monitors and headphones

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kieran t

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Joined
Sep 22, 2009
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MANCHESTER
after messing with various samples and layering i noticed that one of my kicks sounded different when listening through headphones opposed to listening through my speakers.
why is this?


headphones are sennheiser hd 650
speakers krk rokit 8
 
Yeah your monitors could be too close to the wall, or you don't have any acoustic treatment....etc.
 
stereo field also plays a part - headphones have a much wider stereo field than speakers (when set up correctly), stereo field effects how loud you perceive a sound to be, our brains interpret loudness in diffrent ways


mixdown quietly, get it sounding good on both headphones and monitors, eventually u'll get the hang of it just using one, but its always good to refrence with diffrent kinds of speakers so your ears get to learn the diffrences - play the kick on a big funktion1 cab, and it will sound diffrent again
 
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I think the answer of this thread is on the lower frequencies. Monitors tend to give the listener a more clear sound on low frequencies. Maybe that's why you're feeling like the sound is different.
 
DarkYsidro said:
I think the answer of this thread is on the lower frequencies. Monitors tend to give the listener a more clear sound on low frequencies. Maybe that's why you're feeling like the sound is different.
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my krks seem to have a lot of low end compared my mates speakers or maybe thats just me??? o well i keep on at it
 
Yeah honestly it's the frequency response, headphones just can't compare to monitors or a sub-woofer as far as the sub-bass goes; the drivers are just too small. They might be able to produce some sub-bass but the amplitude of those frequencies will be pretty low and roll off the farther down you go.
 
?!

my headphones handle low end waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than my monitors and any soundsystem i can justify using at home.

dunno what kinda hps youre using, but in ears for mixdowns are a BAD idea. lol!

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Sovereign said:
Yeah honestly it's the frequency response, headphones just can't compare to monitors or a sub-woofer as far as the sub-bass goes; the drivers are just too small. They might be able to produce some sub-bass but the amplitude of those frequencies will be pretty low and roll off the farther down you go.
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as is said, sry mate. but this just reads bullshit. most monitors dont even go below 50hz, while any good headphone can reproduce down to 20 with ease. and subwoofers tend to be super muddy when you dont have a treated room - which most of us dont have.

so, where exactly do you draw your conclusions from ?!
 
groelle said:
?!

my headphones handle low end waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than my monitors and any soundsystem i can justify using at home.

dunno what kinda hps youre using, but in ears for mixdowns are a BAD idea. lol!

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as is said, sry mate. but this just reads bullshit. most monitors dont even go below 50hz, while any good headphone can reproduce down to 20 with ease. and subwoofers tend to be super muddy when you dont have a treated room - which most of us dont have.

so, where exactly do you draw your conclusions from ?!
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I've got a pair of DT 990 PRO's (250 OHM) and 2x KRK Rokit 8's + a KRK 10s subwoofer. Don't get me wrong the DT 990's do produce sub frequencies but at such a low amplitude it get's lost behind everything else unless you crank the sub-bass WAY up which would be too much when listened to elsewhere.

The Rokit 8's go down to about 45hz before the volume rolls off harshly but that's why I have the subwoofer with the cross over set to do anything below 80hz. I dunno headphones just don't do it for me, I like to feel the full effect the sub-bass is having in the track. Besides the lower you go frequency wise it becomes less audible and transitions towards more physically feeling it.
 
@groelle

truth

getting useful lows at home is pretty impossible without spending a lot. its why noisia have a floor that floats on magnets and thousands in monitoring and acoustics. proper science
 
AzUK said:
Noisia's floor is on springs, not magnets.
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They upgraded it, now it's on springs on magnets. Whole room's a cube floating inside a cube

Engineer I know who worked with them said they were stuck in the studio for 30 hours once, mixing the bass, came out and the whole studio had floated 100 yards down the street and now opened out onto some children's play area
 
LMAO monitors are MADE for hearing frequency detail to the TEETH... Headphones, and anything else truly arent a match to the accuracy. They are made accurate. Headphones may have higher low end but that doesn't mean its more accurate! And plus a lot of headphones have a noble high end... so as not to damage your ears while djing.

Your main reason bro is because monitors are made to handle sound at its purest of forms. Headphones are made for the final product to listen to and jam out to and dj with! :P

I personally use headphones to make the music and monitors to mix the music. You need monitors. Thats the difference between a well rounded kick and a flat kick... :P <3 best of luck to you bro!
 
Raptor's Den said:
LMAO monitors are MADE for hearing frequency detail to the TEETH... Headphones, and anything else truly arent a match to the accuracy. They are made accurate. Headphones may have higher low end but that doesn't mean its more accurate! And plus a lot of headphones have a noble high end... so as not to damage your ears while djing.

