earphones deceive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Setherial
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Setherial

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firstly, i comment on that thread about home recording vs. pro studio. i've heard tons of cd's with HORRIBLE production...and they're right next to the pro sounding ones in the store. black metal is known for lousy production. i notice alot of people get caught up in this "well your supposed to do this..." attitude. time to break out of the corporate prison!
well this Is sort've irritating; i've got cooledit but a lousy room (but not that bad with close in mic). the end product sounds fine through earphones (for me). but if i play the same track over the stereo speakers it really sounds demo-y/ garage-y/ unditable mid range-y.
Was ist das? as far as i can tell i'm stuck with this.
also, when someone takes a demo to a pro do they just re-process the same demo cd? meaning the band does'nt actually play the stuff all over again? and this is called "re-mixing"? thanx
 
What kind of headphones

Headphones will always sound different from speakers cause, hey, they're right next to your ears. And I've get to see a headphone with a 10 inch woofer, although that would look pretty cool.
 
More info I just found

I found this at http://www.dolby.com/dolbyheadphone/DH_ListenersGuide.html
---->
Speakers versus Headphones

As the sound from each speaker in a stereo system reaches your inner ears, it acquires a set of spatial cues imparted both by the acoustics of the room and the physical properties of your head and outer ears. These cues enable the brain to localize the sounds and integrate them into a soundfield that appears to array the performers in front of you as they would be at a concert
DH_Diagram_1.gif

Headphones, on the other hand, feed the sound directly to your eardrums, devoid of any of the spatial cues imparted by playback over speakers. The result is an unnaturally wide image forming a straight line between your ears
DH_Diagram_2.gif

Left and right sounds appear directly beside you, while center sounds appear within your head. The overall result is unrealistic, and can cause listener fatigue.
 
hmmm. i don't think this is what i mean, although the description covers the dynamics phenomena. i'm talking weak/faded lousy crap! i do alot of experimental space music type stuff and this sounds fairly descent through phones. but it does'nt even sound like it's coming from the same track/setup through speakers. the graphic eq helps though.
i wonder if anyone here has ever tried using a large cardboard box lined with eggholder foam in front of the guitar amp?
seems to be a mid-range problem or something.
 
Mixes DO NOT translate if done via headphones. Period.

You can use them as an alternate reference, and to check tracks for extraneous noise, but for mixing alone, they are essentially useless. You want to be using a pair of decent monitors.

Bruce
 
so it's a bad idea to use head phones when first editing stuff? and that as a wav sounds different with phones to regular speakers, it's best to use regular speakers as a guide?
if so, i've been doing this all wrong! as far as mic-ed stuff goes....
what i forgot to mention (concerning comparison) was when listening to a good cd, there's not much difference in sound quality between phones and speakers.
how do they mix it for both? as when my stuff sounds good on phones it sucks through speakers But Also VISA VERSA.....et spirtuum.
 
The reason good commercial stuff sounds good through both cans and speakers is because it's been mixed well. And you can bet that when they were mixing it, they weren't doing it on headphones! The reason your stuff sounds okay through the cans but sounds crappy through speakers is because you haven't got the mix right yet.

Oh sure, you *can* mix through headphones, like I do - put a mix together that you want to try out, burn it to CD, play the CD through every system you can get your hands on, and then repeat the procedure until you get it approximately right. This really sucks. Take my word for it.
 
Mixes done well on monitors will easily translate to headphones. If they don't, as Dobro mentioned, you may not be mixing properly, or your monitors are just plain bad. Listing a bit of your gear might help us pinpoint areas of improvement....

Headphones ALWAYS sound different than speakers - what's worse, what I or anyone else hears via headphones is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than what you would hear. What is heard in headphones is about as subjective to an individual as you can get - which is another reason you can't mix on them. It's hard enough mixing to make it sound good on all the sources we have now (cars - boom vans - good home stereo - bad home stereos - boom boxes - high end audio - radio - etc...), so can you imagine trying to make a mix that sounds correct on headphones for millions of people! (since each person's perception of headphone sound varies...)

