MIXING AND MASTERING THROUGH HEADPHONES (WHICH 2 BUY)

Beyerdynamic DT770

I love my DT150's personally.

Yeap mostly DT 100 and also 150 are standards too.

mix with phones only is a bad idea.
there is no interaction with the air and surfaces in a space.
put the money towards a good set of monitors.

G4 450DP Mac OS X (10.4.4) digidesign, motu, apogee

My problem is, I see it that if I'm going to get some monitors then I should get really good ones that'll last a long time. And I just really can't afford that. So I do most of my mixes and stuff on my headphones, and then take it to my friends house/uni where there ARE decent monitors for me to check how it sounds.

I definitely agree... it's better to mix with monitors than headphones.

There's very little space with headphones and things like levels and panning can be rather deceiving with headphones. The mix won't travel as well when you mix only with headphones.

Monitors give you a better interaction with the space between them.

However, we use Sennheiser D280's for monitoring... we find the sound can't be beat.

jord

AKG K1000

Cheers,
Bryan

hi jord, BTW i have a set of stax ear speakers vintage 1978/79. electrostatic. still work. cost a fortune then - beautiful reproduction. you can hear the musos in an orchestra flip the score pages in soft passages!!! binaural recordings put you right there. love 'em. never sell 'em. and most important of all: i never mix on 'em.

G4 450DP Mac OS X (10.4.4) digidesign, motu, apogee

Now those sound nice! I haven't seen those for a long time (I had a few friends that were studo engineers that owned a set of them). I do agree with you: don't mix on them. That could really mess up how things travel. :-D

jord

My feeling is that when doing something creative like making music or painting a picture, if someone tells you that "you should never do [blank]" they are wrong. It is a perfectly viable option to mix on headphones. Headphones eliminate any acoustic problems your mixing environment might present. In my experience headphones also seem to offer a more accurate dipiction of relative instrument levels. If you train your ears on headphones enough by listening to your reference recordings on them, I feel that you can adequately mix on headphones. I think if you only mix on monitors you are doing your mixes a disservice. I'm just guessing but I think it's fair to say that at least half of all commercial music being consumed today is delivered by headphones. Headphones should be considered when mixing as should car stereos and boom boxes.

Having said that, using both headphones and monitors is best I think.

I use Sony MDR-7506.

PBG4 1.33 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

mix with phones only is a bad idea.

Agreed. Absolutely. Headphones are good for editing, however.

As for mastering, well... forget about headphones. Mastering requires a good, professionally prepared room, professionally calibrated reference monitors and amps, good ears, and skills.

Oh, did I mention skills?

I don't concur. Headphones may offer a more perceived "accurate" frequency response, but they lack spatial response because everything is shoved right in your ears. This can lead to misjudgement regarding placement of instruments which will also affect other aspects such as phase and perceived volume. As far as the acoustic problems, many can be handled with the use of a hardware graphic eq and a sub-woofer.

Seeing as the car is one of the toughest spots to get a mix right, it is definitely more important to get the space right and mix predominately with monitors. Getting this, as well as the other aspects, down will result in mixes that travel better from place to place.

Headphones have their place and should be used in the mixing process, but they should be used in conjunction with monitors in order to fine tune between the two (which can sometimes be a timely process and requires patience and perspective).

jord

You can Use Headphones for mastering if you want but its not the best idea

save the money and get good monitors or train your ears really well so you can add both headphones and monitors to get a good mix

I do most of mixes on Monitors then when done listen to them on headphones to hear the wideness of the mix compare to the monitors and the room

also i always listen mix in mono as well whilst missing, through both the monitor, headphone and the logic's CORRELATION plug-in

but most of don't use one thing for mixing and also if you can get yourself some old school stereo which is really small and listen to the mix on them to hear how they sound as well

50% of the people that'll listen your album or songs will do it on **** or small stereo systems not professional monitors like the studios has ( put that in mind )

stash

In some cases, you can use a hardware graphic eq to correct some of characteristics of the room. However, you need to use a spectrum analyzer (you can use Logic's along with a good mic). If you discover a standing wave in your room (this will show up as a hump or spike in your spectrum analyzer), you can either use the graphic eq to remove it or counteract it with a sub-woofer positioned so that its wave cuts the standing wave (normally perpendicular to the wall in which the monitors are against). You may need to trap the wall that your speakers are against to neutralize any reflections from the back of your monitors.

That is the reader's digest version.

jord