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

miroslav said:
Sennheiser makes good stuff.

When you decide to upgrade...check out the HD 280 Pro...great headphone for the price.

Over Ear Headphones - Sennheiser
Click to expand...

I surely will. Actually I was very tempted on go for that but I am desperately trying to reduce my credit card bills. Until a couple months ago I was paying around USD1000 per month, then I managed to crush it down to USD500. My aim is to put it in the neighbour of USD200. Till there I have to calm down my GAS!

:D
 
By the way, my 10 years old nephew is spending the weekend with us he brought with him a headphone called 'igoodlo'. Obviously I couldn't let it pass and I HAD to try it. Although I am sure that my brother-in-law never would buy him an expensive can I know that sometimes the best things comes in the more inexpressive boxes.

Anyway... as soon as I picked the stuff and put it around my head I noticed that it was a crap. The cushions touched the top of my ears but remained lifted in the bottom side. firstly I thought that was because it could be a can for kids and that my head was so big, but then I noticed that the arc was at the minimum set and even trying to mess with it the cushions still refused to embrace my ears. I noticed that it simply didn't have enough tolerance to swing and adjust correctly in the head. Bad project.

Anyway, I carried on and plugged it into my headphone mixer and... nothing. No sound. Then I gave it back to my nephew and told him that it was not working when he explained me that it was a contact issue in the cable. Then he showed me that the cable was plugged into the phone side too and that I should pull it a bit to make it work. Bad project.

Then I came back to my room, plugged it again into my headphone mixer, put the stuff around my head with the cushions poorly touching my ears, started playing something in Winamp and pulled a bit the jack in the phone until to hear a sound. Suddenly some sound arose. Mono and out of phase. Not a surprise because when pulling it to make a sound certainly it may have touched the contacts of both channels. Kept a few seconds trying to find a position where it should work but got no luck. I suspect that my nephew has heard his tunes in mono and out of phase for months.

Then I finally decided to gave up and gave the phone back to him. He asked:

-- So, uncle, did you like the phones????
-- Yeah, they are OK -- I answered.

LOL.

:facepalm:
 
rayc said:
You have to amend the truth sometimes.
Click to expand...

Yeah, LOL!

:laughings:

Anyway, this morning when I woke up feeling sorrow about the small guy listening to that piece of shit. Then I remembered about a crappy headphone I bought at eBay months ago for tracking and that I ended never using (so it was brand new). Then after to find it and make a quick test I figured out that it has a sound a hundred times better than his 'igoodlo' stuff and gave it to him. As a bonus the new can is too much more fancy. The little dude gets stuned!

:D

I think that at my deep feelings I didn't want to be co-responsible for destruct his ability to apreciate and enjoy good sound. What if he becomes a mixing professional and never be able to recognize an out-of-phase instrument or lose his ability to spot the difference between stereo and mono because my fault? I never could forgive myself! LoL!

:listeningmusic:
 
currently i try to track through the monitors, everything but mic stuff.
then theres less surprise on mix time and then theres the cans for checking stuff and the cheap plastic pc speakers to test for worst case.

depends what your setup is.

if you are a ME behind a window its almost all done with monitors, if you are solo-hr and play guitar and press record yourself, and total DIY sitting in the same room with the monitors then its either forced cans and micing, or DI and monitors.

its like that beatle bootleg where George Martin mics in to GHarrison, "what did you do to your guitar tone?" and GH said "he switched the treble/rythm switch" and George in the glass room said "well switch it back..." or something.

that was a thing for me to figure out, to play the guitar through the monitors and set the tone as if you were the ME behind the glass using monitors, a dual role.

the point is can's arent used so much in studios as they are in HR land. I think you did good minimizing cash spent on your cans and put it into monitors and room treatment.
 
