Drawbacks to Monitoring with Headphones

[penz]

What are the drawbacks to monitoring with a good pair of headphones as apposed to speaker monitors?

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by penz

What are the drawbacks to monitoring with a good pair of headphones as apposed to speaker monitors?

One problem is that it's more difficult to hear what's really in the mix because things are too clean and clear. For example, a vocal that is mixed too soft will be plainly audible in the headphones, so you won't know it's too soft. Likewise for reverb and some other effects - you think they're louder than they really are.

--Ethan

[MattiMattMatt]

After a while they start to hurt on your head.

[PoorGlory]

Everything maintains extreme seperation in cans, whereas when the sound is actually traveling a distance through the air from the driver to your ear, things tend to blend together. You can't judge how things fit in a mix with headphones... volume-wise or Eq-wise.

[Aearth]

I can never get the bottom end right using cans.

Nick

[barefoot]

Before I started building monitors for a living I did some pretty exhaustive research about mixing with headphones. At the time there were several new "auralization" algorithms available that I thought might make monitors superfluous. Some are quite sophisticated, allowing you to put in your own HRTF (Head Related Transform Function) that specifically compensates for the acoustic sound field caused by your head. I tried them all. I tried dynamic headphones, electrostatic headphones, open cup headphones, closed cup headphones, Diffuse Field equalized headphones, etc., etc., etc.,

What did I discover?


Well here I am, building monitors. Maybe someday headphones will work as recording monitors, but those days are in the distant future as far as I can tell. At this point they simply do not translate well to the outside world.

I do sometimes find headphones useful for editing, where I'm just cutting and pasting or looking for pops and clicks; not actually making decisions with respect to sound qualities or imaging.

Thomas

[duckyboard]

...bass response....

[PDC]

I think all of that above is garbage, sorry to say. It is absolutely no different than learning to mix on anything else. It is a matter of knowing your cans, like you know your room, speakers, amps, etc.

Tell Bob Lentini that his jazz stuff sounds weak on bass, or that his vocals and verb do not sit right in the mix. His stuff was mixed on the consumer version of the 7506s.

I mix two international ministry TV shows, and three ministry radio shows on headphones (Sony 7506s at that). I know what they do, and I know how to compensate. In my opinion, I would rather take the room element out of the equation. I need to hear clean without loud, over long periods of time.

Look, the majority of the world listens to music on phones. Crappy phones at that. So it would not hurt to check mixes on an iPod, with average buds. I also check mixes on the G4 speaker.

[joshelevator]

you can destroy your ears

[Rep]

Originally Posted by penz

What are the drawbacks to monitoring with a good pair of headphones as apposed to speaker monitors?

Low frequency response

Soft and loud sounds, lack volume separation.

Low end perception is not just In the ears / hearing it,
It is more physical then that :

Bass notes are conducted through bones in the body,
and merely hearing them lacks impact ...


.

[mixerguy]

Originally Posted by PDC

I think all of that above is garbage, sorry to say. It is absolutely no different than learning to mix on anything else. It is a matter of knowing your cans, like you know your room, speakers, amps, etc.... (snip)...

Well, you are rudely discounting the opinions of other people.

I'm glad headphones work for you, you rude know it all.

[Messiah]

reference is reference. simple.

We tend to believe that headphones are a compromise over monitors, but both have their limitations. Both methods struggle to recreate the 'real' sound you get from standing in front of a band playing live, or whatever else you are doing.

Your job is to try and interpret this and represent it (at times), so there really is no right and wrong, only preference.

If you have listened to every album you love on headphones, then use them to work o your own material, chances are you can transfer this knowledge.
Substitute 'headphones' for 'monitors' and the same applies.

We are now in the iPod generation, headphones NEED to be referred to, you need to have an idea how the listeners are going to hear it.

[Dom & Roland]

ultrasone proline 750's are an essential part of mixing to me,they compensate for various inefficiencies of normal headphones using some clever processing......how do i use them? i get the mix sounding great on my monitors switch to the headphones to see if theres any spaces or problems,then i do my best to sort them out whilst checking the mix on monitors again to see that i am not damaging the mix at all....This way i can be sure it sounds good on both.....

[dadgad65]

For the price 7506's are

Interesting point regarding people listening via phones. Automobiles are another really common listening environment, not to be discounted...

Originally Posted by PDC

I think all of that above is garbage, sorry to say. It is absolutely no different than learning to mix on anything else. It is a matter of knowing your cans, like you know your room, speakers, amps, etc.

Tell Bob Lentini that his jazz stuff sounds weak on bass, or that his vocals and verb do not sit right in the mix. His stuff was mixed on the consumer version of the 7506s.

I mix two international ministry TV shows, and three ministry radio shows on headphones (Sony 7506s at that). I know what they do, and I know how to compensate. In my opinion, I would rather take the room element out of the equation. I need to hear clean without loud, over long periods of time.

Look, the majority of the world listens to music on phones. Crappy phones at that. So it would not hurt to check mixes on an iPod, with average buds. I also check mixes on the G4 speaker.

