noise is torturing me! headphones advice!!

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janekelson

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Hi all

I live in a noisy area and when I am working on some of my mixes with my fairly cheap average headphones I get easily distracted by the constant traffic flow etc....(I never record vocals at home, I go to a friend's very quiet studio in the mountains for that)..

Does anyone have any tips on a pair of headphones which would be good for both monitoring and noise reduction???? Lots of people talk about the Bose Noise Reducing headphones but I don't know whether they are also a good choice for monitoring????

cheers,

jane
 
The Bose phones are not really monitoring quality. What you're looking for is closed-back head phones, although most of them would be fatiguing for extended listening periods. I don't know how noisy your place is, but I live pretty close to an airport. I use AKG K240S phones. They're open-back though, but I find that they give enough isolation from the outside world for me. I like them because they're relatively non-fatiguing, sound good, and give a bit more sense of "space" compared to most closed-back phones.
 
janekelson said:
Hi all

I live in a noisy area and when I am working on some of my mixes with my fairly cheap average headphones I get easily distracted by the constant traffic flow etc....(I never record vocals at home, I go to a friend's very quiet studio in the mountains for that)..

Does anyone have any tips on a pair of headphones which would be good for both monitoring and noise reduction???? Lots of people talk about the Bose Noise Reducing headphones but I don't know whether they are also a good choice for monitoring????

cheers,

jane
Click to expand...
First off mixing with headphones is a bad idea. There are a few reasons but broadly speaking you will not get an accurate representation of what's going on in your mix.

Here's a good article on the subject:

http://www.bluebearsound.com/articles/headphones.htm

What makes things worse for you is that closed back designs are worse than open back designs in terms of innaccuracy, so the better they are at keeping out noise, the less appropriate they'll be for mixing (although as the article says headphones aren't suitable for mixing at all really).

Sorry to sound negative and unhelpful but that's the way it is. :o
 
Jane, Yamaha has some better-than-okay cans for budget studios but ultimately, headphones are NOT a good primary reference for mixing. Checking your mix is one thing but you neeed some flat reference monitors. Don't find out the hard way. I've learned everything I know about recording on the fly and it's taken me literally years to stop being frustrated with myself.

If you don't have a lot of money I recommend the Tascam VL-S21s which you can get for about a bill. They come with a solid subwoofer that is accurate to around the 30Hz area.

I use ref monitors, a boom box and pair of phones to check my mixes but point A is always the monitors. It's the only way to be accurate. Any other way is a waste of precious time.

Sincerely. I know.


(In my headphone days I used to employ a little self taught trick of mixing everything but the bass with the phones and then use a cheap speaker/sub combo to do the bass lines but.....I don't even know why I told you that. It works to a certain point but it will never sound like you really wanted it to. )
 
Hi again

I do have monitors - (alesis mk2) as my primary monitoring source, I just sometimes like to use headphones like when I'm laying down a keyboard line or something like that and want to listen to what's already been recorded while laying the new track. I live near a major highway which appears to suddenly have become the road of choice for every semitrailer in the world, very very distracting! thanks for your tips, guess I need to head off and do some testing of headphones!

cheers

J
 
Have a look at the Audio Technica ATH-M40fs They are closed back offering good isolation and are more detailed than most others I've tried. They are also quite light and less fatigueing (sp?) on the ears

Alec

forgot to mention...they are LOUD!
 
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The use of headphones as personel monitors while recording is fine and it's common practice, but not in the mixing phase. Even the higher quality headphones wont give you accurate bass, I learned this the hard way by messing up quite a few mixes before I discovered what I was doing wrong. It's tricky with good monitors and almost impossible with headphones.
 
Check out headfi.com for info about headphones.
Bose phones are very lowly regarded. You could get a pair of etymotic er4s in ear monitors, which have superb detail and isolation. However, they are rolled off above 16khz, and have a kind of bright sound. Another option is AKG K340 dynamic/elctrostatic closed phones which are now discontinued. They show up occasionally on ebay for about $150 used. The level of detail is very good and the imaging is outstanding.
 
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