Why buy an expensive headphone? Please read it all to get my point...

YanKleber

YanKleber

Retired
Please don't beat me too hard. I am a newby, do it for hobby, and my equipment is a crap compared with yours. But I am this guy full of opinions and thinking!

:D

Earlier today I found this thread asking advice for a good headphone for mixing:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/gener.../looking-some-good-headphones-mix-372430/new/

Of course I stayed there (as I always do) but ended popping off not convinced about a single word. But don't get me wrong. I will explain.

Some time ago when I started thinking that I could mix my stuff myself (hahaha, poor bastard!) I had this hope that I could do the job only with headphones but after a while I was sold here in this forum by the idea that speakers are the real thing for mixing. OK, I have a pair of monitors Edifier 1000R that aren't supposed to be used for this purpose but not being a complete shit, after some positioning adjustment and a small personal learning as how things should sound on a minimally decent mix I managed to achieve passable results. I have submited one of my mixes here in the forum and some masters said that it sounds OK and after to hear it in some different systems here in home I liked what I heard too.

Anyway, this is not the point where I want to get.

I have a pair of chinese CRAP headphones. Something called C3 Tech. Meh. It is a headphone for cheap gamers I think. It is all plastic and it already has broken in a couple spots so I had to use some glue and screws to put it back together. Currently the left cushion detached from the carcass and every time I put the phones on my head I have to adjust its position (yeah, more glue on the way...). About the sound, though, it sounds OK for me. It is not good and it is not bad. It's OK. Actually the mix I did sounds awesome on it (almost as good as in the speakers) and the tunes I am used to enjoy are pleasant for my ears on it too. The only big drawback of it is that it has a low output so if I try to crank volume up it will distort like crazy. It also doesn't have any color and the bass is poor. Actually it sounds very boring because is excessively flat but surprisingly I feel it VERY enjoyable and usable. And seriously it is a $5 buck stuff.

OK, now I am gettting to the point. I have used this headphone for personal listening, tracking, tests, checking mix results, etc. As mentioned the only thing I REALLY don't like it is because sometimes I would like to hear it LOUD but unfortunately it doesn't have enough hair in the sack for this.

So the question is: if a cheap phone can do effitiently all the bread-and-butter stuff and at the end of the day the final mix will have to be done with the speakers what is the point of buy an expensive headphone?

:confused:

I keep trying to convince myself to spend some cash on a Senheiser, Sony, AKG, or whatever but at the very last moment I always give up because this questioning.

:facepalm:
 
What do you consider an "expensive" set of headphones?

You could make a mix on cheap apple earbuds if you want to. And it can even come out very good once you've learned how to work with those earbuds. But why? You don't have to buy anything you don't want to buy. One reason to have decent cans is simply so listening isn't annoying. I use tracking headphones for tracking. They attenuate outside noise. With drums and loud amps, this is a must. But they sound like shit. I don't care, I'm just tracking. For general listening and detail work, I use some better cans. They sound okay and don't lie to me too much. For mixes, monitors.
 
Greg_L said:
What do you consider an "expensive" set of headphones?
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Well, I am talking about something around USD250-500 that is how much I will pay for a Senheiser, AKG, Sony, etc, here in Brasil (even buying at eBay because the shipping and custom taxes).

:(

Greg_L said:
You could make a mix on cheap apple earbuds if you want to. And it can even come out very good once you've learned how to work with those earbuds. But why? You don't have to buy anything you don't want to buy. One reason to have decent cans is simply so listening isn't annoying. I use tracking headphones for tracking. They attenuate outside noise. With drums and loud amps, this is a must. But they sound like shit. I don't care, I'm just tracking. For general listening and detail work, I use some better cans. They sound okay and don't lie to me too much. For mixes, monitors.
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I guess that this is what my guts tell me but I need to hear this from experienced people like you. So you are telling me that basically a good headphone is more for the please of the ears than exactly for the sake of a good result. Or I misunderstood your words?

:listeningmusic:
 
Greg's covered the main points.
The reasons to spend good money on cans aren't usually so you can mix on them.
It's usually comfort, isolation, something that won't fatigue the crap out of you, something durable...
That's why I bought Sennheisers instead of using big plastic clumpy 'studio headphones' or earbuds.
 