[AlexLakis]

Originally Posted by penz

What are the drawbacks to monitoring with a good pair of headphones as apposed to speaker monitors?

Mainly balancing the low end turns into guesswork, and panned tracks can start playing games with you. Also, if you turn them up past a certain level, the volume levels all start sounding the same (this goes for every kind of monitoring, but I believe the effect is magnified in cans...probably due to the fact that the speakers are so close to your ears and your ears are trapped inside a small bubble with all that sound!)

Personally, I don't mind editing on heaphones, in fact, I sometimes prefer it. I'll even do a bit of initial rough mixing in cans too, depending on my situation.

Once you get used to a set of headphones, you can get a better idea of how things will translate. For example, on my one set of headphones, I know that, for the mostpart, in a rock mix, the low end on the bass guitar has to be barely audible to sit right. Anything more, and it will rattle off the bumper in my car. Do I prefer to work like this? Obviously not. Can I work like this. Yeah, but there better be some A/B/C/D monitoring comparisons going on down the line, and the sooner the better!

[PDC]

Originally Posted by mixerguy

Well, you are rudely discounting the opinions of other people.

I'm glad headphones work for you, you rude know it all.

My post was just an opinion, just as theirs.

If I took everything that people said here as gospel, and didn't try things for myself, then I would be broke, having bought multiples of every new fad toy, have conflicting knowledge of digital and analog, etc.

All of this stuff is relative. Not everyone here can afford the perfect room. Many of us have to make do. So, I would rather mix in cans, than trust my imperfect environment. What good are great monitors if the room sucks right? Besides, with my content, I am dealing with spoken word and music beds for TV. The average listener/viewer is over 40, and natural (severe) hearing loss. So to me, all of those points about bass and effects, etc are moot.

Now, I send church kids wanting to learn about audio here. So watch the fingers will ya? We can disagree with class.

[Bump Music]

I use headphones on ALL my mixes. I agree with all the drawbacks mentioned here, and for those reasons, I only use headphones for 65% of the mix. The other 35% I use my monitors.

[synthoid]

I've rough-mixed some stuff on cans (good ones) and taken it into a studio and almost blown out the speakers with excessive bass, haha. Cans are horrible for dealing with bass, and it cuts both ways: you can get too much because they don't reproduce the really deep frequencies faithfully, and you can get too little because you get used to hearing other mixes in cans where the bass always sounds thin (and so your own mix doesn't seem to be missing anything).

-synthoid

[jonnyclueless]

I have mixed several albums on nothing but headphones and auratones.

Recently I had a mix in a big SSL room, but due to some corrupted files the studio was booked by the time I got the files. I mixed the record in one of the studio offices on nothing but headphones, auratones, ITB (To be fair I had a manley mixer) and not only did the client not know that the mixes weren't done on the SSL, he thoguht they were the best mixes he ever got from an SSL room.

So I am a little hardpressed to give a disadvantage. You do need to take more breaks (which I alwys need a lot regardless) because it's easy to get worn out and it's easy to listen too loud without realizing it.

[Roland]

Hedphones can give a you a ballpark, however as Ethans post alluded they give a "false" balance. Back in my early days recording I couldn't understand why a mix performed on heaphones didn't translate to any speakers I tried. No they don't work, for all the reasons stated by different people above.

Regards


Roland

[splitune]

I'll always check from time to time with headphones. They seem to illuminate some problems that get by me on my mains such as small mic stand bumps, small plosives and clicks in bad edits. And they're good for tweaking reverb. They also just give me another perspective. I'll do most levels and rides with my small sony Z750s. But for checking low end and eq's ,mains are the way to go for me.

[Oldone]

Well I'm not locked one way or the other but when I mix on my speakers and then listen through the headphones, the mix sounds done. When I do the opposite, it always sounds bad. So, being the the kind of person who values his time, I only mix on the speakers.

I do dink around a lot on the headphones, trying different things but would not commit to a mix hoping it would translate.

[Aearth]

Originally Posted by jonnyclueless

I have mixed several albums on nothing but headphones and auratones.

Recently I had a mix in a big SSL room, but due to some corrupted files the studio was booked by the time I got the files. I mixed the record in one of the studio offices on nothing but headphones, auratones, ITB (To be fair I had a manley mixer) and not only did the client not know that the mixes weren't done on the SSL, he thoguht they were the best mixes he ever got from an SSL room.

So I am a little hardpressed to give a disadvantage. You do need to take more breaks (which I alwys need a lot regardless) because it's easy to get worn out and it's easy to listen too loud without realizing it.

That's great if your recordings are good. I reckon if the tracking is good the mix will follow.

Nick

[soupking]

Going deaf, I have those things on for 10 minutes and my ears start to ache. Of course, overdrive is my middle name.

[jonnyclueless]

Originally Posted by Aearth

That's great if your recordings are good. I reckon if the tracking is good the mix will follow.

Nick

Good recordings are a thing of the past. Mixers are now fixers.