CoolCat said:
currently i try to track through the monitors, everything but mic stuff.
then theres less surprise on mix time and then theres the cans for checking stuff and the cheap plastic pc speakers to test for worst case.

depends what your setup is.

if you are a ME behind a window its almost all done with monitors, if you are solo-hr and play guitar and press record yourself, and total DIY sitting in the same room with the monitors then its either forced cans and micing, or DI and monitors.

its like that beatle bootleg where George Martin mics in to GHarrison, "what did you do to your guitar tone?" and GH said "he switched the treble/rythm switch" and George in the glass room said "well switch it back..." or something.

that was a thing for me to figure out, to play the guitar through the monitors and set the tone as if you were the ME behind the glass using monitors, a dual role.

the point is can's arent used so much in studios as they are in HR land. I think you did good minimizing cash spent on your cans and put it into monitors and room treatment.
Click to expand...

Well, actually I am the DIY guy that press the record button myself!

:D

As my caption says I am a 'backyard sef producer' making records to realize a 30 years dream and to satisfy my ego. My only colaborator so far is my wife that sings in some of the tunes but all the rest is made by myself (song writing, guitars, arranging, programming, tracking, mixing, mastering, album cover design, etc). However it is only a hobby thing so no big pretensions here.

Beside I am a guy in a budget (to not call myself a cheapo) what means that I am NOT really going to spend cash in monitors and room treatment. To tell you the truth I am SO amazed with the latest improvements I achieved in my mix job thanks to a couple simple tips I got from forum mates, that I am not really concerned on get TOO much better. Don't get me wrong, I just am not too perfeccionist and I already got a quality level (quickly) that I didn't imagine that I could.

Anyway, all in all the best thing I did was just to raise my monitors to make them to aim directly my ears. What a difference!

:)
 
YanKleber said:
Well, actually I am the DIY guy that press the record button myself!

:D

As my caption says I am a 'backyard sef producer' making records to realize a 30 years dream and to satisfy my ego. My only colaborator so far is my wife that sings in some of the tunes but all the rest is made by myself (song writing, guitars, arranging, programming, tracking, mixing, mastering, album cover design, etc). However it is only a hobby thing so no big pretensions here.

Beside I am a guy in a budget (to not call myself a cheapo) what means that I am NOT really going to spend cash in monitors and room treatment. To tell you the truth I am SO amazed with the latest improvements I achieved in my mix job thanks to a couple simple tips I got from forum mates, that I am not really concerned on get TOO much better. Don't get me wrong, I just am not too perfeccionist and I already got a quality level (quickly) that I didn't imagine that I could.

Anyway, all in all the best thing I did was just to raise my monitors to make them to aim directly my ears. What a difference!

:)
Click to expand...

It is good if you learn the headphones you have, a lot, because you want your music to sound great in most cans and speakers. You can also try to mix in phases where you gradually open up the frequency spectrum and once the mids are rich, then you work on balancing the various ranges of the lows and the various ranges of the highs separately. Most cans and speakers are quite bad, but if you train your ears a lot you can learn to discount that when you evaluate what you have in the mix. Learn the technique well so that you know how to best work with the frequencies. Listen to the sound objectively and practice putting the most precise terms on it, just like describing what a particular red wine is like. Describing sound and music really well is key, no matter what headphones and speakers you use. It is more important than the speakers and the headphones, so do not over estimate their impact... Obviously you are going to need both cans/speakers that have a limited frequency spectrum, and ones that provide you good low end and high end insight too. If you learn to mix against for instance notebook speakers with a very limited high and low frequency spectrum, you kind of learn the art of creating bright mixes. From there the step to creating great sounding mixes on the full frequency range will be a little smaller and easier. If you open it up with cans that lack precision, then that can take some time to learn.
you
When you learn the art of describing sound, an advice is not to immediately attach good or bad labels to it all. Balanced might be good and it might be bad. The question to ask yourself is this: How do I like this, what is really what I think and feel about this sound? Maybe some of the music I love out there and would like my mixes to sound similar to, maybe that's not at all the kind of sound I've dialed in here. What IS that sound like, what does it contain? Have I really put the right labels on that sound? Do I need to listen to it using a number of different cans to see how that impacts the labels I've put on those mixes?

