I'm Getting More and More Convinced about Mixing with Headphones

[Anderton]

I was ALWAYS a "mix on speakers, put on cans once or twice to catch little stuff you might miss" kinda guy. But I find myself mixing with headphones more and more out of choice. Taking the room out of the equation is part of it, and the fact that for a given amount of $$, headphones are a better value. Another factor is that so many people listen with earbuds these days so it approximates the delivery medium.

 

But the overriding factor is that having learned my phones, I'm getting mixes that translate phenomenally - more so than I got with speakers. Now the situation for me is more about mixing with headphones, then listening with speakers for a reality check. Granted, it took me much longer to acclimate myself to headphones than speakers, but once I got past the point of being really familiar with them I was covered.

 

I know this isn't supposed to be the "right" way to do things, but I can't argue with the results. Is it just me, or have others noticed the same thing?

[Ernest Buckley]

Hi Craig,

 

I just started another thread in which I am selling my HR824s... for the same exact reason you mentioned... my headphone mixes translate better more and more now so I am trusting them. I used to mix 90% of the time on monitors and put the phones on when the mix was getting close. In the last 3-4 years, I mix around 80-90% of the time on phones. At this point, I see no sense in using the 824s any longer.

 

EB

[UstadKhanAli]

What headphones are you guys using?

[russrags]

I use headphones quite a bit, it seems I can set the Bass level better for some reason.

Sony MDR-7506's I prefer being in the same room with singers while I record them, so again I've got on phones sharing the same space with the singer for faster communication.

 

 

Russ

Nashville

[Ernest Buckley]

Ken,

 

Best phones I have ever used.

 

EB

[elsongs]

When mixing with headphones, keep the volume levels very low...not just to protect your hearing but also because of the Doppler effect. The music will sound slightly sharper (pitch-wise I mean) when listening at a loud volume.

 

Also mixing at an extremely low volume will give your mix a good idea of what's audible in it when heard at low volumes or far distances.

[Anderton]

 

When mixing with headphones, keep the volume levels very low...not just to protect your hearing but also because of the Doppler effect. The music will sound slightly sharper (pitch-wise I mean) when listening at a loud volume. Also mixing at an extremely low volume will give your mix a good idea of what's audible in it when heard at low volumes or far distances.

 

 

Excellent points. I follow the same protocol as with speakers...mix at low levels, with occasional turning up the volume as a reality check. If you mix ONLY at low volumes, Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Munson will bite you in the butt when people play what you've mixed at loud volumes. Headphones or speakers, it's always about finding the "sweet spot."

[Anderton]

 

 

 

Holy crap...those are the same phones I use for mixing!! However, I have to say AKG makes some fabulous headphones. The only problem is they sound so good, you can confuse that with a good mix ("Hey, this mix sounds great!!").

[UstadKhanAli]

I record music with my friend Chris as The Mercury Seven (see sig file below), and I'm almost positive that he uses ATH-M50 headphones as well. If that's what they are, they really do sound quite good and are effective for mixing. He brings 'em over every once in a while when we're mixing.

[elsongs]

 

Holy crap... those are the same phones I use for mixing!! However, I have to say AKG makes some fabulous headphones. The only problem is they sound so good, you can confuse that with a good mix ("Hey, this mix sounds great!!").

 

 

Are AKG 240s good for mixing?

[MikeRivers]

The only time I mix using headphones is when I have to - recording a live show direct to stereo when I can't put my gear in an isolated room. I guess I've become accustomed to headphones (I use Sony 7506) because most of the time it works, but it always sounds better to me when played back on speakers. I just don't care for what I hear in the phones. Maybe I should try those ATH-50 phones that seem to be pretty popular.

 

I don't record rock and roll and bass balance is rarely a problem with me. I need to like how guitars, fiddles, and voices sound in the headphones, and the "hyped" response of the Sony phones tend to make those a bit on the unpleasant and too bright side. I had to learn to tolerate that sound, otherwise I'd mix the most important parts too far back.

