mic placement with headphones?

N

noground

New member
I've read other threads on similar subjects but I am still confused. This might all just be that I'm confused by the terms "tracking" and "recording" but here goes:

I am considering getting some headphones to use as my main reference for a recording. I’m NOT planning on mixing with them. I just want to know if it would be a bad idea for me to use them for analyzing and tweaking sounds. (For example, comparing placing the mic 6” or 3" away from my acoustic, or seeing if the bass drum is punchy enough, or do I really need monitors for this?)

I’m planning on recording a full length album (mostly rock style) on my portable Roland VS-1680. Being new to most of this, I’m planning on spending lots of time playing around with mic choice and placement as well as trying the recording in many different rooms. It would be very convenient to be able to bring the headphones with me to wherever I go. Since time is not a factor to me, I can spend as long as I want on mixdown and will have time to compare between many different inexact speaker systems, so monitors are not necessary for mixdown (I don’t think). Because of this I have concluded that I should be able to finish this project without needing studio monitors.

If headphones WOULD be acceptable as a reference I would need something flat which leaves my sounds uncolored. I spent some time comparing headphones, but while reading reviews it was hard to discern between headphones that “sound good” and headphones that would act as a good reference.

I have seen hype about the following headphones: Sennheiser HD580, AKG K-240M, Grado SR 125, Sony MDR 7506. I have tried to find frequency response charts for these and have been quite unsucessful. Some of them are made to have a "diffuse-field frequency response". Would this make these nearly as acurate as speakers in finding the right sounds? Will headphone speakers respond as quickly to dynamics as regular speakers? Will any of these get the job done sufficiently in my situation, or will I put my guitar or drum sounds through regular speakers and notice that my headphones were inexact and have to do it all over again?

Any advice would be appreciated.
 
You CAN use headphones for tracking, but they still shouldn't be your ONLY frame of reference (unless you have no choice!)

I've had success doing remote location sessions using BeyerDynamic 770Pro phones. I'd recommend those - high power handling, and excellent frequency response. They also provide a high-degree of isolation, allowing better monitoring.

Bruce
 
AHA:]

Someone else has finally boosted the Beyer 770 cans. Although they may not be the best, they are very good for the price.

I won't mention how good the Yorkville YSM-1 monitors are or how little they cost.

Bruce, I'm about to order my Masterlink; just shopping around for the best price but 1400 pezzutos seems to be a steady price so far.

I do hope it works when I take it out of the box!

Green Hornet
 
If some one else is going to be playing the instrument I don’t sugest you trying to listing to how it sounds in a pair of headphones. Maybe I just miss understood you but you wanted to take the headphones in different rooms with you so you could reference how that instrument sounds. If you are in the same room as say a kick drum and you are trying to here how it sounds threw head phones, the actual sound of the kick drum will interfere with what you may think you here in the head phones. If you can afford to by a pair of studio monitors you will be better off. If you need to use the headphones try not to be in the same room as the instrument.

If you are playing all the instruments your self you don’t riley have a choice but to use headphones otherwise you will get feed back. If possible after you record it you should try to listen to it an a set of monitors.
Andy
 
ADS said:
If some one else is going to be playing the instrument I don’t sugest you trying to listing to how it sounds in a pair of headphones. Maybe I just miss understood you but you wanted to take the headphones in different rooms with you so you could reference how that instrument sounds. If you are in the same room as say a kick drum and you are trying to here how it sounds threw head phones, the actual sound of the kick drum will interfere with what you may think you here in the head phones. If you can afford to by a pair of studio monitors you will be better off. If you need to use the headphones try not to be in the same room as the instrument.

If you are playing all the instruments your self you don’t riley have a choice but to use headphones otherwise you will get feed back. If possible after you record it you should try to listen to it an a set of monitors.
Andy
Click to expand...
Funny... I could have sworn I just said that!

As I mentioned, the DT770Pro phones provide a high degree of isolation... I've used them to track drums in a remote recording session and they worked very well...

Of course, you want to have monitors also (if possible), but for monitors to work correctly, you would need to be in a control room with the instrument being tracked in another room... otherwise the sound of the instrument being tracked (say amp'd guitar or durms) will bleed over the sound of the monitors causing you MORE problems than with the headphones!

Bruce
 
thanks for the advice guys...

I want to clarify one thing: I'm planning on recording an instrument and then putting on the headphones and listening to how the recording sounded, then I will move it a couple inches and try it again. I just don't want to have to carry the 1680 back to my room and hook it back up to the monitors so I can say "oh, there's too much bass that close to the sound hole...". If the phones were used in this fashion, and I tried to keep everything in mono (just to find the right basic sounds), could they be thought of as a good reference?

It seems to me that if I put all the sounds in mono, this will eliminate most of the discrepancy between headphones and the speakers (such as phasing or stereo image). Then the truth of the sound should depend fully on the frequency response, and if a pair of phones are made with a flat enough frequency response then this should fulfill my purpose as well as a pair of monitor speakers would.

Do you think I'm at all on the mark with this?

(yes, I'm starting to realize that later on in the process I'm going to need monitor speakers, but I'm new at this and most of my time for now will be spent doing tests like those I have described above.)
 
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