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Headphones as mixing monitors?

#21
What do you guys think about QSC K12s? I have a pair of those in the room hanging off a MixWiz3 16:2.
I can set them for no vocal boost and no bass enhancement, and set everything flat on the board.
It's PA gear, but decent quality.

A reasonable choice for mixing?

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#23
I (and many others) believe it is very difficult to achieve a really good mix using just headphones, as the human ear is accustomed to processing acoustic information from 3 dimensional and open spaces we think of as rooms. Even well designed/treated rooms with great monitors still have space, which plays a part in how we adjust tone and levels in mixes.

FWIW - The great rock and soul records of another era (Abby Road, MoTown, Stax, et al) were all mixed in rooms that were really just rooms with lots of really great gear in them, BUT sources were highly treated using superlative mics, etc. The sounds of the Beatles, Zepplin, Bradley Barn, all of them, didn't come from great sounding control rooms but from great sounding tracking areas.

Or did I open a wound?
 
#24
The ear can't sense distance. The brain synthesizes a perception of distance by comparing the difference in time & loudness of a sound as it reaches the two different eardrums.

Headphones can actually do a good job of presenting the sense of space.

No wound opened, just trying to learn how to get a decent mixdown without breaking the bank.

There have been a lot of great answers but I think the biggest thing I learned is that it's important to listen and tune the mix to work well on real-world playback systems, which are generally not perfect flat audio reference monitors. I'm thinking that perfect flat monitors are most useful to the experienced ear that knows what imperfections to introduce to get the most out of cheap earbuds, car speakers, 128-bit mp3s played on computer speakers, and so on.
 
#27
Hi.

Ken Morgan said:
The sounds of the Beatles, Zepplin, Bradley Barn, all of them, didn't come from great sounding control rooms but from great sounding tracking areas.

Or did I open a wound?
Click to expand...

Even if You did not, I will.

IMO the most important contributing factor to the sound was the engineers and producers.

Think about it.

We still have some of those artists around.
Most if not all are still recording music.
Some have matured like a good wine, some have turned into vinegar.
Most have an access to the latest and greatest technology, as well as all the vintage gear, often something that money can't even buy.

But even so...

Their older recordings from the 50's, 60's & 70's sound "better" for most folks.
Could be nostalgia, or the familiarity of the "old", but often the only variable that has really changed is the recording engineer (and the times, You're never too young to blame the time destroying the good in anything ;)).

The engineers of the yesterday were professionals, often disliking the "noise" they had to capture and process, but still doing a job only a handful of the recording engineers today in the mainstream can.

Those engineers, combined with finely honed tunes and professionalism from the years on the road IMO made the sound.

Regards
Sam
 
#29
Your headphones is not that suitable for mixing as the Audio Technica ATH-D40fs as it enhances the bass signals, that why you are reducing the bass so much during mixing and hence getting a very weak bass when you listen on your speakers.

It is possible to mix on headphone, just that you need to get used to your headphones and know how your sound compared to a nice reference speakers. I'm using a Shure SRH440 headphones for mixing. It has a relatively flat response but has a weak bass, so when I mix, I know that the bass frequencies will sound a little weak over my headphones, so I'll try to mix it with less bass boost.

Also, since you are mixing using a DAW, why are you getting a hardware mixer to mix? I prefer to mix in the DAW as I will be able to modify the individual tracks and tweak them to fit into the mix better. When mixing on a mixing console, your ability to modify the individual tracks are very much less than what you can do on your DAW, unless of course you have a super high-end mixing console, which most probably isn't the case.
 
#31
T-Bird said:
Hi.



Even if You did not, I will.

IMO the most important contributing factor to the sound was the engineers and producers.

Think about it.

We still have some of those artists around.
Most if not all are still recording music.
Some have matured like a good wine, some have turned into vinegar.
Most have an access to the latest and greatest technology, as well as all the vintage gear, often something that money can't even buy.

But even so...

Their older recordings from the 50's, 60's & 70's sound "better" for most folks.
Could be nostalgia, or the familiarity of the "old", but often the only variable that has really changed is the recording engineer (and the times, You're never too young to blame the time destroying the good in anything ;)).

The engineers of the yesterday were professionals, often disliking the "noise" they had to capture and process, but still doing a job only a handful of the recording engineers today in the mainstream can.

Those engineers, combined with finely honed tunes and professionalism from the years on the road IMO made the sound.

Regards
Sam
Click to expand...

Agreed. And some of this was done with 4 and sometimes only 2 tracks. No fixing it in the mix. There's a lot that goes into just capturing the performance before you even get to the mixing. Which in turn can make mixing harder or easier. That said for your own projects and while learning in a pinch with some flat cans and some sources to listen to your mixes on you can get ok results. Run what you brung
 
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#32
In the studio I learned basic recording at we had ns10s, some tannoys and some big JBLs. Also a boom box. And we would always take a cassette out to someone's car for a listen. The musicians out in the studio had huge altecs flown from the rafters.
 
