EQ w/ Headphones or Monitors?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Valley Arts Kid
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Valley Arts Kid

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What's the consensus? Is it better to EQ using headphones or monitors?
 
It depends on the quality of your headphones and of your monitors.
EQing can be very tricky when:

- using headphones that are not open type and not of geat quality
- headphones are used without an headphone amp that drives sufficient current, or with a poor amp
- monitors are in an untreated room
- monitors have phase problems and issues
- bad monitor amplifier
- monitor positionning is wrong

So what I advise you to do, is EQ the way you mix AND DURING the playback. Do not solo tracks to eq, it means nothing. You have to make the WHOLE sound good.
 
Monitors is by far the way to go. But i have had a bit of luck with using my Audiotechnica ATHM40fs headphones for mixing. They closed back and arnt so scooped. I think its important to hear the mids with headphones. They are pretty confusing and unbalanced with headphones. AKG K240s gave me horrible mixes.

Danny
 
darnold said:
AKG K240s gave me horrible mixes.
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The K240s are essentially hifi cans, good for tracking/monitoring, but dont give you a flat frequency response.

You should try the K240df, which are flat frequency response - terrible for hifi (the flat, unscooped mids will scare your pants off :), but good for stuff that needs to a real "sound picture". Totally apples and oranges (soundwise) compared to the K240s (I have used both).

Having said that, the statutory warning says that you shouldn't mix with headphones, but then of course the question wasn't about mixing per se, so that's cool.
 
Definatly get the monitors and dont just buy the ones that look like computer speakers.

Use the Phones for tracking the Monitors for mixing. :)

-Blaze
 
Thanks for the advice. My monitors are an old yet reliable pair of RSL 3600.
 
breeeeza said:
Monitors! headphones can be biased to some frequencies
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It depends on the headphones and headphone amp. The K240DF and most open Sennheiser models are diffuse-field EQ'd, which means they are so flat to the ears, that most speakers (even those costing thousands, even in great rooms) can't approach this.

Don't be afraid of the truth....$ for $, headphones are much flatter and you don't have to treat your room or wake everyone in the middle of the night.
 
blazingstrings said:
Use the Phones for tracking the Monitors for mixing. :)
-Blaze
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...unless you happen to have a great headphone system.
 
GIVE IT UP DEWD!
Why am I still responding to you its aparent you know nothing.
I'm done with ya!


Hey Valley Arts Kid!

Trust the majority, Like I said decent Phones for tracking monitors for mixing.
Experiance proves that.

Later

-Blaze
 
blazingstrings said:
GIVE IT UP DEWD!
Why am I still responding to you its aparent you know nothing.
I'm done with ya!

Trust the majority, Like I said decent Phones for tracking monitors for mixing.
Experiance proves that.

-Blaze
Click to expand...
Well, I know better than you, cause I know how to mix with BOTH (monitors and headphones).

Trusting the majority is following like a sheep. Why don't you let people be the judges of their own actions? I never said mixing with monitors was wrong. I said mixing with headphones was an interesting alternative. I AM open-minded about both approaches.
 
It has nothing to do with following like sheep. There's a reason most, if not all, experts will agree on something.

In this case, it has nothing to do with how flat a response the headphones give you. There are many other factors that make even the best phones a less than wise choice for mixing. One of them is the fact that the bones in your face and head altar your perception of sound. Not taking this and other factors into account (other than "if the headphones are good it should rule") doesn't leave anyone in a position to claim "I know how to mix with both".
 
RAMI said:
It has nothing to do with following like sheep. There's a reason most, if not all, experts will agree on something.

In this case, it has nothing to do with how flat a response the headphones give you. There are many other factors that make even the best phones a less than wise choice for mixing. One of them is the fact that the bones in your face and head altar your perception of sound. Not taking this and other factors into account (other than "if the headphones are good it should rule") doesn't leave anyone in a position to claim "I know how to mix with both".
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The "the bones in your face and head..." argument is easily counterweighted by the room acoustics argument when using monitors.

Indeed, I think that for open headphones, the effect of the bones is much less appearant. It evens completely disapears.

With closed headphones, no doubt that the bones play a much bigger role, because they form a resonance chamber with the capsules of the phones.

