Monitoring through headphones?

[C.Lambrechts]

Originally posted by shangoe
for me its important that the headphone is open like my sennheiser hd600. i get tired and confused after a while working with closed headphones.

for the control room yes .... absolutely yes


for the tracking room ....

[aidyhall]

You should be very careful mixing exclusively on headphones. There are good psycho-acoustic reasons why your mixes will probably not translate that well to other systems.

The most crucial of these is that because sounds panned centrally often seem to originate from above you or 'inside' your head, it can be difficult to judge the level of them correctly in a mix. So your Kick/Snare/Bass/Vocal balance may be a little different when listening on speakers!

The other big factor is that when panning sounds, your ears get none of the head-diffraction effects that you get naturally, i.e. the way sound bends around your head to reach your ears plays a large part in determining the position of sounds in the real world. With headphones, your head is not part of the way you localise sound. What tends to happen with headphones is that as the instrument is panned from the centre outwards, the source seems centralised, then suddenly 'flicks' to one side of the stereo field. It can be difficult to accurately place sounds in the space between centre and hard-panned.

[GYang]

Originally posted by aidyhall
You should be very careful mixing exclusively on headphones...
...The other big factor is that when panning sounds, your ears get none of the head-diffraction effects that you get naturally, i.e. the way sound bends around your head to reach your ears plays a large part in determining the position of sounds in the real world. With headphones, your head is not part of the way you localise sound...

True, so correct approach should always include studio monitors for final judgement of space and panning.
Some designs ( as K 1000) produce much less typical adverse effects on headphone mixing and after getting nice mix on them, just minor tweaking (on nearfields) is usually enough to reach the final goal.
My point is that in mid sized commercial or better project studios, hard earned cash can be saved on expensive high quality (large) main monitors+top range room's acoustic treatment (that will in total go over 30 k) and beter allocated for very good nearfield monitors+headphones setup, as well as, mics+outboard gear, if final result is the main point.
Of course, if we could have all of big boys facilities and equipment, it would be ridiculous to optimize budget on most crucial part of the chain - monitoring.

Good mixes to all.

GYang

[Ted Nightshade]

Monitors are only as good in the room they are in. I was in a control room with $30,000 worth of Genelecs and some Meyer HD-1's too, and the only thing I could believe was what I was hearing on my Grado's. That's one intense advantage to headphones- the room really doesn't matter.

Even with a good room to monitor in and good monitors and good monitor amps, there can be issues with trying to hear exactly what is going on down low where the crossover to subs are or just where the cabs roll off. On some phones you can hear that stuff really well and it's well worth a listen.

And then there's the real issue that you can not listen to monitors while placing a microphone! But some good isolation phones can let you get the mics into good phase coherency and into the best place. Forget giving mic placement instructions over the talk-back: "alright, a little higher, no over to the left, kind of counterclockwise but down, no, back where it was..."

I've done some mixes recently alternating between headphones to check stereo and a single mono monitor. Why? One side of the monitors was down! But it worked, and really well.

[neve1073]

Good thread. I posted a similar thread in the So much gear, so little time! forum without seeing this one first....OOpps. My bad.