#33
Jay2U said:
I always use headphones to mix. I use a cheap PreSonus HD7 set. My brains have adapted to these headphones, so I know exactly what's coming out. With my AKG headphones it doesn't work, because I'm not used to them I guess.
Click to expand...

+1. A lot of engineers still use Yammy NS10's for playback and mixing. Being heavy in the mids and having little bass extension, they're not flat. They also immensely dislike being driven loudly. But they do exhibit very good time-domain response, which is more important to the ear than frequency response. Once you understand how a speaker can color a mix, it's easy to compensate for it using subtle eq. With the mid-hump and quick time-domain response, the NS10's are merciless when revealing the details of what's been recorded, which is extremely useful.
 
#35
doesn't that constant velocity compression make for better listening at 128k through cheap earbuds? Maybe that's why they're doing that nowadays.

Time-domain response is a new term for me. I shall have to read up on it.
 
#36
Rockin Mike said:
doesn't that constant velocity compression make for better listening at 128k through cheap earbuds? Maybe that's why they're doing that nowadays.

Time-domain response is a new term for me. I shall have to read up on it.
Click to expand...

It refers to how well a driver starts and stops in response to an input signal. Nothing too complicated.

And that shaging compression sounds awful EVERYWHERE. Cheap earbuds. Lossy compression at low bitrates. Lossy compression at high bitrates. Lossless compression. No compression. High-end tube audiophile systems. Good headphones.

Somewhere along the line, the music industry noticed that the "average" listener equated loudness with "better". A song that sucks will suck less if you squash all the dynamics out of it and crank the gain -- supposedly. That started a nasty trend whereby everyone felt compelled to do the same to be competitive. And, of course, since everyone listens to music through poopy earbuds in all sorts of loud places (city streets, public transport, open plan offices), it's easier to kill the music than force the consumer to ride the volume control. To the detriment of people who actually like to, you know, listen and appreciate music. I consider it non-consensual audio adulteration.
 
#37
Yes you can use headphones for mixing and produce professional results - there's been 10 of thousands of live broadcasts mixed in broom closets, the back of vans in below zero weather, and such all done with headphones. I've done a hundred or so myself. As for untreated mix rooms, you can generally get by if you use nearfield monitors, keep your volume down, and hang some blankets (furniture moving blankets are handy). To use headphones successfully you need to become familiar with your headphones and make a bunch of mixes with them played on many different playback devices. Although not the greatest headphone of all time I use to use AKG 240's (70's and 80's when I did this for a living) for mixing because I was 1) very familiar with them having used them in the recording studio (laying bass tracks), in the DJ booth, and engineering (radio production work); 2) they provided fairly decent isolation in loud environments (usefull when you're in the back room of a bar); and they sounded good without being hyper (which many headphones are). I would have my near field monitors with me too (Mordaunt Short) but often had to rely on the headphones.
 
#38
HeisnbrgUncertn said:
It refers to how well a driver starts and stops in response to an input signal. Nothing too complicated.

And that ****ing compression sounds awful EVERYWHERE. Cheap earbuds. Lossy compression at low bitrates. Lossy compression at high bitrates. Lossless compression. No compression. High-end tube audiophile systems. Good headphones.

Somewhere along the line, the music industry noticed that the "average" listener equated loudness with "better". A song that sucks will suck less if you squash all the dynamics out of it and crank the gain -- supposedly. That started a nasty trend whereby everyone felt compelled to do the same to be competitive. And, of course, since everyone listens to music through ****** earbuds in all sorts of loud places (city streets, public transport, open plan offices), it's easier to kill the music than force the consumer to ride the volume control. To the detriment of people who actually like to, you know, listen and appreciate music. I consider it non-consensual audio adulteration.
Click to expand...

I want to hear somebody overcompress "Summertime" by Janis Joplin just to play it side-by-side with the dynamic version. Maybe I'll do that and use it to illustrate the problem.

And, to derail my own thread, when will movie studios start to use compression properly??? You can't watch a movie in your living room because by the time you turn it down enough that the explosions don' t crack the windows, the talking parts are below whisper level. Why is there not a market for home stereo compressors? I'm going to take a couple of bass compressors and stick them on the left and right channels of my TV stereo.
 
#39
I'm in a similar boat... Looking to do more 'serious' recording on my iPad, but I have either Apple earbuds or some AudioTechnica headphones that sound decent for listening to music, but not recording.

I'm debating whether a cheap (under $200) set of monitors would be better or a similar cost set of headphones...
 
#40
I read many years ago that Roy Thomas Baker used to mix on car stereo speakers to achieve a mix that sounded
good in the car on the freeway. There are guys who mix on earbuds these days because there is such a large
number of people listening to the music on buds. But like said previously as long as the mix translates well to
other systems you can mix on phones, buds, large or small speakers, anything that serves your purpose. It's always good to check mixes on various systems for dynamic accuracy. We used to run out to our cars with cassettes from the studios
we recorded at in the 70's and 80's, check the mix, make notes, and then tweak as needed. So whatever your personal reference system is, that's the best place to check your mixes and dial them in.
 

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