Get yourself some decent monitors and you should see better results - providing you're mixing properly in the first place! (You can also consider picking up a copy of Bobby Owsinski's "The Mixing Engineer's Handbook"...)

Bruce
 
It's different

Not only is the frequency response of your cans going to be different from speakers, but the way you perceive stereo separation and placement is going to be radically different. That's sort of what I was getting at with the snippet above. I have had the same experience where I mixed with cans (by necessity, can't wake up the baby) and later listen to the mix and say, my god, what have I done. This sounds horrible. I've also had the reverse experience of listening to pro recordings I knew well on headphones and noticing things in the mix I never heard before. The stuff they dropped onto tracks 22, 23, 24, little pings and things. Or the reverb sounded totally different. Or whatever. It's a whole nother thing.
 
thanx for the responses. maybe i need to get a book (at least on how to mic in a bad place).....but for now....ok, i've got cooledit2k and i also use fruityloops. most anything i do with fruityloops sounds fine as it does'nt have to be mic-ed. this is the real problem....lousy room etc.
maybe i should just go techno! blackened techno...
you guys have me a little hazy now when u say "mixing".
ie., i record 2 tracks then select "mix down all tracks"...is that the "mixing"? or is the real mixing got to do with all the processing/editing? ie., hiss reduction/maybe echo/bass boost and whatever i think makes it sound better.
or maybe it's the actual setup/settings of equipment while recording. (which is it...all the above?!)
and again...apparently the samples that are in fruityloops are so nice that one can make a final cut right at the start. or are u guys saying that even that stuff needs to be properly "mixed"?
and if i may; being into black metal i've heard some incredibly horrible demo tracks at the end of their better sounding stuff. am i to think that these recording pro's can change those Very Same tracks into nice stuff? if so, how much is something like that?? thanx ps. oh well, i've got some Bad mic-ed tracks then....are tracks like these beyond the abilities of cooledit2k to spruce up to par? i've hammered them all repeatedly, with everything from graphic eq/hiss cut/slap back/channel swap/flange (this does seem to clean out the grit)/blah&blah, but some still sound like a demo of a demo!
 
TRACKING generally refers to the RECORDING of one or more tracks at a time. You'll want to be setting up mics for proper placement, and making sure what you're mic'ing sounds good before even throwing a mic up on it! You also want to check the sound source thru your monitors to make sure it sounds as good in the control room as it does at the source. Once you've verified things are the way they should be, you can then use headphones for the actual tracking (hitting "record" and nailing the part...) In fact, you may have to use headphones if you're tracking vocals to avoid bleed-thru. You keep TRACKING until you have nothing left to record anymore, or you run out of tracks to put it on!
The idea is to get the sound as you want it, going to tape, rather than trying to "fix it" at later stages.

MIXING generally refers to the balancing and adjustment of all the previous tracking into the cohesive entity called THE SONG. Here's where you play with effects, making any (hopefully) minor tonal adjustments, and create a sense of space and ambience around the tracks. Basically you're creating the sound stage. When mixing, you are MIXING DOWN to another 2-channel recorder (a 2-TRACK) of some sort, which results in one or more MIXES. (It's one or more because you may want to print a mix a few different ways - vocal normal, vocal up/down, guitars normal, guitars up/down... depending on the song) You can then choose later which version(s) you want to keep as a FINAL MIX - which is simply THE VERSION of the song you intend as the final result.

There is a further post-production stage to prep a final mix for release - MASTERING... which is really adding the glossy wax to make the final mix shine. Proper MASTERING is not a do-it-yourself process, as much as some would like to believe, so don't try this at home, kids! ;)

Bruce
 
like that photo, eh. yeah, guess i'll try to pay more attention to sound quality Before recording. i hear throwing a comforter over amp and mic helps...my "studio" is a bedroom.
so what's the scoop with all these tracks i have with soso quality? can i burn these to cd and bring it to a local recording genius?
 
