Headphone mix

Well pretty straight forward really. Create a new buss and call it Headphones. The main concern is routing the outputs of that new buss to perhaps a spare set of analog outs so you can and then you can patch those into some sort of headphone amp. Or another option is to route the new buss to your main outs and stop everything else from going to your main outs. (during tracking only of course)

Now you can create sends on all of your tracks (at once too) and send them to your new buss. Don't forget any busses you may have set up eg drum buss or guitar buss etc can also send to your new buss. And even your main masterbuss can go there too if you want.

A few tips:

Spend time getting a nice headphone mix. Musicians will love you for it (or you) and it just makes everyone (or you) play better, period. This is often rushed during a session. Slow down and get it right.

Don't be afraid to use the panning in your headphone buss. If you have got two guitars say pan them a bit to the left and right. It helps to distinguish them easier.

When tracking vocals dont let the bass get lost, keep it well up. It helps vocalists to pitch better.

Avoid heaps of reverb. It hides things and makes singers sound better than they are. You are better off keeping it a bit dry. It is hard but they will pitch a bit better as a result.

Don't have too much stuff happening in the phones when tracking. Keep it minimal. It helps you hear what you are tracking at the time better.

Often the drum overheads are enough to keep them in time maybe with a little kick and snare. Don't waste time trying to get all the toms in there as well. Not necessary.

You can create more than one headphone buss and create different mixes for people. But then you will need multiple analog outs in order to feed the diffeent headphone amp inputs etc..I have often found that one decent mix can do it most of the time!

Use decent headphones if you can and if you are listening in as well make sure you have got the same headphones that everybody else has. That way you are hearing exactly what they are hearing.

Hope that helps.

Where are you in Australia?

Good explanation, Jeff. And neat trick, Mike, keeping true to the KISS principle.

to the OP - some interfaces will let you do a mix within hardware, too.  Zero latency mixing.  That way you skip having to go through SONAR and any inherent delay.  Depending upon your interface and its mixer, you do enough there sometimes.

@

Hi guys, I have a Berhinger 1204USB mixing desk and would like to route a headphone mix from the alt 3/4 outputs into my headphone amp, I've been playing around with buses in MC6 and have no idea what to do
 
Thanks

mike_mccue
Another thing I do when routing monitoring through SONAR is that I send my main mix to the Master and then the Master to a headphone bus... and the headphone bus is my temporary "master"

That way I can split an overdub track directly to the headphones and make it loud and I can have The Master as a  bus on the mix so I can turn down the whole mix to easily reveal the track of who ever is doing overdubs without messing up the mix.

After the overdubs I can quickly fold the new tracks into the mix by making my Master the actual Master again.

Mike, that's brilliant. I am going to steal this trick. Thanks.

I backed into a sweet monitor mix setup. Primary interface is an M-Audio 2626 w 2 Behr ADA8000s on ADAT ports. The hardware DSP mixer is an 18x16 config, with a stereo master pair, and 7 stereo submix sends. Twoadvantages to doing monitors this way, one, zero latency no matter how hard I push the DAW, and two, saving and reloading the entire monitor mix setup.
 
Problem was Senn hi impedance phones, 280s and 380s, and not enough volume in the cans. I put a Samson S-phone headphone mixer/amp in, which has a 6x8 I/O configuration, (in stereo pairs for a 3x4 phone mix). This gives me all the volume I'll ever need, and significant flexibility as well.
 
By setting up 3 different monitor mixes on the 2626 DSP mixer, I can feed the 3 stereo Samson inputs, and from the Samson, blend these 3 mixes 4 different ways for 4 different artists. That leaves the 4 remaining DSPmixes available for use as hardware effects sends, 4 additional headphone mixes, or any combination thereof.
 
Master outs from the 2626 feed any or all of a pair of Resolv 80As, HS50Ms, Eurolive S1220 stage monitors, or an Altec Lansing 2.1 system w sub, in different rooms,  for A/B/C/D testing.
 
If stacking multiple multiplex units in this manner, I highly recommend taking the time to diagram everything in a clear, legible way, as signal routing complexities get real deep real fast. I use two diagrams, one for the Samson headphone mixer inputs, and one for the patchbay, which includes all the 2626 and FX I/O, and so far I haven't yet had to hunt for signals in any situation encountered to
 date.

mike_mccue
Another thing I do when routing monitoring through SONAR is that I send my main mix to the Master and then the Master to a headphone bus... and the headphone bus is my temporary "master"

That way I can split an overdub track directly to the headphones and make it loud and I can have The Master as a  bus on the mix so I can turn down the whole mix to easily reveal the track of who ever is doing overdubs without messing up the mix.

After the overdubs I can quickly fold the new tracks into the mix by making my Master the actual Master again.

It sounds wordy but it is simple... and helpful (at least to me). :-)





best regards,
mike

This is a great tip. Something that should be stickied. If only we had stickies. Which we don't . Why not?

Bibs