Your main reason bro is because monitors are made to handle sound at its purest of forms. Headphones are made for the final product to listen to and jam out to and dj with! :P

I personally use headphones to make the music and monitors to mix the music. You need monitors. Thats the difference between a well rounded kick and a flat kick... :P <3 best of luck to you bro!
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Nowadays a LOT of music is mixed on headphones. For a lot of newer producers from genres like Dubstep onwards it's always been headphones .. they grew up listening to music on headphones/earphones and don't read magazines like Sound on Sound which tell everyone to use monitors

It's a trade-off either way. The problem with monitors is they're only as good as the room you're in. Most home studios couldn't accommodate good monitors with any decent bass even if you spent a ton on acoustics

Sound on Sound tested readers' home studios a few years back, and on average they were finding frequency dips of over 30db just caused by room problems (standing waves, phase cancellation, resonant frequencies) .. It would shock some people how big a room you'd need to house monitors like Mackie 624s. So in general you will actually get more accuracy from good studio headphones (Beyerdynamic 990s or 880s) .. You'll get more detail from monitors, but chances are your frequency spectrum will be all over the place, like you've slapped some crazy graphic EQ on the hifi
 
Oh no dont get me wrong, you can get the dynamics down and how loud you want your sounds, but for acurate detail you absolutely NEED monitors! :)

Tbh you just need to know your frequency... As long as you do, you can tell how sound is supposed to sound, what a headphone is lacking, what a monitor thrives in, so in either environment you can compensate.. You can hear the difference clearly between mediums. I dont go from magazines either that monitors are good. I go from the fact that monitors are just good. That's proffesional sound. At a show you aren't playing your music through headphones to everyone! Even then dynamics wise you need to learn your sound more if it is having that bad of clips and phasing and stuff... I get rid of all of that and BLAST my sounds to maximum capacity a human ear can handle, along with compression and ACCURATE as fuck high end detail in mastering.

Monitors are VERY important. Headphones LAG highly in the balance a true speaker is supposed to sound. Smooth, Clear, ACCURATE, and flat! You still can make music with whatever though like I said, as long as you know the sound you are doing.. Hell make it on laptop speakers while looking at where your bass hits and adjusting for example leaving it only within the 20-50hz then test on a headphone for bass or something. Thats if one has no monitors. For every issue there is a solution, and for almost all issue the solution is to learn your sound more so you know how the physics truly work! Not undermining your work nor knowledge at all brother! but when I hear sound I hear EVERY frequency of EVERYTHING! to the teeth... obviously not above the tightest highest frequencies above human absorbtion ability. like above 20k htz... but you get what i mean! hahaha much <3 brother!
 
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Oh for sure, and for detail it's very hard to touch what a good pair of monitors can do .. and great you've got along so well

But I would say monitors got a bit oversold and inflated since about 2001 when a lot of ppl got into making music. In the earlier days it was more about buying a small pair of nearfields for a home studio and getting properly kitted out for acoustics. But then ppl got into buying oversized monitors and spending more on monitors than bass traps and deflectors and I think a lot of ppl arent aware how off their home monitoring is .. You also get this situation where things like high-end Dynaudio monitors are actually hifi speakers, just with twice the price tag and less of a hyped low-end

Headphones can be very flat. If you look at these, it would cost a lot to get studio monitors that flat for most rooms, and when you get to the 880s the detail is comparable to a £1,000 pair of monitors

graphCompare.php
 
Dont get me wrong, frequency response is a flat and clear for a good number of headphones mostly the high end ones. However in almost all headphones they always adjust the basses higher/ do some other shit, which in turn really makes the sound highly innacurate. Which is really just a marketing gimmick.. the kids love the louder bass... so why not give them the loudest? Beats by dre should be banned.. those shits are WAY too loud.

Dude haha i dont even get why people need gnarly foam and shit.. like ive learned what it sounds like phasing and shit and bouncing off my walls and i ignore that. I only pay attention to the signal my ears are receving from the speaker inputing and outputting, pure, sound, and simple!

I use krk 6" they are simple, solid, PERFECT size for my room and acoustics and get the job done GREAT. And im only in my bedroom... LMAOOOO


Sometimes I even place the speakers on my bed, direcltly in front of my chest so I can really get that DEEP bass that I need to shape and form and stuff. Then I master listening to the entire frequency spectrum that is inputting and outputting! <3
 
Hah yeah, well guys like Breakage got on fine just mixing on a big old hifi speaker on a desk. And there are big House producers who mixdown on ghetto blasters or multimedia speakers. So yeah, if you know your setup

But if you want to really know what's going on, you need either a really good room or a really good pair of headphones. Cos without foam and traps and things, there's be whole regions of your mix you're not hearing, and medium-sized monitors aren't great for bass tbh
 
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