Headphone Mixdowns.

Their reputation proceeds them, seemingly. If you've got guys like Teebee, Noisia, Stuart Hawkes from Metropolis mastering swearing by them/rating them - says it's all right?
I think they were initially aimed at hifi enthusiasts, but people soon realised they were THAT transparent, full ranged and precise in the low mids/low end that they had a good application for music production and mastering.
 
For an example if I had High quality headphones such as a pair of whatever Audezes... Then just putting them through an audio interface should be okay for their quality?

This will all depend on whether your audio interface has enough power to drive them though. The LCD-3 as an impedance of 110 ohms so they need a serious amount of power to drive them or they will sound awful.
 
Their reputation proceeds them, seemingly. If you've got guys like Teebee, Noisia, Stuart Hawkes from Metropolis mastering swearing by them/rating them - says it's all right?
I think they were initially aimed at hifi enthusiasts, but people soon realised they were THAT transparent, full ranged and precise in the low mids/low end that they had a good application for music production and mastering.


I can only find one independent review of their products and its not all that positive...every other review in google search, is part of a PR campaign (and is unsurprisingly glowing in every respect)

I need to hear them, hell I aint gona doubt the Noisia team's ears, but with the internet full of seemingly nothing but PR run reviews, i gotta wonder if the hype is a bit like another big over priced company that's so well loved for no good (Technical) reason
 
This will all depend on whether your audio interface has enough power to drive them though. The LCD-3 as an impedance of 110 ohms so they need a serious amount of power to drive them or they will sound awful.

that's pretty high - although any decent audio interface shouldn't be distorting when driven at full volume, so they might not be loud, but they wont sound bad, unless its a crap interface.

and as loud + headphones = hearing loss, loudness shouldn't be the main concern of someone buying for monitoring imo
 
on headphones I work around -20 to -25, and the headphone volume not on full - on a focusrite saffire 6, audiophile 3496 (via amp) and ni 2 (via mixer) interfaces, with both my ACS in ear monitors and sennhiesers...more than enough volume imo...if its loud, its fukin ur ears
 
Don't need more than that.

You don't even need Audeze's to decently mix with headphones. I use my Sennheiser HD25's ALOT. Just because I listen to them alot. So I know how a mix should sound on them. As long as you know that, you're good to go

this is some really good advice. you don't HAVE to have monitors. there's a lot of pros who actually mix and produce strictly through headphones, most famously Eric Prydz/Cirez D. when i reference on my ATH-M50s i sometimes pick up on a lot of little details that greatly enhance the mix. like crizis said, trust your ears and feel it out.

with that being said you should upgrade to monitors as soon as you can, it really i s a huge upgrade. mixing without monitors is like painting without a canvas as the old saying goes.
 
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Hi guys,

Mixing on good headphones is fine, and acceptable in certain circumstances. It's not unusual to mix on headphones, and then polish the mix on a set of monitors in a treated room. As discussed headphones come with greater hearing-loss risks (but you need to push it a bit, and for long periods). The biggest reason (actually there are two!) to not mix on headphones though has not yet been mentioned in this thread, and it's the reason that headphones mixes often do sound very different once you get them on hi-fi's etc... That main issue is spacial isolation.

If you wear a set of headphones and pan something hard left it will only ever be heard by the left ear, as the ear is isolated, along with the driver, within the cup of the headphones. Same with the right. This means that every element of the mix that you pan (which is often lots of elements!) is massively isolated and distinct. Even only slight pans will naturally be made more defined.
If you perform this same process when sat in front of a set of monitors, in an open room, the right ear will still hear sounds that are panned hard left (and visa versa), it's just that it's only coming from the left speaker. Your brain can tell where the sound source is, but it radically changes the spacial placement of mix elements when you hear them. Often panned elements become either over powered, or very weak as a result of mixing in headphones and require additional EQ and reverb work (as a minimum) to give them the same clarity in a proper speaker mix. Spacial placement is key to an awesome mix.

The other point to mention is the occlusion effect. This, to put it simply (and I'm missing many of the finer points here), is where the sound in the ear canal bounces back and forth off of the skull and resonates from the bass frequencies being pushed against it by the headphones. Much like a certain element in a room having a resonant frequency and artificially 'boosting' those frequencies in your mix. You can hear this effect by talking out loud, and then putting your hands tight against your ears to form an air seal. While you'll loose top end from what you hear, your voice will become boomier in the low mids as the skull resonates from the voice box moving and these waves bounce around in your ear canal.
This is particularly problematic with great headphones, as they often go much lower and are more efficient in the lows than many monitors (and certainly hi-fi speakers), so not only do you naturally get more lows when mixing in headphones, but those lows are often made to resonate higher due to the occlusion effect. The end result here is that your HUGE bass, seems to vanish when you take the cans off and listen on the stereo.

