Producing with In-Ear earphones instead of headphones?

mykono5

Aru R.
Joined
Dec 2, 2012
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Indonesia
I'll have a collaboration with a friend in school. And since we'll do the collaboration in school on break time, I can't bring my headphone 'cos it's big and if a teacher found out I bring it, it might get confiscated. So we decided to use in-ear earphones/canalphones which is much more low-profile than headphones.

My question is, is it okay to produce with it instead of headphones? It can isolate the crowded sound of the classroom a bit better than my headphone.
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P.s. The headphone I use for usual producing is Panasonic RP-DJ120. Not a studio headphone but a DJ headphone. And my earphone is MDisk MD-E945.
 
I'll have a collaboration with a friend in school. And since we'll do the collaboration in school on break time, I can't bring my headphone 'cos it's big and if a teacher found out I bring it, it might get confiscated.

Hide it in your anus
 
Earbuds are fine for just getting ideas down, mixing/mastering requires something a lot better. Depends how awesome you want your tunes to sound.
 
you can both get on dropbox and work like that? or just work on tunes and bring them the next day? but the whole purpose of monitors and headphones if for them to translate sound as accurate as possible and i dont see your earphones doing that, cheers.
 
I highly doubt ear buds can give a good representation of anything in the sub range. So yeah you're pretty screwed.

Unless you're making wankstep with no sub anyway lol.
 
I have used bass boosted earbuds for a long time.I use them for both producing and listening music.It's really addictive because the silicone buds fit nicely inside the ear and it blocks the outside noises.You can listen to everything very closely and even get a good mix(only if you have used them for a long time), but for the final touch you still have to use your speakers.

Imo yes, you can use earbuds for producing if you use them daily, but it seems that you only want to use them because you can't take your big headphones to school.man don't you have a pc at home : / ?
 
They aren't good for mixing. If you want to have good stereo imaging they are a no no.
When listening with ear buds panning becomes unrealistic but a sound that is panned hard left will never reach the right ear.
However when using monitors the sound will reach the right ear nut with a lower intensity, slight delay and with a different timbre depending on the environment you're in. There is also a thing called a sound shadow I think where the frequency content is different in the opposite ear because of diffraction around your head.
 
They are pretty good for drums though aslong as they are a good model. When creating kick drums in an untreated room sometimes the tails are hard to judge and they seem bigger than they are because of standing waves ect. Also if you're room has too much reverb then your drums may sound nicer and more coherent only to find that they sound dull and boring when you listen with headphones.

Just make sure you have a few reference tracks to compare with.
 
You cannot produce using earbuds. End of

You can get ideas down. Some people can actually get decent mixes on headphones or earbuds. As long as you are aware of what the differences are between headphones and monitors are and you reference with other tracks you should be okay.

As long as they have a flat frequency response then they should be okay to work with. But yeah if you're expecting the tracks to be played out or considered for release then you should really use monitors.

Apparently Mortem has made a few of his tracks using HD25's. I know they aren't earbuds but yeah. I'm not sure if this is true though.
 
Erm, I don't think most people here know the difference between In Ear Monitors and erabuds eh? So...

1. What is an In-Ear-Canalphone?
In-Ear-Canalphone, also known as canalphone, ear-canalphone, ear-canal headphone, or In-Ear-Monitor (IEM), is a type of Inter Aural headphone that is designed to be used where the user’s ear canal is sealed by the ‘phone. The seal generally serves two functions: 1) to block noise and 2) to form a sealed acoustic chamber in order to achieve a fuller sound. To create such a seal, the earphone’s nozzle along with its tip (or sleeve) is inserted into the front part of the ear canal. Many high end canalphones are custom molded to the user's ear for maximum comfort and a perfect seal.

Quote:
Is it a canalphone or an IEM?
Due to its great portability, high sound quality and noise blocking ability, specially tuned (and often custom molded) canalphones have long been used on stage by musicians and audio engineers alike. These canalphones are part of the In-Ear-Monitor-System (IEMS), which can be either wired or wireless. For ease of naming, canalphones used in such system are referred to as IEMs. Later, as canalphone manufacturer began to make high quality canalphones available for the general consumer (iPod generation), the word ‘IEM’ became popular thus replacing ‘canalphone’ as how we refer to all canalphones. Technically speaking, only canalphones on an IEMS should be called an IEM. However, there is no concrete definition of the word ‘IEM’ and it is easier for general consumer to use a simpler terminology. Sometime ‘IEM’ is also used only to refer to high quality canalphones. For the purpose of this article, we will refer to all canalphones as IEMs.
um2.jpg

[Basic components of an IEM]

2. I thought IEM/canalphone is also called 'earbud'?
No, IEM and earbud each refer to two different kind of Inter-Aural headphones.

Inter Aural headphone, or in-the-ear headphone, is sometime known as earphone. It refers to headphones with a transducer small enough to be placed/worn in the ear. The two major types of inter aural headphone are earbuds and canalphones.

earbud.jpg

[Picture of various types of earbuds]

Earbuds are worn in the opening of the ear, often just outside of the opening of ear canal. They can have a headband or clip-on to increase comfort, but they do not form an air-tight seal in the ear canal as they are not intended to go into the ear canal.

IEM.jpg

[Picture of various types of IEM]

On the other hand, canalphones/IEM are intended to be partially inserted into the ear canal to create an air-tight seal (for reasons see first question).

The reason why so many websites mislabeled IEM as 'earbud' is simply because they don't understand the differences.
in http://www.head-fi.org/a/basic-guide-to-in-ear-canalphones

So, the answer is yes, you can produce using IEMs. You just need to get ones somewhat neutral, like most studio headphones (and since you have DJ headphones instead of studio ones, you wouldn't lose anything by having some not-so-neutral IEMs)

As for earbuds, if that's what you're refering to, the answer is a straight no

So, what I would recomment: If you're planning on producing somewhat seriously, buy some proper In Ear Monitors, and i mean monitors, and you're good to go producing anywhere you want with maximum efficiency :)

Only issue would be stereo imaging as refered by sam, but you can always fine tune that at home with some speakers
 
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