[WRGKMC]

I'm coming from the other direction. I mixed with headphones for a good 20 years before I went to monitors.

My mixes got so much more professional and predictable after that. My studio is sound proofed like a padded cell

so I have little or no reflection to contaminate the raw sound so that may be part of it.

 

You have to use a combination if you want to get a good mix even if you only spot check it.

Theres no point of reference for getting your depth set unless you do. Everything else can be done quite well

if the headphones have a good flat responce, especially if you A/B the mix against a good commercial mix occasionally.

Most headphones dont have a flat responce though. Its very difficult to get a single element to produce sseparate

highs and lows like a woofer and tweeter do and you can have frequency notches or scooped mids that throuw your EQing off.

[Lee Knight]

My dirty little secret as well... I mix on phones. 7506's. I have for 2 decades. And I've found the best way to do a final check for me is the listen through the display speakers of an iMac. Reverb levels can still be undermixed through the phones so a check through those little dry display speakers is all I need to get a pretty good final grasp of my mix...

[Philter]

 

Are AKG 240s good for mixing?

 

I think they're good but they're a little hyped on the low end (like a lot of head phones.) It's just a matter of learning how they translate.

 

AKG used to make the 240DF model which was flat across the bottom, but they've discontinued them. I'm still using the 2 pairs of AKG240DF that I own.

 

I had to mix in the cans for so long that I've been enjoying being able to play the music in the room. The JBL LSR6328s might have something to do with that. But yeah, I'm still doing a lot of referencing in the cans, because it does tell you a lot about your mix, and a lot of people will end up hearing it in cans anyway.

[gubu]

I use Beyerdynamic DT100s as a 2nd reference all the time. See here:- http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?2799719-Headphone-reference-while-mastering&highlight=headphones+mastering

 

They're extremely unflattering headphones but great audio sounds like great audio and crap sounds like crap on them. I still use my Tannoys and a few checks on consumer gear as the final reference but those phones are awesome for feeling out problems below ~800hz and also getting a handle on the overall frequency balance. All caveats about using headphones as a reference apply tho. I wouldn't rely on them solely..

[Lukenskywalker]

Saul T. Nads has been professing/advocating this for years.

Cutting edge Englishman he be.

[blue2blue]

 

I was ALWAYS a "mix on speakers, put on cans once or twice to catch little stuff you might miss" kinda guy. But I find myself mixing with headphones more and more out of choice. Taking the room out of the equation is part of it, and the fact that for a given amount of $$, headphones are a better value. Another factor is that so many people listen with earbuds these days so it approximates the delivery medium. But the overriding factor is that having learned my phones, I'm getting mixes that translate phenomenally - more so than I got with speakers. Now the situation for me is more about mixing with headphones, then listening with speakers for a reality check. Granted, it took me much longer to acclimate myself to headphones than speakers, but once I got past the point of being really familiar with them I was covered. I know this isn't supposed to be the "right" way to do things, but I can't argue with the results. Is it just me, or have others noticed the same thing?

Not me.

 

That said, if one is mixing for headphones/buds, it probably pays to put on the cans at least part of the time.

 

One of my favorite current records is the Daniel Lanois collaborative project, Black Dub. I often find many of Lanois' mixing moves problematic, but as I've settled into that record, I've often found myself thinking, this sounds great -- while listening over speakers. Listening over headphones/buds, OTOH, Lanois' extreme LCR mix sounds stupid. And I don't mean good stupid.

 

 

Like others, I started out mixing on cans -- it makes sense, after all, at least on some levels, if you've got halfway decent 'phones but crap speakers -- as I had for years.

 

When I switched to NFM's, first NS10's and then adding Event 20/20bas, my mixing skills -- and the resultant mixes -- started improving a lot.

 

 

But everyone's process is potentially different. What works for one mixer/artist is not necessarily going to work for another.

