Drawbacks to Monitoring with Headphones - Gearslutz.com

Gearslutz.com

All Advertisers
Go Back   Gearslutz.com > The Forums > Remote Possibilities in Acoustic Music & Location Recording


Tags:

Drawbacks to Monitoring with Headphones

New Reply New Reply Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 25th October 2006   #1
Gear nut
 
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 120

Thread Starter
Drawbacks to Monitoring with Headphones

What are the drawbacks to monitoring with a good pair of headphones as apposed to speaker monitors?
penz is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 25th October 2006   #2
Gear Guru
 
Ethan Winer's Avatar
 
Joined: Oct 2002
Location: New Milford, CT, USA
Posts: 12,334

Lightbulb

Quote:
Originally Posted by penz View Post
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
Ethan Winer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 25th October 2006   #3
Lives for gear
 
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 950

After a while they start to hurt on your head.
MattiMattMatt is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 25th October 2006   #4
Lives for gear
 
Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 1,804

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.
PoorGlory is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 25th October 2006   #5
Lives for gear
 
Joined: Aug 2003
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1,289

I can never get the bottom end right using cans.

Nick
Aearth is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #6
Lives for gear
 
barefoot's Avatar
 
Joined: Jan 2004
Location: Portland Oregon
Posts: 1,270

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
__________________
Thomas Barefoot
Barefoot Sound
barefoot is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #7
Gear maniac
 
duckyboard's Avatar
 
Joined: Oct 2006
Location: boston
Posts: 233

...bass response....
duckyboard is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #8
PDC
Lives for gear
 
PDC's Avatar
 
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,787

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.
PDC is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #9
Gear addict
 
joshelevator's Avatar
 
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 486

you can destroy your ears
joshelevator is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #10
Rep
Lives for gear
 
Rep's Avatar
 
Joined: Dec 2003
Location: So-Cal
Posts: 1,778

Arrow

Quote:
Originally Posted by penz View Post
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 ...


.
__________________
The only regrets We will have in Life......Are the things we Never Tried To do.
Rep is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #11
Lives for gear
 
mixerguy's Avatar
 
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 4,002

Quote:
Originally Posted by PDC View Post
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.

fuuck
mixerguy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #12
Lives for gear
 
Messiah's Avatar
 
Joined: Dec 2002
Location: North West Coast, UK.
Posts: 603

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.
__________________
Best Regards,
Carl.
Messiah is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #13
Gear maniac
 
Dom & Roland's Avatar
 
Joined: Feb 2006
Location: London UK
Posts: 275

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.....
Dom & Roland is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #14
Gear Head
 
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 63

For the price 7506's are

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




Quote:
Originally Posted by PDC View Post
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.
dadgad65 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #15
Lives for gear
 
AlexLakis's Avatar
 
Joined: Mar 2005
Location: Annapolis, MD/Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 3,631

Quote:
Originally Posted by penz View Post
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!
AlexLakis is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #16
PDC
Lives for gear
 
PDC's Avatar
 
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,787

Quote:
Originally Posted by mixerguy View Post
Well, you are rudely discounting the opinions of other people.

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

fuuck
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.
PDC is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #17
Gear Guru
 
AllAboutTone's Avatar
 
Joined: Nov 2005
Location: S.Carolina
Posts: 11,480

I agree, you cannot get a true sound over headphone esp if you are mixing rock and roll or there is alot in the mix, i have tried that and its plain out crazy to do such, you are not getting the bonce of the room, nothing will never beat a proper montior set up in a well tunes room......like one other thread says......SAVE YOUR EARS !!!!! If you want to mix for many years get the damn headphones off. This may very well be the same type issue that many artist run out and by a cheap work station and think they can mix there band at home and forget a studio...... well i saw how many DAWs are for sell at GC last Monday, my god they must have been 30 or so used DAWs laying around. You must have the entire package if you plan to make a great sound..... theres no other way out !!!!!
put that in your corn comb pipe and smoke it !!!! LOL Little humor.....


If its radio or Tv you can get by, just keep them LOW !!!!
__________________
Don't Fu*k with my Tone !!!.
I need a spell check app
Harrison~ API~ Dan Alexander~ Fuchs~ John Hardy~ JLM~ Urei/UA

Fuchs Amps = Amazing Tone !!
AllAboutTone is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 27th October 2006   #18
Lives for gear
 
Joined: Oct 2005
Location: Toronto
Posts: 645

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.
Bump Music is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 28th October 2006   #19
Lives for gear
 
synthoid's Avatar
 
Joined: May 2006
Posts: 2,798

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
synthoid is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 28th October 2006   #20
Lives for gear
 
Joined: Aug 2004
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 799

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.
jonnyclueless is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 28th October 2006   #21
Lives for gear
 
Roland's Avatar
 
Joined: Oct 2002
Location: St Leonards on Sea, England
Posts: 2,133

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
Roland is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 28th October 2006   #22
Gear Head
 
Joined: Sep 2004
Location: Northern NJ
Posts: 37

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.
splitune is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 28th October 2006   #23
Lives for gear
 
Oldone's Avatar
 
Joined: Dec 2002
Location: Mission Viejo, CA
Posts: 1,181

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.
Oldone is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 28th October 2006   #24
Lives for gear
 
Joined: Aug 2003
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1,289

Quote:
Originally Posted by jonnyclueless View Post
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
Aearth is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 28th October 2006   #25
Lives for gear
 
soupking's Avatar
 
Joined: Jul 2006
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 3,337

Going deaf, I have those things on for 10 minutes and my ears start to ache. Of course, overdrive is my middle name.
soupking is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 28th October 2006   #26
Lives for gear
 
Joined: Aug 2004
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 799

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aearth View Post
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.
jonnyclueless is offline   Reply With Quote
New Reply New Reply Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook  Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter  Submit Thread to LinkedIn LinkedIn 



Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Similar Threads
Thread Thread starter Forum Replies Last Post
Best Headphones for Monitoring? Meg Lee Chin Remote Possibilities in Acoustic Music & Location Recording 168 4th July 2011 10:43 PM
Avocet's monitoring and Manley Mixer's monitoring The MPCist High end 0 18th May 2005 08:58 AM
Using AES to SPDIF digital transformers, any drawbacks? Kubilay High end 4 6th January 2005 04:44 PM
Monitoring through headphones? GYang Remote Possibilities in Acoustic Music & Location Recording 34 3rd January 2005 12:59 AM
AES/EBU> SP/DIF any drawbacks? cleantone So much gear, so little time! 7 19th March 2004 04:34 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 07:40 PM.

Home - Search Forum - Contact Us - Terms Of Use - Advertise on Gearslutz - All Advertisers - Archive - Top
 
 
Powered by vBulletin®
Gearslutz.com LTD - UK Company Number 7597610.
Registered Office - 35 Ballards Lane, London, N3 1XW.
Hosted by Nimbus Hosting.

SEO by vBSEO ©2010, Crawlability, Inc.