mixing on headphones

Hey jimmy that was cool. You didn't really start the whole thing, nor were you quite as harsh as some others. Unfortunately, your status as Moderator makes you something like the "voice of the forum". Like it or not, I guess. Those of us who've been around awhile are aware that you're at least as full of shit as the rest of us ;). Newbies and casual guests, though, will tend to look to you for cues. Oh whatever...

I was going to say that I feel like one can only really learn so much in ideal circumstances. It might be nice to start from a solid foundation, but I think that true professionalism means getting the job done despite all the obstacles. Think jogging with ankle weights, maybe...

Frankly, a person just starting out pretty much must go through all of the hard work of double checking and second guessing no matter what they're mixing on. That in fact might be the most important part of the process. Hell, I can't call a mix done until I've lived with it for a week or more and heard on every system I have access to. Now that I've got decent monitors and speakers, I'm not going back to tweak quite so much, but I'm in the habit, and I think it's a good one.
 
There are a lot worse things you could do than mix on a nice set of cans. I've seen a lot of professionals agree that if you had a choice between the headphones or a crappy, untreated room with entry-level monitors you should go with the cans. Obviously neither is ideal, but I've heard a lot of good mixes come from headphones only. As long as you don't let the bass get crazy(which is about as easy to pick up as the "sound" of monitors in an untreated room) you're fine.
 
ashcat_lt said:
Hey jimmy that was cool. You didn't really start the whole thing, nor were you quite as harsh as some others. Unfortunately, your status as Moderator makes you something like the "voice of the forum". Like it or not, I guess. Those of us who've been around awhile are aware that you're at least as full of shit as the rest of us ;). Newbies and casual guests, though, will tend to look to you for cues. Oh whatever...
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I am just another guy here. I volunteer to try to keep things in perspective. I am not here as a mod to be a personality-less member.

Some people take themselves way to seriously, and I find a bit of humor in that. I really just like to try to lighten up the mood a bit sometimes. May not be the best thing to do as a mod, but I am also not playing Father to any members either. Anyway, I would much rather have a fun dad, that a grouchy dad with a stick up his ass.

I just try to keep peace and hold up the rules with the personalities around here. Ya know, moderation... Yeah, I can be full of shit sometimes I suppose, but I don't call people 'dicks'. Well, not lately. :)

The beauty of this site to me, is the fact that there are extremely professional people, colorful people, some people with deserved attitudes, an occasional troll, members that are new to this and looking for advice, and all the while the community has fun on the site-while learning from each other.

Try that on other recording forum sites...

Moresound compared this site to the 3 bears one time. This 'porridge' is just right in my opinion as well.
 
Hey jimmy. Need some advice. Forget the cans/monitors thing.... There's this hot chick lives down the street. Should I ask her out or wait till she finds out I'm a "producah"?
 
I went from a pair of Sennheiser HD280 to the Audio Technica ATH-M50 and couldn't be happier. Honestly, I do a lot of my mixing on these, and only near the end of the process do I tweak levels using the monitors. And more often than not, the tweaks near the end are more about subtle properties of the mix. Overall I get 95% of the mix done (well IMO) using just the M50s.

Now with the HD280s I didn't have nearly the same degree of confidence, and would rely heavily on my monitors.

As someone posted here - get a feel for how the headphones color the sound, then compensate accordingly when making your adjustments. The M50s actually don't color too much, maybe low-mids. Doing mixes on headphones alone will defintiely end up biting you in the ass at some point though. As I listen to my earliest mixes done years before I got proper monitors, I am constantly kicking myself for not dropping coin on an adequate setup.
 
I have a pair of AKG K-240 MKII that I love and weren't expensive, they go for under $120. I'm a proponent of listening on multiple systems as well and I particularly like checking a mix out in my car. Also, there are a few plug-ins available for headphone monitoring that will emulate a "speakers in a room" environment. I have one from Tone Boosters called Isone that offers customizable speakers, rooms and more. I think Focusrite has one too. I don't think they equal real-monitor listening but Isone gives you a good reference. Isone goes for about a $20 download.
 
What about if we know that the majority of our listeners are going to download from iTunes and listen on ear buds plugged into an iPod? Do we check our mixes on them, encoded as MP3 or AAC or FLAC? Is this the equivalent of listening on a single Auratone for mono AM radio mixes back in the day?
 
I'm still stuck on the wunderkind,been "producing" since age 12,and "indy" label that can't afford to buy him some monitors.
but it is what it is so I'll go w/ the AKG K240's or on an even cheaper budget the K44's,but either way the mix will need to be referenced somewhere else like in a vehicle w/ a decent system.
 
