headphones for mixing

i read the recent posts on headphones which i found really helpful, but before i make any hastey investments as my budget is extremely limited since i am in grad school, i was wondering if i could get some suggestions/opinions from a few people. i have almost completely finished tracking and am about ready to do final mixing: which headphones for under 100$ would be best for mixing? i dont care about comfort, i just want headphones that wont color the true sound and will give me a relatively flat EQ. phones that will give me a good idea of how it sounds in a car stereo. suggestions?

I assume you know that mixing using headphones isn't recommended, but if there is no other way, I suggest you look into some Beyerdynamic products, like the DT 231, which is rated ok, price around 60$. Do some reading here:

http://www.headphone.com/guide/by-manufacturer/beyerdynamic/beyerdynamic-dt-231.php

Another and better choice would be the DT 770 Pro, which I own myself and use extensively in my home studio for practising guitar. They sound very good actually, price around 95-100$, review here:

http://www.audioreview.com/cat/headphones-home-audio/headphones/beyerdynamic/PRD_117777_2750crx.aspx


Beyerdynamic products are high quality and good value for money, can't go wrong if you invest in something like the DT231 or anything above. Good luck with your mixing.

Mixing with headphones is not recommended by people who have never learned how to go about doing it correctly. The trick to mixing with headphones is to map the headphones to an ideal listening enviroment. Once your brain has learned the map, you can very reliably get the mix you want using headphones. For example, I have cognitive maps for my Sennheizers for both my nearfield studio monitoring setup and for my car.

I use AKG 240-Studio Headphones for several years now.. very comfortably to wear.
I also use Headphone to pan the instruments and the effects in the mix..(I think I can hear it better using headphones)
When I'm done with the "basics" I switch to my monitors, then home-stereo and car.. and start all over again lol..

ORIGINAL: whattarush

I'm using some Audio Technica ATH-M30 headphones at the moment and they sound great. I picked them up at GC for about $70.

I had the 30s but my mixes didn't sound right on other systems. The ones that work for me are the ATH-M40fs. They are designed just for that and don't cost much more if any if you shop around.

Once I tried a friends Beyerdynamics .

Had to throw them of my skull. Abnormal bass responce and fatiguing highs.

No, you can get a good mix using headphones, and certainly a lot better one that from a typical set of nearfields with no sub. Using a small woofer nearfield without a sub is almost always going to lead to bass overcompensation and a muddy low-heavy mix, when you listen to it on anything else.

ORIGINAL: mosspa
Using a small woofer nearfield without a sub is almost always going to lead to bass overcompensation and a muddy low-heavy mix, when you listen to it on anything else.

With poor ones (M-Audio, etc.), yes. With good ones (Event, Dynaudio, etc.), no.

And, the bass response is the least of the problem. The midrange is just as important, and the M-Audio's for example don't give you good midrange information. I struggled more with this actually than with the poor bass response because, whereas you could eventually gauge where the bass needed to be from trial-and-error experience on hi-fi systems, car stereos, etc., the mids and high-freq stuff all got jumbled together in a hyped-up mess making it difficult to find out what's really there in all the "sizzle".

ORIGINAL: mosspa

Mixing with headphones is not recommended by people who have never learned how to go about doing it correctly. The trick to mixing with headphones is to map the headphones to an ideal listening enviroment. Once your brain has learned the map, you can very reliably get the mix you want using headphones. For example, I have cognitive maps for my Sennheizers for both my nearfield studio monitoring setup and for my car.

Mosspa, you obviously have a very strong opinion of what you are capable of doing on a set of headphones. If you have no other choice, then mixing on a pair of phones is an "option" but not a very good one. Checking mixes on phones are a good practice, but it is never recommended to do the entire mixing process on a pair of phones. There are many things that headphones can not transpire to a mix as if it where played thru a pair of speakers.

Things like imaging is one of the most important aspects that will never translate to a pair of headphones no matter how well you think you are training your brain. This is Phase relations between the audio in the left speaker as it is combined in a listening environment with audio in the Right speaker. Thus you can not hear phase cancellations that will normally occur in a normal listening environment between the interation within air of 2 speakers. The same thing for phase interactions due to the listening environment. Using a pair of headphones elliminates these interactions totally, and there is NO WAY you can judge Phase relations interactions with a pair of headphones.

I'm not trying to start an argument here, I'm just stating the facts. I'm sure you can get a pretty reasonable mix thru headphones once you become familiar with them and how your mixes transpire to other systems, just like ANY speaker you can also do this. If you want to further explain how your "cognitive maps" deal with Phase interactions which are not present when monitoring with headphones as far as additions and substractions when using a pair of headphones, then I'm all ears.

If you're going to make a blanketed statement about people not knowing how to mix with headphones and their advice, then I will make one also.

Mixing with headphones is only recommended by people who don't understand audio and the physics behind it.

If you're willing to upload one of your headphone mixes, I will happily listen to it and point out things that may be wrong with it. I have gone thru many listener training courses, I've been a mastering engineer for quite a few years, and I do this kind of listener critiquing almost on a daily basis and it is pretty easy for me to be constructive and point out flaws that you may be overlooking in your mixes.

ORIGINAL: Rednroll
If you're willing to upload one of your headphone mixes, I will happily listen to it and point out things that may be wrong with it. I have gone thru many listener training courses, I've been a mastering engineer for quite a few years, and I do this kind of listener critiquing almost on a daily basis and it is pretty easy for me to be constructive and point out flaws that you may be overlooking in your mixes.