[Beck]

I mixed with headphones a lot when I was very young starting out, but not for decades now. Can't deny there is probably something to the end user medium that would make this more acceptable these days... for now. But because I'm always looking for brighter days in music to return I hesitate to mix based on today

[blue2blue]

 

If you

[Anderton]

Well, you really have to do a reality check with both speakers and headphones, regardless. I guess one of the differences for me was that after mixing on speakers, if I wanted to create a compromise mix that worked well for both speakers and headphones, it took more work than starting with headphones in the first place.

 

Make no mistake, headphones are an unnatural environment - the spatial sense is very different, little amounts of reverb sound big, etc. But, their value was really brought home to me on an Alyssa Atherton project I'm re-mixing now, where there were six vocal harmony tracks. The engineer was not real careful about editing, and I could hear leakage from the singer's headphones in the spaces between vocal takes. I couldn't hear this over speakers unless I soloed the vocals and turned up the volume, but when multiplied six times, it contributed a lot of "dirt" to the mix and removing these problematic sections cleaned things up quite a bit.

 

I think one reason why I've been using headphones more is that a lot of my work involves "ear candy" with music, and detailed editing with narration. These things stand out more with headphones, which is probably why they work well for the initial phase where I'm very detail-oriented, and then I can transition to speakers for the "big picture."

[Ernest Buckley]

I mixed with headphones a lot when I was very young starting out, but not for decades now. Can't deny there is probably something to the end user medium that would make this more acceptable these days... for now. But because I'm always looking for brighter days in music to return I hesitate to mix based on today

[144dB]

I have two pairs of ATH-M40's (which aren't quite the same), but they are economical and sound pretty good. Just be prepared to replace the pads in about 3-4 years, as the foam covering flakes off really bad and leaves remnants on your head.

 

I track with headphones and check with headphones, but I still mix on speakers. I'm not nearly as seasoned as many of you, so I'm always open to a new approach. The reality is, most home studios have really poor room acoustics, and it's very hard to overcome.

 

Todd

[Bookumdano2]

7506s for me for years. The only way to mix for me. I don't even remember the last time I had the jbl 6328s powered up. Used k240s I think in the 70s.. at least I think they were around then, until those eventually began hurting my head. Too heavy.

[blue2blue]

I'm lucky in that I work at home so I control the means of (audo re-) production. I probably listen to music an average of 6-8 hours a day. When I get in the car, I plug my Android into the stereo (via one of those old-fashioned cassette-shaped electromagnetic transducer thingies, since I have one of those old-fashioned cassette players in my old-fashioned car ). When I get out at the supermarket or the Target or wherever, I usually pop the headphones in.

 

I have to say, I hate listening over headphones, vis a vis speakers. For one thing, the music follows your head movement. I find that really annoying and distracting. And it's one of the reasons I almost never listen over headphones ('buds) in the car, even though it lets one hear the music in detail without blasting out those nearby. That shifting soundstage confuses those fundamentally important parts of the brain that use sound for geospatial personal space mapping. We have millions of years of evolutionary wiring that went into an incredibly sophisticated and sensitive perceptual system -- but plugging earbuds into the sides of our heads and walking around with them blows that pretty well all to hell. In the supermarket, I don't mind the isolation from my immediate environment. In the car, it could mean life and death.

[sventvkg]

 

Holy crap... those are the same phones I use for mixing!! However, I have to say AKG makes some fabulous headphones. The only problem is they sound so good, you can confuse that with a good mix ("Hey, this mix sounds great!!").

 

 

I don't know Craig. I have those headphones and they have hyped low end, are easy on the mids and highs..I find if I mix in them BECAUSE they sound so good, the mix does not translate. My house is asleep by 9pm a lot of nights and I find myself working in the studio late/early into the morning so i'm on cans a lot, so I've had to get a lot of workmixes going. I ended up getting some open back cans. Ended up with AKG K702's which I find do no sound as full and sweet as the M50s but after a few minutes you get used to them and overall, the mixes translate better. I still finish during the day and tweak on my MSP5 Yamaha monitors for finalizing. This seems to work..Really my room needs a lot more work so that's the next thing I'm going to fix.