I'm a talented audio tech and don't have anyone financially backing me, and I'm entirely self-taught (sans whatever info I gain from forums). There's a lot of people out there in the music world with tons of talent but no large financial force behind them. I've played in bands with them, bought their independent releases online, etc. The fact this person has been doing it from a young age (they're maybe 18 now?) is a good thing, yes? Is there a graduation date somewhere in the audiophile's handbook I missed? Or a minimum age where you're supposed to get licensed to drive a mixing board?

The underlying tone in the thread by some here is a put-off. I get RAMI's original point and know from prior posts that he's not trying to hurt anyone's feelings. The motivations of the rest of the bandwagon jumping in are suspect at best.

It appears Sam's received the info he asked for, plus. Hopefully they realize most people on this forum are friendly and supportive. It certainly doesn't shine through in the posts in this thread.
 
Brento said:
What about if we know that the majority of our listeners are going to download from iTunes and listen on ear buds plugged into an iPod? Do we check our mixes on them, encoded as MP3 or AAC or FLAC? Is this the equivalent of listening on a single Auratone for mono AM radio mixes back in the day?
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I kind of touched on this earlier, but you've gone a bit different direction with it.

I personally wouldn't (and don't) worry about the conversion. There are still debates, I guess, but I have convinced myself that the high-bitrate and "lossless" formats are close enough to the full .wav that any decent mix will survive without any special considerations. You do need to leave a little headroom (<1db usually) in the final master to avoid inter sample overs which might pop up in the conversion process, but that's just good general hygiene anyway, and not really a "mixing" issue.

I do think that it's important to consider what happens to your mix when it's played on a bass-deficient system. Whether it's earbuds or laptop speakers, or whatever there are a lot of common situations where the listener could be missing the bottom couple octaves. It might be nice to know that they won't completely miss out on any important elements which you might have hanging around down there.

It would also be nice to know if you're going to make people sick or have your listeners walking crooked from having extreme panning tricks which cause severe imbalance when heard through headphones. Jimmy said something about how any good mix made on speakers will sound fine on headphones. I already mentioned one which really doesn't work that way. That Low album is kind of meant to be difficult and experimental, though. If you look back a bit, though, there are quite a number of classic recordings - CCR comes to mind immediately - which sound pretty great on speakers, but kind of suck on headphones because the entire rythm section is hard-panned one way or another. This just to say that "real" speakers tend to hide the true stereo width of your mix, and it might be worth double-checking sometimes to make sure you haven't gone too far.
 
ashcat_lt said:
It would also be nice to know if you're going to make people sick or have your listeners walking crooked from having extreme panning tricks which cause severe imbalance when heard through headphones. Jimmy said something about how any good mix made on speakers will sound fine on headphones. I already mentioned one which really doesn't work that way. That Low album is kind of meant to be difficult and experimental, though. If you look back a bit, though, there are quite a number of classic recordings - CCR comes to mind immediately - which sound pretty great on speakers, but kind of suck on headphones because the entire rythm section is hard-panned one way or another. This just to say that "real" speakers tend to hide the true stereo width of your mix, and it might be worth double-checking sometimes to make sure you haven't gone too far.
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One I learned about on an long airplane ride was Bob Seger. Dry vocals left, reverb right. Never noticed it on speakers.
 
ashcat_lt said:
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Jimmy said something about how any good mix made on speakers will sound fine on headphones. I already mentioned one which really doesn't work that way. That Low album is kind of meant to be difficult and experimental, though. If you look back a bit, though, there are quite a number of classic recordings - CCR comes to mind immediately - which sound pretty great on speakers, but kind of suck on headphones because the entire rythm section is hard-panned one way or another. This just to say that "real" speakers tend to hide the true stereo width of your mix, and it might be worth double-checking sometimes to make sure you haven't gone too far.
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On the other hand, a significant percentage of the music that inspired and continues to inspire was mixed in the vocals left/bass and drums panned hard right era. So many of us try to re~write history according to the way we want it to be now. That's not a pop at anyone. Some of the people on this site I have the greatest respect for have little time for the panning schemes of yesteryear.
I get your point and many agree with you. It's just never been an issue for me. If one won't listen to a song because they don't like the panning scheme...........well, then don't ! But however it's done, phones and speakers always sound different to me {as do different stereos and mediums}. But I don't care because it's the same song.
 
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