mixing with headphones

I agree with Tex, for tracking, I like HD280's. I have significant hearing loss and have to run headphones rather loud, including click tracks, so attenuation is critical. If I get a little bleed from the headphones w/ guitar, thats one thing, but recording a click track really, really, sucks. Mixing? I wouldn't know, I don't mix with headphones.-Richie
 
Skysaw said:
Yet another point. If you mix solely in headphones, you will not hear any phase cancellation between the two channels, no matter how your ears adjust.
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I don't see how this would be a problem. Phase cancelling from the recording would be accurately presented, because each channel would be presented to each ear.

If you mean phase cancellation from the near-field (or loudspeaker) monitors, because sound travels through space and bounces off surfaces, then I'd say one better get their monitors and room set up more properly.

If anything this would be a benefit of headphones, eliminating possible phase cancellations due to improper sound setup, allowing to hear phase cancellation between the channels better.
 
Why not do the work that is nice with cans and do the mix without? Cleaning up track a.s.o. works almost nicer with cans...

I even did some mixes with cans at night and the checked a lot in the afterwards... This surely is a VERY inefficient way...

I also had the impression that some very short delays sounded awesome in my cans and shitty in real life - probably due to some partial cancellations - that cannot occur in cans, so check the sound in mono, too (AND on your monitors)...


aXel
 
I'll chuck my two cents in....... Headphones are best for editing, monitors for mixing, I'm sure that's agreed. I do think that the home recordist has to choose all to often between working under the cans or not working at all, and so they're gonna do what they have to do. I think that a good amount of mixing can be done with headphones, so long as the final bit is done on monitors. I've worked this way, and found that the re-tweaks are usually not huge, that the headphone mix is not on the bullseye, but it's not completely off the target either. With experience you even start to anticipate the difference, and mix accordingly under the cans, but never to the point where the monitor reality check is no longer necessary.
Regards, RD
 
SalJustSal said:
I don't see how this would be a problem. Phase cancelling from the recording would be accurately presented, because each channel would be presented to each ear.
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If you have a phase problem between the right and left channels, you can only hear it with an ear that is hearing both right and left channels. If each ear is hearing only one channel, that's not going to happen.

As an extreme example, record a sine wave on the right channel, and have it duplicated on the left 180 degrees out of phase. In any position you sit where your ears are approximately the same distance from each speaker, the sound will cancel out.

If you listen to the same recording in headphones, it will not cancel out. Each ear will be hearing a sine wave.
 
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