Well I don’t actually hate headphones, i just dont like the extreme disconnection from the outside world when it comes to recording/mixing.
I am currently(as a lot of u prob already know) selling up and moving in with family short term in preparation for moving abroad next year.
This means i no longer have a studio set up and no loud speakers, just an interface and headphones!
Now, i’m a bit of an audiophile by nature and love really listening to music. My mixing still sucks but my listening ears and musical appreciation is grade A*
I have a couple of sets of nice headphones and quite like my beyer dynamic hd’s but they are still headphones!!! I need to be able to hear music naturally and openly to be able to listen, mix(poorly), appreciate.
What tips do you hard core headphone users give me for my turn to the (temporary) darkside of headphone mixing/production?
Volumes?
Duration?
Rests?
Panning?
All input greatfully recieved.
Please make my stay at my folks less painless
Depends on the headphone. For my grado 60es indoor use when I’m listening on my phone I never turn it up more than a third of the way, and on the PC it’s more like 1/5 of the way or less. Usually only listen about an hour at a time (duration of an album). Rests, trust your body. You’ll know when you’re up for it.
yeah im headphone again, but i find the whole recording thing like that…the acoustic guita for example can sound beautiful then through the mic,room and daw and electron flow the industrial tx speaker soundish tones of a hollow garbage can acoustic waveform is there for me to edit.
For mixing purposes, try the Sonar calibration program on a free trial, and see what it does. You can then fake the corrected response on your output bus to get in the ballpark of what the cans need help with by using a similar eq curve. I haven’t purchased the program, but it did a good job, and is much more sophisticated than what I am describing. Use your laptop speakers to help with panning, headphones screw that up royally. Beyond that, I’ve always found that when the low end sounds great on headphones, it is still wimpy on speakers. You need to know your headphones really, really well to mix properly on them, but it can be done.
I’m the opposite, I prefer headphones over speakers for listening and mixing (even if it’s wrong). I want it to be disconnected from the outside world, I don’t want to hear anything else mixed in with what I’m listening to. I like having it blast straight into my ears with as little as possible in between. When I listen on speakers I miss that kind of precision.
the whole headphone thing and speakers hitting both ears, where headphones can separate too much is something. if doing mono or small stereo spreads life is easier when its played in the car.
theoretically… my mixes never sounded that good in the car either, but theoretically I can speak of how it should work. mono mixes tend to sound less drastic from place to place, its more the room and player then than the mix.right?
will check it out.