YanKleber said:
I guess that this is what my guts tell me but I need to hear this from experienced people like you. So you are telling me that basically a good headphone is more for the please of the ears than exactly for the sake of a good result. Or I misunderstood your words?

:listeningmusic:
Click to expand...

Mostly, yes. You want something that's pleasing to use, even if you're not gonna mix with them. I can throw my headphones on and listen to music and be satisfied with what I'm feeling and hearing. I could do a mix with them, but I don't need to. I don't want to. They're just decent all-around headphones. Not great, not terrible.
 
I'll just say from personal experience, that if you plan on using headphones for extended periods, a nicer sounding set will fatigue your ears far less quickly, and usually sound 'better' at lower volumes. It's easy once your ears start to become fatigued to start cranking the volume to make up for it and you can end up doing permanent hearing damage pretty easily. Again, i just learnt this through personal experience, operator fail.... i hate headphones now, and only use them when i have no choice. Years of industrial noise didn't help my ears either, but it sucks to look at an EQ and know everything above 15-16k means nothing to you :(
 
Don't forget that mixing on headphones is a problem with any price kit. Very often headphone mixes sound awful on phones.

Your choices in decent quality headphones seem to centre on open or closed types. My favourites for out and out sound quality that is pretty neutral are Sennheisers (I like 280s and HD25s), Beyers - the DT150s are my preferred choice their, or maybe Sony's - lots of people like them. My hearing tops out at 15KHz too, but it really doesn't matter that much, as you get used to what you can hear, and as long as you avoid sticking energy up there that hurts the kids, it's fine.
 
Now everything makes sense for me. I have an awesome headphone here (a 70's vintage Koss HV/1) that unfortunatelly is very heavy and uncomfortable. Probably that's why it is thrown within a cardboard box along with some other trashes.

Here a picture of it (not my own):

koss_hv_1a_01.jpg


Anyway, I will reconsider to buy a good modern headphone.

:)
 
It's kind of a little complicated, not heavily complicated, just a little multi dimensional in nature. :)

Rather than trying to find a simple answer to this question, find a good one and accept that as good enough. We all have unique ears, unique awareness and unique tastes. So it is about making a match between you as a listener and the cans as the speakers. Relatively flat headphones in absolute terms are good in absolute terms, but that's only one aspect to it. Headphones that you are intuitively drawn towards will work better than other cans. Cans you know better will work better than cans you don't know so much about and do not attach to emotionally. Although you can go the intelligence route, it can also happen both from an emotional point of view or from the combination of the two. The emotional route has to do with becoming aware of your intuition about certain headphone options. This is kind of knowing on some level which cans are just perfect, however being left confused about as to why that is, intellectually speaking. The intellectual route is to basically explain why the impact of the headphones is the way it is based on technical criteria, then through that understanding achieving the same "position" about some specific cans. The combination is what usually takes place in practice - we get emotionally drawn to some cans, then we add the intellectual reasoning on top of it, or it can be the other way around, we start off with the intellectual reasoning, once that is completed we finally also get emotional once the intellectual reasoning has resulted in the same choice. In other words, only YOU know what cans are a great match.

In terms of best knowing which cans you like, buy cans and listen to music using those cans. Pay attention to what cans you kind of tend to end up using. That is the emotional choice. The intellectual choice you can do by describing the lows, mids, highs relatively speaking when listening to music, in other words to precisely describe their musical profile and how they make music sound and what you think about how that music comes across when sounding like that, then choose the musical profile you find best sounding, then as you mix on those cans you make your mixes sound like those cans. Nothing forces you to use a single pair, you can use multiple ones - dedicated to different things.

In other words, it's about finding a match between your emotion - your intelligence - your music taste in regards to cans and to enhance the perspective on it.
 
RAMI said:
Oh shut the fuck up.
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You simply disagree and you simply also attach a little hate to stuff you disagree about, because you don't like it. But someone else might. Therefore although it can serve your ego good to tell others what your position is, do understand that people that are disagreeing less you will push away in taking this position, because they will perceive themselves in the position of the person subject to the hate. Think about it or keep hating. It's your choice.
 