Bruce - don't people distinguish between MIXING and MIXING DOWN, mixing down meaning reducing the whole multitrack mix to two stereo channels? And what does it mean to 'print' a mix? Save that particular combination of adjustments in that particular mix?
 
dobro said:
Bruce - don't people distinguish between MIXING and MIXING DOWN, mixing down meaning reducing the whole multitrack mix to two stereo channels? And what does it mean to 'print' a mix? Save that particular combination of adjustments in that particular mix?
Click to expand...
To me, the terms "mixing" and "mixing down" are interchangeable - both representing the action of creating a 2-track version of a multi-track recording. However, I suppose the term "mixing" doesn't necessarily imply actually recording to 2-track - you could simply be mixing a song as a dry run without "printing" it.

The term "printing" usually refers to the actual recording of either a mix, or sometimes an effect. As in "That effect was so cool on the guitar, I printed it to another track right away..."

"Printing a mix" would be the same as "mixing down", in my own terminology.

There is also SUBMIXING or PRINTING A REDUCTION, both of which mean to take 2 or more tracks and combine them to another track in order to make more tracks available for use later. This is also called simply A REDUCTION.

Bruce
 
Thanks. Also, thanks for the tip about the Owsinski book - your last recommended reading material (Howard Massey) was great.
 
Hey Dobro...

Another must-have (although a bit pricey) is Dave Moulton's Total Recording.... it's got pretty much everything and most excellently - detailed, in-depth theory.

Bruce
 
Yeah, I saw that one reviewed in July "Recording". It looks encyclopedic. I'm still at the level of 'use a popper stopper and raise or angle the mic a couple inches to avoid plosives', so I don't know if it's appropriate to me. On the other hand, maybe Moulton's book would help get me beyond the 'use a popper stopper etc' level... :D
 
Headphones & mixdown

I'm going to assume you're adding effects upon mixdown. If you're monitoring this by headphones as opposed to your minitors, obviously, reverb, delay, chorus, whatever, are going to sound very different than they would through headphones, where there is no outside influence, the room quality, the sound deflection and absorbsion factors.
:rolleyes:
Bottom line...you don't wanna mix down with headphones.
Good Luck...
http://sh-boom.freehomepage.com/index.html
 
gee to bad about all this...'cause most of my stuff does sound ok through cans. for monitors i've got the basic stereo speaker(s)...neither top nor low quality. these are going to have to suffice for now. but 'cause of this... any advice on how to position or whatever to get the most out of them ...specifically for the mixing process? danke
 
Setherial,

I feel your frustration. Started with the minimal four track and a set of phones had a couple basses and guitars got a drum machine, an SM 57 and thought I was set to do some killer home demo's. Not production quality but demo quality. WRONGO! Phone mixing will never work.

I have found Bruce at Blue Bear Sound to be extremely knowledgable and graceous
so I have to second what he said.

The thing about true monitors is that they are engineered to be "FLAT". They are not supposed to impress you they are supposed to challenge and guide you to get a good sound on flat speakers. In theory if everything sounds good on the monitors it should still sound good on cheapo speakers, pretty darn good on pretty darn good systems and pretty killer on killer systems...you get the idea.

Most of your pro studios will have several sets of monitors including a cheapo mono speaker to simulate the cheap mono speakers (found in older cars AM/FM alarm clock radios) to make sure none of your beautifull stereo effects cause phase cancellation (disapearing tracks) when converted to mono.

I finally traded in some equipment to get some true monitors not the best (Alesis M1's) but the best I could afford and the consistancy from one system to another and even to phones is much, much better.

They don't tell you this stuff when you buy the latest 4 or 8 track with the built in "pre-amps" they tell you everything you need is in the box. I think most of us get sucked into gear lust money pit this way. Oh well.
 
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