This is not to say you can't make great mixes on headphones, you just have to be VERY mindful of these points, and get to know the headphones, and mix accordingly/compensate. It's no different to an engineer getting used to the traits of a set of studio monitors and the sound of his room.

Hope that helps a little!

Shep
 
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/\ nice explanation of what I mentioned earlier, misinterpreting the stereo field and over/under compensating bass - two very important areas when trying to create a balanced mix


regarding top engineers who mix on headphones exclusively (if they really do, i bet they use monitors to reference tho)... you can be sure that they learnt their craft using monitors, and they learnt how their headphones respond in relation to monitors

learning to mix, only using headphones, is a significant challenge without reference monitors, learning to mix is a big enough challenge as it is without making it more difficult for yourself imo


last point I didn't mention before, is EQ, doing notch sweeps (one way of finding resonance), while wearing headphones, is asking for trouble



edit - I still cant find any independent reviews of the Audeze headphones, can someone link me up? I see that one or two well known producers where given freebies by them...
 
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IMO.. Best way to get used to doin mixdowns is to listen to a tune from a similar style by a big well known artist and listen to where all the position of everything is. Make sure you listen via whatever method you will be mixing down, ie headphones, monitors or if your like me, a £40 hi fi from cash converters.

If you get used to what it needs to sound like on that particular system, it will start to happen naturally as your ears have become accustomed to that setting...
 
I think it's good to have one set of "brickwall" headphones on the side because most studio cans are so flat that you can't listen to the tracks at really high volume, so you won't notice too harsh ear piercing high end that easily.
 
you should not be listening to headphones at really high volume, not only is it destroying your hearing, which gradually makes your mixing skills worse, but also high compression (loud) sound waves slamming into your ear drum mean that you cannot get a good sense of the mix and wont get the best results.

Mix quietly, and never use headphones turned up loud :soap_box:
 
I do all my producing on my LCD2's and have never looked back. I'll be obtaining the LCDX's within the next few months after being incredibly impressed with the results of my experience with the LCD2s.

Keep your eyes peeled for Open Box deals, they usually slice a considerable amount off the MSRP. My LCD's were about $250 cheaper.
 
Mix quietly, and never use headphones turned up loud :soap_box:

This! Golden rule...

If you make a tune quietly in your headphones, it will 99.99% of the time, enrich in quality when the volume is turned up.

If you make a tune whilst it's tumping out at full volume, it will 99.99% of the time sound crap when you turn the volume down :)
 
This! Golden rule...

If you make a tune quietly in your headphones, it will 99.99% of the time, enrich in quality when the volume is turned up.

If you make a tune whilst it's tumping out at full volume, it will 99.99% of the time sound crap when you turn the volume down :)

Yeah I didn't mean it like keeping it loud on the whole time (because your ears get raped), but doing small tests with coloured headphones when mixing high- and low end. I've ended up having too much bass, or too much treble million times with my AKGs, because the spectrum is so flat that you feel like there should be some more sub, and more shiny highs. However when listening with any coloured cans, which have usually more bass and some high end boost, your ears start to hurt and mix sounds muddy.
 
headphones should never be played loud, not even for a short time (actually short bursts of loud noise are even more dangerous than continuous loud noise)

i know i'm banging on about this...but I partially lost hearing to tinnitus for 3 months a few years ago, I was unbelievably lucky as it went away and my hearing was not permanently damaged! being a completely obsessed artist, and engineer by trade, i really cant stress enough how important it is not to use headphones loud :mkay: ...you will regret it one day :(


flat response headphones don't result in wonky mixes, it just means you need to understand their response a little more...and as I said on another thread, if you feel like something needs boosting in volume, first check that its not really just that other things are too loud in the mix
 

I know you're probably going to say he's not going to speak down on something that he was given etc, but at the same time he strikes me as the sort of person wouldn't stand behind something he genuinely believes isn't worth his time.

I've not watched it yet but I presume he's talking about the cans.

more interviews on their channel.

yolo etc.
 
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Audeze just did an interview with Noisia aswell....sound quality is unbelievably bad; can only presume the sound recordist wasn't using Audeze headphones to monitor the recording mix...or :oscar:
 
They stated that the recorded microphone had multipul flaws in it that they didn't realise until they got back to LA so had to use the camera mic for obvious reasons.

Still don't get your weird angle against them through. Bit odd.
 
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