I find it's mostly this kind of stuff. Balancing is balancing, you can hear when you have too much or too little lows, mids or highs, but knowing what frequency composition you truly want to have and how to achieve precisely that using any cans, that's what you should be looking into. It's good if you learn to balance a mix per frequency band and can put precise labels on the frequency bands of various sound sources. In that way you learn how to balance the mix towards what you find to be beautiful. You can come a really long way by only using the volume faders really well no matter what speakers/cans you are mixing against, but when you take it one step further - balancing by frequency band - and learn that really well, then you make great sounding mixes on any cans or speakers you have available.

So, focus on objectively describing the sound coming from any cans. Balance precisely enough. Learn what sound you REALLY want to end up with and learn what that sound REALLY contains in terms of frequency content. Use multiple cans and speakers to broaden and widen the perspective on what you're truly hearing, so that you can put more precise labels on what you're hearing or trying to achieve. You cannot achieve all sound characteristics all at once, but you can learn them well and play with them beautifully throughout the course of the mix.

I know this is kind of a little off topic, but I do find this needs to be said. All too often we get focused on details and forget the real issues, it's a big issue when you say something sounds organic when it really doesn't. Or when you say something is soft and the pro sitting next to you turns up the volume and says no it's harsh.

In other words, the art here is really to enhance your music and sound awareness, sharpen the precision in your analytical process, then if that is done in conjunction with great speakers, then even better, but with a great ear you come a really long way. The good thing about that is that you do not have to be super intelligent about the hows and whys, because of your skills about the whats are so great. Let me give you an example: You compare a real B3 sound to the sampled counter parts. Then you give each sound really precise musical labels describing how you perceive them intelligently and emotionally, then you find you love the real B3 so you use that it becomes a success. You never had to precisely explain the whys and hows into it, get confused and end up choosing the sampled version, you just kept it real and it worked..
 
Last edited:
Nice post!

:)

Currently I am very excited to try my new can. It should be here between tomorrow and Monday. I am trying not to create big expectatives about the brand 'Sennheiser' because I know it is an entry level model so I won't get disappointed if it doesn't sound too much better than this:

6785.jpg


:laughings:

* the thing above is the 10 bucks garbage can I use currently.
 
OK, the final countdown has started... the cans are available to be picked up at my POBox. I should go to the post-office branch in a couple hours!

:D
 
MusicWater said:
It is good if you learn the headphones you have, a lot, because you want your music to sound great in most cans and speakers. You can also try to mix in phases where you gradually open up the frequency spectrum and once the mids are rich, then you work on balancing the various ranges of the lows and the various ranges of the highs separately. Most cans and speakers are quite bad, but if you train your ears a lot you can learn to discount that when you evaluate what you have in the mix. Learn the technique well so that you know how to best work with the frequencies. Listen to the sound objectively and practice putting the most precise terms on it, just like describing what a particular red wine is like. Describing sound and music really well is key, no matter what headphones and speakers you use. It is more important than the speakers and the headphones, so do not over estimate their impact... Obviously you are going to need both cans/speakers that have a limited frequency spectrum, and ones that provide you good low end and high end insight too. If you learn to mix against for instance notebook speakers with a very limited high and low frequency spectrum, you kind of learn the art of creating bright mixes. From there the step to creating great sounding mixes on the full frequency range will be a little smaller and easier. If you open it up with cans that lack precision, then that can take some time to learn.
you
When you learn the art of describing sound, an advice is not to immediately attach good or bad labels to it all. Balanced might be good and it might be bad. The question to ask yourself is this: How do I like this, what is really what I think and feel about this sound? Maybe some of the music I love out there and would like my mixes to sound similar to, maybe that's not at all the kind of sound I've dialed in here. What IS that sound like, what does it contain? Have I really put the right labels on that sound? Do I need to listen to it using a number of different cans to see how that impacts the labels I've put on those mixes?

I find it's mostly this kind of stuff. Balancing is balancing, you can hear when you have too much or too little lows, mids or highs, but knowing what frequency composition you truly want to have and how to achieve precisely that using any cans, that's what you should be looking into. It's good if you learn to balance a mix per frequency band and can put precise labels on the frequency bands of various sound sources. In that way you learn how to balance the mix towards what you find to be beautiful. You can come a really long way by only using the volume faders really well no matter what speakers/cans you are mixing against, but when you take it one step further - balancing by frequency band - and learn that really well, then you make great sounding mixes on any cans or speakers you have available.