IF you're going to get headphones, get the best you can afford.
Make that 'best" based on comfort and sound.
Open back will allow you to hear the world around you & the world to hear you (NO good for tracking then so they won't do dual work).
Closed back will keep the sound in the world out & will boost some frequencies a little (& can be used for tracking as well).
On ear will be a little less comfy as they'll need to press harder & over ear will cover, press less but weigh more.
IF you wear glasses you'll have to think/test how the two go together.
My Sennheisers (over ear) are comfy with my specs for a while but then get annoying.
My Sonys (on ear) are VERY uncomfortable after about 20 mins - though they sound good.
The price of good h/phones is in the realm of the price for OK monitors.
Someone gave me a set of Dr Beats last year - YUCK - hyped bottom end that was also flubby and shrill top end.
I tried them a few times but they are back in the box now.
beware "designer"/"DJ" anything.
 
rayc said:
IF you're going to get headphones, get the best you can afford.
Make that 'best" based on comfort and sound.
Open back will allow you to hear the world around you & the world to hear you (NO good for tracking then so they won't do dual work).
Closed back will keep the sound in the world out & will boost some frequencies a little (& can be used for tracking as well).
On ear will be a little less comfy as they'll need to press harder & over ear will cover, press less but weigh more.
IF you wear glasses you'll have to think/test how the two go together.
My Sennheisers (over ear) are comfy with my specs for a while but then get annoying.
My Sonys (on ear) are VERY uncomfortable after about 20 mins - though they sound good.
The price of good h/phones is in the realm of the price for OK monitors.
Someone gave me a set of Dr Beats last year - YUCK - hyped bottom end that was also flubby and shrill top end.
I tried them a few times but they are back in the box now.
beware "designer"/"DJ" anything.
Click to expand...
Wow a lot of good stuff!

As by your advices I think that the best stuff for me would be a closed back hp because I will just keep it at my desk (as I usually do) and it will become my everyday can. So I will be using it for enjoy my tunes, track, pre-mix late at night, whatever. I do use glasses but I cannot see myself trying phones before to buy them. I live in a hell of a small town with an awful local store market so everything (and I mean it) I buy is online and based on advice of people that I don't know but that I choose to trust (like you).

I don't think that I would spend on a pair of headphones more than I spent on my monitors. Currently I have a pair of middle-end (for my standards). They are more than the regular PC user has and less than someone pretending to be a musical producing supposed to have in his desk. Oh well... it does mean that I shouldn't go beyond something around $250-300 for a headphone at this time.

Thank you very much for your tips!

:)
 
I don't usually join in punch ups, but most posts are giving good tips, others are verbose in the extreme, contain little information that a listener doesn't know, and are amazingly heavy to read because they're basically twaddle (Nice British word).

In fact, the advise to try different ones is sensible, but practical reasons mean few of us have access to a number of good ones.

Very few headphones sound like speakers, that's a practical aspect you can't get around because they're virtually glued to your ears. They also might give you grief with panning because the plane of pan goes through your brain, not in front of you. Left doesn't leak to right and vice versa, as speakers do.

With experience you can cope with this and adjust your mixes. In fact, you can even adapt to headphones that have peaks and troughs in the frequency response, but they tire your ears. DT100s have an odd frequency response that allows quality to be assessed, but sounds a bit different to real life. The 150's are better. To my ears sony's are bright. The old Sennheiser 480s I really loved - very open sound, but used to fall off my head. The HD25s in the old and new type clamp your ears pretty hard, but sound very good to me.

Recently I've started wearing in-ears and tried loads and settled on Shure 215s, which I have to say give me a sound I rather like, and can be worn for long periods. I haven't mixed on them yet, but I will.
 
rob aylestone said:
Recently I've started wearing in-ears
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Man, I absolutely hate those in-ears small guys. I really HATE them. OK, they may have a great sound but just feel ackward for me. Beside the ear wax stuff (yuk!) there is also the fact that I don't like to have stuff stuck into my holes. Call me a sissy. Or an obsolete person. I don't care. I am definitively a vintage guy. Stuff can be attached to my body but they have to stay OUTSIDE.

:facepalm:
 
I've been mixing with Sennheiser 600HDs for almost four months now and I'm happy with them. I know them pretty well by now and can make some good judgement calls. Still, nobody is actually going to listen to anything on good headphones (you're not mixing for 0.01% of the market. Unless you are. Yay.)
I was forced into mixing with headphones because I am between places and have no speakers. You can get used to it but you really need to get a feel for it. I find that it gets a bit too easy to get carried away with stereo effects because they are so incredibly vivid on headphones.
 
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