones is more mono than you think.

+2

But it still was a little unnerving.

Perhaps try and create some music about your emotion(s) of the experience.

Good luck!
{‘-’}

Koss invented Headphones and they sound amazing…

http://www.koss.com/en/about/history

audeze’s are cool, i see quite a few mastering engineers use them as reference. i have the lcd 2’s which are around $1k, but they just released a budget $400 model i think, could be worth looking into. another pair i’d recommend is the new-ish sony mdr 7520. they’re closed-back, and much cheaper (around $350) but sometimes i prefer them to the audezes.