So, focus on objectively describing the sound coming from any cans. Balance precisely enough. Learn what sound you REALLY want to end up with and learn what that sound REALLY contains in terms of frequency content. Use multiple cans and speakers to broaden and widen the perspective on what you're truly hearing, so that you can put more precise labels on what you're hearing or trying to achieve. You cannot achieve all sound characteristics all at once, but you can learn them well and play with them beautifully throughout the course of the mix.

I know this is kind of a little off topic, but I do find this needs to be said. All too often we get focused on details and forget the real issues, it's a big issue when you say something sounds organic when it really doesn't. Or when you say something is soft and the pro sitting next to you turns up the volume and says no it's harsh.

In other words, the art here is really to enhance your music and sound awareness, sharpen the precision in your analytical process, then if that is done in conjunction with great speakers, then even better, but with a great ear you come a really long way. The good thing about that is that you do not have to be super intelligent about the hows and whys, because of your skills about the whats are so great. Let me give you an example: You compare a real B3 sound to the sampled counter parts. Then you give each sound really precise musical labels describing how you perceive them intelligently and emotionally, then you find you love the real B3 so you use that it becomes a success. You never had to precisely explain the whys and hows into it, get confused and end up choosing the sampled version, you just kept it real and it worked..
Click to expand...
:laughings: :laughings: :laughings:

OK, now you're doing it on purpose just to get a laugh, right? Well, it worked. Now, I get it. You're a pure comedy genius. :D
 
Finally I am with my new cans in the ears. Undoubtedly ii is better than my previous $10 one. LoL.

Of course I am still getting used to it and I should let you know that this is the first Seinnheiser can I have in my ears. Also I am very far a way to be a headphone conneceur, so, please, consider it when read my further words. Here it goes my first impressions right in the bat:

1) It has too much more headroom (I think that's the term, please correct me if I am using it wrongly) what means that I can perceive a better space and positioning of the instruments. With the other pair of cans the sound seems more 'flattened'.

2) It has an impressive bass response for such a small can. The last headphone I tried that I remember to put such pressure in the ears is the Pro-4AA. Actually for my taste it has MORE bass than I would like so I made two small cuts (4dB in 70Hz and 2dB in 180Hz -- Winamp EQ) to make it more comfortable. However, it is not just MORE bass. It has a BETTER bass. I can perfectly hear the kicks along with the tail of the bass of the kickdrum and also the bass guitar perfectly apart. Awesome. Impressive.

3) The acoustics of the cushions are very sensitive to a correct positioning on your head. I just had my snack and came back in a rush to my desk to keep trying it and noticed that as I move my jaws while I try to clean my teeth with the tongue (LoL!) the minimum that the cushions gets apart from the ear makes a huge difference in the bass pressure.

4) It supports too much more volume than the garbage can one, what means that I can crank TOO MUCH MORE the volume up before it starts to distort, even with its heavier bass.

5) It is exceptionally well insulated. It really keeps the external sounds outside. And also does the backwards, that is, what is within almost doesn't leak.

6) It is lightweight and kind of comfortable but the arc passing over the head causes a certain annoying pressure even being stuffed with a soft foam. I am wearing it only for about 20 minutes now so I don't know how I will feel by using it for hours and hours.

All in all I am very happy with the acquisition. I am really really REALLY impressed with the quality of this little guy specially taking in consideration that it is a can for the poverty. Congratulations Seinnheiser! Everything puts me towards to get the next level can in a few months!

:thumbs up:

PS: Today I am not in my best day as I am with this slight migrane along the whole day, so maybe I am oversensitive. Let's see how I will feel after a few days using it.
 
MusicWater said:
....like describing what a particular red wine is like.
Click to expand...

What about beer?

MusicWater said:
....it's a big issue when you say something sounds organic when it really doesn't. Or when you say something is soft and the pro sitting next to you turns up the volume and says no it's harsh.
Click to expand...

