Gearslutz.com - View Single Post - i had 10 minutes with a senheiser 600 headphone

littledog · 24th December 2003

I'm just not sure you can really plan to mix on any headphone system, although I admit my experience does not include some of the super-high end ones.

They can help you mix, for sure, because they reveal details that are tough to hear on even the best speakers. But the listening experience of headphones vs. speakers is always going to be different.

You don't hear just the right speaker in the right ear and the left speaker in the left ear. Both ears get more of the corresponding speaker, but they also get some of the other one. Plus you get reflections off of the side walls which are an important contribution to the sound, and which contribute to the translatability of the mix to other rooms. But with headphones, the left ear hears ONLY the left channel, and the right ear only the right - and room reflections are eliminated. One might wonder if eliminating room reflections might not be a good thing, but that's just not true. Since the average listener is not going to be in an anechoic chamber, mixing in an anechoic chamber has been proven to be a disastrous idea.

Because of the dual-mono vs. true stereo aspect of headphones versus speakers, certain elements just don't translate that well when an exclusively headphone mixed piece is played on speakers. This is especially true of panning and reverb issues.

But to reiterate, I do find headphones very useful as one part of the mixing process. And by the way,I'm using the Sennheiser 580's, which i love.

24th December 2003	#2
littledog Lives for gear Joined: Jun 2002 Location: Boston area	I'm just not sure you can really plan to mix on any headphone system, although I admit my experience does not include some of the super-high end ones. They can help you mix, for sure, because they reveal details that are tough to hear on even the best speakers. But the listening experience of headphones vs. speakers is always going to be different. You don't hear just the right speaker in the right ear and the left speaker in the left ear. Both ears get more of the corresponding speaker, but they also get some of the other one. Plus you get reflections off of the side walls which are an important contribution to the sound, and which contribute to the translatability of the mix to other rooms. But with headphones, the left ear hears ONLY the left channel, and the right ear only the right - and room reflections are eliminated. One might wonder if eliminating room reflections might not be a good thing, but that's just not true. Since the average listener is not going to be in an anechoic chamber, mixing in an anechoic chamber has been proven to be a disastrous idea. Because of the dual-mono vs. true stereo aspect of headphones versus speakers, certain elements just don't translate that well when an exclusively headphone mixed piece is played on speakers. This is especially true of panning and reverb issues. But to reiterate, I do find headphones very useful as one part of the mixing process. And by the way,I'm using the Sennheiser 580's, which i love.