This is why serious mixers use open high quality headphones with high quality headphone amplifiers.

BTW: experts agree because they are used to monitors. I am used to headphones more than monitors, so for me, mixing with headphones is much easier. I've spent at least 70% of my lifetime musical listening with headphones. Thus, I know how a mix should sound on them. Pro's are used to speakers and can't mix a damn shit on headphones. It's all a matter of getting used to and knowing your monitors/headphones.
 
I find that one of the main reasons, aside from frequency responce, that EQing with headphones doesn't work very well is the fact that you have L/R separation in the first place, so things might sound more clear on the headphones. Also sometimes EQing can cause some changes in the phase relationships which again wouldn't manifest themselves until you listen on the monitors.
 
It also depends on what one's definition of "mixing" is. Using headphones to solo an instrument to zero in on a frequency or check on on an edit is one thing. But "mixing" to me is listening to a "mix" of the whole song and determining things like panning of a guitar or how much reverb to put on the vocals. Things like that are always exaggerated and unrealistic in headphones regardless of the quality.
 
TheDewd said:
The "the bones in your face and head..." argument is easily counterweighted by the room acoustics argument when using monitors.
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Well, if you're going to assume everyone has a bad room, then I'm assuming you have a bad face. At least we can change our rooms. You can't change your bones.

This is why serious mixers use open high quality headphones.
Click to expand...
Really...I guess alot of people I looked up to in the business aren't "serious". Though you didn't say they ONLY use headphones.

BTW: experts agree because they are used to monitors.
Click to expand...
I thought you said all the "serious" mixers used head phones. Make up your mind.
 
RAMI said:
Well, if you're going to assume everyone has a bad room, then I'm assuming you have a bad face. At least we can change our rooms. You can't change your bones.


Really...I guess alot of people I looked up to in the business aren't "serious". Though you didn't say they ONLY use headphones.


I thought you said all the "serious" mixers used head phones. Make up your mind.
Click to expand...

1) Most people don't have $100 000 to put on room treatment...I certainly don't ! And don't get me wrong, with room treatment, if you don't go ALL the way, you won't get any results. So room treatment is a minimal $100 000.

2) By serious mixers, I should have been more precise. I meant serious mixers that are
1-) open minded
2-) willing to use headphones.

I would not suggest anyone who wants to try headphones for mixing to use $40 headphones. That would not work.

What I wanted to say is that someone who's serious about using headphones (or who would like to try) would have a lot of trouble when not using a quality headphone system.

You are following like a sheep and are closed minded. Why don't you just let go your close mindedness and accept that mixes done with quality headphone systems can be great (assuming a great engineer who is used to headphones).
 
Yo, guys!

Heh - this discussion is getting a wee bit out of control, resulting in a "you are wrong because I am right" match. :)

Please note that the original poster did *not* ask about mixing - just about EQing (possibly of single tracks), which is quite a different beast from mixing.

As for the "mixing on headphones" argument - there will always be people who will argue either side.

While it is quite true that room acoustics play a major role, and that monitors are likely to provide a much more realistic acoustic environment when it comes to mixing, there have been advances in headphone technology which could make headphones feasible at some point.

If you don't believe that, just remember what Sony's Walkman headphones did back in the 70s and 80s - before them, people believed that you could only get "heavy" sound using huge cans with big speakers and drivers!

I remember similar arguments when it came to IDE v/s SCSI hard disks half a decade ago - with arguments going that IDE could never provide the speed, reliability and capacities of SCSI disks, and should therefore never be used for servers. Today, of course, things are very very different. :)

And let's not forget that an experienced sound engineer can mix without headphones or monitors - just by level meters!

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/4307/0

So instead of arguing over it (and failing to convince either side), let's just agree to disagree for now, and let time, technology and experience be the final judge.
 
I agree with noisewreck.

You will miss huge things when only using headphones. When you hear it later or check your mix you have the "what hells wrong" Feeling. :rolleyes:

Been there done that. At best We use phones when tracking and sometimes when editing things, but more so edits,mixing and EQ'ing are all done on monitors. For our studio that is.

Sorry for the bickering guys, as I said I'm done with him.

-=Blaze
 
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