I downloaded their calibration software for headphones, it gives you a 21 day free trial. I’m pretty impressed so far. It does a lot more than just eq the headphones, seems like it is doing some phase adjustments and changing the soundstage a bit too. The difference between the normal signal and the calibrated signal is pretty dramatic. Does anyone have any experience with this, i.e. is it good enough to make you trust your headphones for mixing? That would be ideal for me, since I have a small room that is untreated, and usually get the bug to work on things later in the evening.
I’ve found that if you’re really experienced with a pair of headphones, then it’s okay to mix with them. Obviously I’d want to check on it with speakers at some point, but if you’ve listened to a bunch of professional recordings on them and know how they sound, I’d say it isn’t that dangerous to mix on them at all.
You’ll definitely get mixed reviews on the idea of mixing with headphones. Personally, I like to use them for troubleshooting issues in mixes, and I definitely double-check mixes with them as another translation check, but I try to use my monitors as much as possible.
As has been stated multiple times, there are many phase issues and whatnot to mixing on headphones, but if you know your headphones you should be able to get a pretty good idea about how you want to EQ a track, and it’s great for listening to reverb in my opinion. I agree, you should just remember to check on speakers if you get a chance.
I’ve never heard of “phase issues” when monitoring with headphones. Can you explain, or aim me at a link where someone else does. Forty years doing this and never once heard of it.
You learn something new every day.
Part of it comes from having the two channels isolated on your head, causing the loss of the right-left blend you get when you are listening to speakers. It makes it hard to do proper panning, and you don’t hear some of the frequency buildups and dips that you would hear through speakers. In my short trial with this program it seems to take care of a lot of it. I also have the Waves program, but that’s more of a virtual room approach than this one, which does a better job of flattening the response of the headphones.
I have , and use occasionally, the Sonarworks software. But I prefer Redline Monitor which is not designed for headphones, does not do the “room creation” (my term) that Sonarworks does.
My point is that headphones don’t create a phase issue. And I find a quick check on speakers shows up any problems. And in 40 years, I’ve never had a phase issue. Thanks for the infor Styles.