I find it amusing that you would be giving this advice, when just a couple of threads back, you were confusing everyone here because you were making up you own descriptions/terms of audio related things...and when everyone was asking that you use terminology that is already common and accepted in the audio world, because the stuff you were saying wasn't making any sense...you just kept on making up your own stuff.

Anyway...how about some samples of your stuff that demonstrate what you're talking about?
 
RAMI said:
Believe me, I tried. I really did. That's just a bunch of ridiculous, stupid, psychotic blabber. As usual.

:D
Click to expand...

Somewhere in Musicwater's tidal wave of text is possibly a good idea . . . but it is just drowned by dense and incomprehensible language.
 
miroslav said:
I find it amusing that you would be giving this advice, when just a couple of threads back, you were confusing everyone here because you were making up you own descriptions/terms of audio related things...and when everyone was asking that you use terminology that is already common and accepted in the audio world, because the stuff you were saying wasn't making any sense...you just kept on making up your own stuff.
Click to expand...

It is confusing at first when a pioneer (said in general terms) suddenly provides a new term to the language, what is it, what does it mean, how does it work, why was it coined. Signal-to-background noise is a term that explains the degree to which you can perceive a certain element or quality within the mix, what you are focusing on improving is the "signal" and what is distracting the perception of that "signal" is the "background noise", hence the ratio is how well you perceive that mix element or quality in the context. It could as well have been coined signal-to-context noise, but I have found "background" to be a little easier for most to understand.

Signal-to-background noise is a very important concept to understand, because it deals with enhancing the listener's perception about various elements and qualities about the mix. It also helps to provide a better understanding about how various "frequency types" react to each other within the mix. You can work with signal-to-background noise in many dimensions. In the upper dimensions you work with it in the production and arrangement process, in the lower dimensions you work with the console, the fxs and their order. An example would be A) placing a chorus behind a reverb as oppose to B) placing both effects in parallel, where B yields the higher signal-to-background noise ratio.

There is a significant difference between technically not being aware of this concept and being aware of it and working technically with it. It is a concept that applies to song writing, production, recording, mixing, mastering. In song writing it is how emotionally attached you make the lyrics, the emotion/heart is the signal and the brain is the background noise. In recording there are many aspects of it, one being how freely musicians can express themselves through their instruments, meaning how much their instrument/technique is in the way of their musical expressions (musical expressions vs musical abilities). In production there are many aspects of it too, for instance how clear are the chords in contrast with the tunings of the instruments. (with higher quality instrument tunings comes greater chord clearity potential, but in between there is noise you need to remove in order to improve the ratio, things like instrument bleed, false notes played, disharmonic distortion, frequency masking...)

One should not get stuck on the abstractness of this term, it is as abstract as you make it since it scales very well both vertically and horizontally. I use it mostly as a tool to sharpen and broaden my focus, to bring things to my awareness and technically deal with more aspects involved to improve the product.
 
Last edited:
YanKleber said:
Finally I am with my new cans in the ears. Undoubtedly ii is better than my previous $10 one. LoL.

Of course I am still getting used to it and I should let you know that this is the first Seinnheiser can I have in my ears. Also I am very far a way to be a headphone conneceur, so, please, consider it when read my further words. Here it goes my first impressions right in the bat:

1) It has too much more headroom (I think that's the term, please correct me if I am using it wrongly) what means that I can perceive a better space and positioning of the instruments. With the other pair of cans the sound seems more 'flattened'.

2) It has an impressive bass response for such a small can. The last headphone I tried that I remember to put such pressure in the ears is the Pro-4AA. Actually for my taste it has MORE bass than I would like so I made two small cuts (4dB in 70Hz and 2dB in 180Hz -- Winamp EQ) to make it more comfortable. However, it is not just MORE bass. It has a BETTER bass. I can perfectly hear the kicks along with the tail of the bass of the kickdrum and also the bass guitar perfectly apart. Awesome. Impressive.

3) The acoustics of the cushions are very sensitive to a correct positioning on your head. I just had my snack and came back in a rush to my desk to keep trying it and noticed that as I move my jaws while I try to clean my teeth with the tongue (LoL!) the minimum that the cushions gets apart from the ear makes a huge difference in the bass pressure.

