Headphones for mixing

[tubesrawsom]

I agree with the dewd, but i have my own perspective on this matter.
accurate moniters are great and everything but its all mostly materialistic most of us can tell the difference b/t good and crappy so mixing on crappy headphones or moniters is crap. But lets say you listen to these crapy noise makers and you get used to the frequency response and the way everything translates on them there should be no reason why one shouldnt be able to create an ok balanced mix. So mabe these amazing sounding moniters are good for lazy engineers and for some company to make some good money, It could be.It really about how you listen not all about how its comes thrue, but i agree with you all i dont want to fatigue and/or desrtoy my hearing listening to crappy sounding headphones or moniters.

peace

 

[kylen]

I'm just completing my move from a house (unlimited dBSPL) into an apartment (limited dBSPL) so I'll let you all know what I find in the future...

I've already posted elsewhere about my usual reaction to mixing & mastering in [normal] headphones - lack of localization, depth, freq balance, tactile response (vibrating air molecules hitting your chest), etc. But now I have to make some changes or...

I'm a semi-pro type who usually does this for myself and friends but I really don't want to give it up! The first thing I've found in the apartment is that with a little bass trapping and a closer monitoring triangle (3feet) I can still hit 75dBC SPL with very little leakage outside of the room - that surprised me a lot. A 3 foot triangle is usually uncomfortable that loud so turning the volume down seems sensible - now that I have the volume restriction and have to anyway.

But now for the tricky part - I know I'm going to have to rely more on my special tools like spectrum analyzers, waterfalls, EQ to balance the monitors to account for any loudness delta from my normal 85-90 dBC SPL levels in the room (EQing monitors at 75dBSPL with lots less room interaction should work to a point), EQ to also compensate for any fletcher-munson effect at 70-75dBSPL in my own hearing, and finally [gulp] I'm going to have to rely on headphones more...I stuck a Berringer DEQ2496 EQ in my monitoring chain (see below) and my plan is to save some presets in there for speaker EQ balance as well as individual [3D Virtual] headpone balances.

But just sticking on a set of cans isn't going to hack it - I've got an idea. I'm trying to mimic some of the binaural, psychoacoustic, and head related transfer effect (HRTF) that listening in the open air to stereo monitors gives...I have a couple of 3D tools from Wave Arts (Panorama) and Spin Audio (3D Panner Studio) to try and create a virtual room during monitoring - this would be plug-ins on the master - when rendering the mix I'll just turn it off.

http://wavearts.com/Panorama.html
http://spinaudio.com/products.php?id=18&page=description

I'll let you know what I think later after I've worked with this for a while...I'll also need to EQ the [Virtual 3D] Headphones (open, closed and canal) a bit just as I would in a room (using trapping and auralex) except there are no room peaks and nulls to deal with - just the transmission path to the cochlea!

The monitoring is Berringer DEQ2496 --> Benchmark DAC-1 --> Event ASP8 Nearfields (70-75dBC SPL), Senn HD600 open air, Beyer DT770 closed, Shure E4c canal. The phones I'll listen to as loud as I like obviously.

Wish me luck!