Headphone leakage

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wings012345

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So I bought a really nice sensitive condenser mic. Its picking up sound from the headphones. What headphones are good for not leaking the audio?
 
Why worry about headphone leakage? It will never be heard in your finished recording.
 
If you use any decent closed cup headphones and the sound can be heard outside, I guarantee you're monitoring at levels high enough that you're doing permanent damage to your hearing.
 
Sometimes a certain amount leakage can add life and warmth to a mix that you can't archieve in other ways.
IMO performance, choice and placement of the mic and your mixing abilities is way more important. If the leakage is clearly audible in the final mix you're compressing too much mate :-)

It's common to play the mix to a condenser from a couple of speaker to get the room sound close micing killed in the first place.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about a little leakage, even on a vocal track. As long as you were doing the track with the same backing tracks that are in the final mix. What I mean is, you don't want to get leakage if you did your vocal track with a click track or a dummy drum track that you were planning on changing later, because then you'l end up with something that isn't part of the finished song on your track. It may or might not cause problems.

As far as simply turning down, that's not always practical. I agree that monitoring too loud can cause hearing damage, so it's good advice health-wise. But some singers need volume to be able to belt out a vocal track. You don't want that "home recording" vocal sound where it sounds like you were singing without trying to wake anyone up in the next room. A lot of home recordings have very "timid" vocal tracks, and I'm sure part of the reason is trying to sing to a low-volume music track.

Also, when I'm doing a drum track, I need good volume in my headphones just to hear everything over my actual acoustic drum sound. And nobody's going to tell me I hit too hard because that would be stupid.

So "turn it down" sounds good on paper, but it's not always possible or desirable. Just live with bit of leakage.
 
RAMI said:
As far as simply turning down, that's not always practical. I agree that monitoring too loud can cause hearing damage, so it's good advice health-wise. But some singers need volume to be able to belt out a vocal track. You don't want that "home recording" vocal sound where it sounds like you were singing without trying to wake anyone up in the next room. A lot of home recordings have very "timid" vocal tracks, and I'm sure part of the reason is trying to sing to a low-volume music track.
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This is true, all excellent points Rami. You have to find a balance - there is definitely a difference between loud, really loud and hearing damage loud...
 
If you're recording predominantly quiet sources such as acoustic guitars, it's quite possible for a leaking click to be heard in the final mix, especially if you have a long ringing chord at the end that's just fading....

In that case, do two things... learn to play with quiet noise in the headphones, and tailor your click to stop at the right spot..
 
Armistice said:
If you're recording predominantly quiet sources such as acoustic guitars, it's quite possible for a leaking click to be heard in the final mix, especially if you have a long ringing chord at the end that's just fading....

In that case, do two things... learn to play with quiet noise in the headphones, and tailor your click to stop at the right spot..
Click to expand...

Wasn't someone just talking about a cool trick like recording the click by itself, then record the guitar and the click, then phase inverse the click and it cancels it out in the mix? Maybe I dreamed it...
 
arcadeko said:
Wasn't someone just talking about a cool trick like recording the click by itself, then record the guitar and the click, then phase inverse the click and it cancels it out in the mix? Maybe I dreamed it...
Click to expand...

Dreaming about HR!
 
arcadeko said:
Wasn't someone just talking about a cool trick like recording the click by itself, then record the guitar and the click, then phase inverse the click and it cancels it out in the mix? Maybe I dreamed it...
Click to expand...

Maybe, but god, that's just way too much trouble... I used to have the issue early on in my recordings until I learnt how not to have it!
 
arcadeko said:
Wasn't someone just talking about a cool trick like recording the click by itself, then record the guitar and the click, then phase inverse the click and it cancels it out in the mix? Maybe I dreamed it...
Click to expand...

Yeah I saw that somewhere on here too! But then I think one of the older more experienced guys came in and said it doesn't work.
 
The phase invert trick only works with two identical tracks. You need only listen to the tinny quality of headphone leakage to realise it's far from identical to the original.
 
How 'bout slamming a gate on the track to get rid of the leakage? Sort of an audio version of wearing Depends ...
 
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