4) It supports too much more volume than the garbage can one, what means that I can crank TOO MUCH MORE the volume up before it starts to distort, even with its heavier bass.

5) It is exceptionally well insulated. It really keeps the external sounds outside. And also does the backwards, that is, what is within almost doesn't leak.

6) It is lightweight and kind of comfortable but the arc passing over the head causes a certain annoying pressure even being stuffed with a soft foam. I am wearing it only for about 20 minutes now so I don't know how I will feel by using it for hours and hours.

All in all I am very happy with the acquisition. I am really really REALLY impressed with the quality of this little guy specially taking in consideration that it is a can for the poverty. Congratulations Seinnheiser! Everything puts me towards to get the next level can in a few months!

:thumbs up:

PS: Today I am not in my best day as I am with this slight migrane along the whole day, so maybe I am oversensitive. Let's see how I will feel after a few days using it.
Click to expand...

I like some Sennheiser cans but I find that having a dedicated subwoofer that is isolated from the rest of the sound makes it easier to perceive exactly how much low end I have in the mix. The other aspect about them is that they are quite limited in terms of how they reproduce the stereo field. These weak points are two very critical ones that you need to have a strategy of dealing with. In commercial mixes using the stereo field efficiently is an incredibly important thing. I use several cans, but also a monitoring speaker solution that allows me to hear various frequency bands in isolation (various bands in various speakers). That gives me a very good frame of reference.

In order to better understand your cans, you can playback various commercial mixes through various cans and play the songs through various frequency bands in isolation, you can do this both in L-R and M-S modes to get multiple perspectives on it. In this way you can better understand how they will impact your balancing decisions and make you understand how they reproduce the sound.

Also remember that you can use cans in at least two ways: mixing against their frequency response as if they were flat in which case you get the opposite to their inaccuracies, mixing towards their natural sound (make your mix sound the way the cans make other mixes sound) in which case you try to align the sound to cancel out the inaccuracies. It takes some time to understand the impact of both of these application types, a way of ramping up more quickly is to get a frequency band level insight into each set of cans/speakers and based on that understanding take advantage of both application types to both shape the sound more easily and at the same time also get a higher quality mix balance.

I can recommend that you keep your mixes isolated to at least stem level, so that you have a chance of optimizing various stems against various cans/speakers in mastering. Deciding how to efficiently distribute the mix into stems used during mastering is something that really pays off. Overall it's great to have a great degree of isolation, just remember that transients can be very distracting (lower the signal to background noise), use compression and reverb on particular frequency bands on particular sound sources to harmonize those transients and hence add more emotion to your mixes. An example would be to soften and level out the transients in the bass guitar's upper mids and high end. This will make the bass line slightly more muddy and less separated in the stereo field, but it will help make sound sources like background vocals and electric guitars harmonize really nicely which will provide emotional content that otherwise is simply not there. It will also help separate out the other elements in the stereo field.
 
Last edited:
I do mostly voicework and 30 and 60 spots with simple audio BG under them as well as a weekly recorded talk show. But each year I do a one-hour "Christmas at the Shrine" music show highlighting the 2,0000 pipe organ at the (26 million dollar!) Shrine Church at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, WI.

The acoustics in this sanctuary are thrilling, with final notes bouncing off the sides of the church and fading away. I overlap one Christmas Carol over the end of the previous when it works. To find out if it works, I use some pretty-good Sennheisers.

The point is that I mix so the best equipment for listening will highlight the nuances, while a cheap FM radio will miss it. I'd rather do it that way then just mix for compressed FM radio and have it sound bad if someone hears the audio file directly and not broadcast. Really cheap headphones to me sound more like what the FM broadcast normally sounds like.

You can also hear little things like page-turns, heating system clicks, the organist farting and other irregularities that might be missed with a $10 headphone set.

It's a lot like photography: If you have a really clear, bright viewfinder you can compose the shot better than if you have some nasty little screen on the back of the camera and you are trying to compose the shot in bright sunlight.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top