That's a great offer, albeit to someone else.

I do a lot of headphone mixes of recordings, made from rehearsals at a studio, when I get back to my home studio, because it's usually late at night and, besides, the mixes themselves are only for our personal use -- i.e. I'm being practical rather than having a preference and I have some near-reference monitors that I use when I take things a bit more seriously. Whenever I mix anything, I do try to listen to the result on as many systems as possible, including a decent stereo system, my automobiles (a van and a car -- and what a difference in just those two) and on cheaper headphones via my iPod. I find this very useful to do and helps me make beter mixes on the phones, but I recognize the difference it makes when I use my monitors.

Given that this seems to be an area of speciality, I'd love to have your offer extended to include a couple of things I've done. I think I do a pretty decent job, but there's always room for improvement and to gain the insight and experience from others...

Let me know...

Thanks for your reply. That information was not very clear in your original response and I agree with most every point you made now. I also agree mixing CAN be done on headphones, but there are a lot of things that must be considered in doing so. If you're new to mixing music like the original poster seems to be, then it is not a good starting point if you are not aware of the limitations of headphones. The good point is that you hopefully will learn from hands on experience why mixing exclusively on headphones is not a very good practice.

You mentioned that you would choose to mix on a pair of headphones over a set of speakers without a sub-woofer and get better results. That may be the case for YOURSELF but it's really not very good advice in my opinion. You mentioned using Seinheisser cans in mixing. Well here is a spectral graph of a pair of HD650's.

http://www.stashbox.org/uploads/1147382714/HD650.jpg

Now this looks like a pretty good bass response, for a set of cans. They're also a pair of $650+ pair of headphones and one of their top of the line models. I will only have to safely assume that lesser model numbers have a worse frequency response curve on the low-end. For most of my mixing tasks I use a pair of Alesis Monitor One's, which go for about $150. I bet those Monitor One's have a better overall frequency response then those $650 headphones, especially in the lower frequency range. So looking at that HD650 frequency response I see a nice hyped 200Hz bump and then rolling off on down. Infact if you download the Seinheisser HD600 manual, which I just recently did, they seem to show a frequency response curve from 100Hz-20Khz with nothing between 20-100Hz. Hmmmmmm???? I wonder why that is? Did their printer run out of ink, or do you think maybe that's the area where intermodulation problems occur and the where performance of a small speaker like used in headphones has a hard time reproducing and it wouldn't look very pretty for their documentation?

Headphones have speakers just like speaker cabinets and are therefore subject to the same problems when it comes to accurately reproducing bass frequencies. So the most common way to overcome those low frequency resonant intermodulation frequencies is to increase the size of the speaker. So which speaker has a bigger cone, a cabinet or a set of headphones? Well, my Monitor One's have a 6.5" cone and I haven't seen a pair of headphones with that large of a cone yet. So which do you think has a better "chance" of more accurately resproducing bass frequencies? The smaller speaker or the larger speaker?

I'll go with my 6.5" woofer over any pair of headphones for judging bass any day for a mix. I do cheat though and look at my mixes with a Spectral Analyzer to make sure I didn't accidentally go crazy on the bass frequencies, but in no way would I ever say I could judge bass more accurately with a pair of headphones, then I could with a pair of monitors without a sub-woofer. Physics would be working against me in that statement and my $150 Monitor One's seem to have a better frequency response then those $650 Sennheiser cans.

I do a lot of headphone mixes of recordings, made from rehearsals at a studio, when I get back to my home studio, because it's usually late at night and, besides, the mixes themselves are only for our personal use -- i.e. I'm being practical rather than having a preference and I have some near-reference monitors that I use when I take things a bit more seriously. Whenever I mix anything, I do try to listen to the result on as many systems as possible, including a decent stereo system, my automobiles (a van and a car -- and what a difference in just those two) and on cheaper headphones via my iPod. I find this very useful to do and helps me make beter mixes on the phones, but I recognize the difference it makes when I use my monitors.

That is a very good practice and is one that I highly recommend and use myself. My studio monitoring system actually consists of 3 sets of speakers as well as a set of AKG K240 headphones. They're all there for sanity checks to make sure I haven't missed anything, and then I also check the mix with a spectral analyzer.

Given that this seems to be an area of speciality, I'd love to have your offer extended to include a couple of things I've done. I think I do a pretty decent job, but there's always room for improvement and to gain the insight and experience from others...

I'ld be happy to do that and give some constructive feedback. I have actually done this in the past where this same type of discussion/argument came up and I pointed out to this headphone mixing person who insisted their mixes where great, where quite a few things they missed in using the headphones where pretty aparent. That week, they purchased a new set of Mackie monitors and said later that their mixing and listening skills had improved 10 fold.

I understand, lots of people have limitations as far as the environment they mix in and sometimes have no other choice then to use headphones. The key to getting a good mix no matter if you use headphones or $10K studio monitors, is "Familiarity". You need to become familiar with the speakers and listen a lot to other material that has been done professionally and become familiar with how that mix transpires to your monitors and make mental notes. It's always good to listen to music that might be similar to your mix before you start mixing, just to reaquant yourself with that sound. Then when you're near finishing a mix, it's always a good idea to play that music again thru your monitoring system and see how it matches up tonally to your mix. It's all about familiarity and using the right reference material.

With enough effort and perserverence, I *could* walk on my hands to San Francisco, but I wouldn't want to do it... It's easier to drive.