Need new headphones...suggestions?

  • Thread starter Thread starter EndangeredFeces
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EndangeredFeces

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I am in the mix/mastering stage in my berklee class, and I noticed my $20 AKG's just weren't cutting it. Anybody got any suggestions for mixing headphones at a reasonable price...like $100-150? I'm sorry for disturbing your chatroom, it seems there are a lot of locals in here...I just figured you guys would know your headphones in here. Thanks in advance. Dusty.
 
EndangeredFeces said:
I am in the mix/mastering stage in my berklee class, and I noticed my $20 AKG's just weren't cutting it. Anybody got any suggestions for mixing headphones at a reasonable price...like $100-150? Thanks in advance. Dusty.
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Are you saying your Berklee teachers are recommending you do mixing and mastering with headphones?
 
There's a difference of course between "recommending headphones", and not requiring distance learning students to have monitors.

Endangered - The reason Harvey sounds incredulous in his question is that it is a well known fact that you can't make good mixing decisions with headphones, let alone mastering decisions. They are fine, even better in many cases, for editing, but not for mixing/mastering. If you are serious about an AE career, and about getting the most out of this course, you should stick with your $20 headphones, and spend your money on monitors. Also, do some quick homework on acoustics and room treatment, and do what you can to create a usable environment for those new monitors.
 
To the extent that you can use headphones for mixing (which is in a very limited capacity) you want an open cup design, which tends to be much more accurate than closed cup types designed as tracking headphones.

Probably the cheapest good set is the Sennheiser 600 series. If you have a little more money, you can look into Grados.
 
If for some reason you absolutely can't use monitors, then AKG 240 DFs (difuse field) are the best cans I've found for trying to mix with. I can get stuff close with them, and tweak it later with the monitors, vs other phones that don't even land me in the ballpark. But they're a bit more than you want to spend, costing as much as you could get some decent powered monitors for. And while they sound great, there's no getting around the physics of isolating your right ear from the left speaker and vice versa.
 
Headphones

FWIW,

The Sony 7506's have pretty much been an industry standard for a bunch of years, and for good reason. $99, and good for everything. I've got 2 pair, in addition to my AKG & JVC sets.
 
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