Headphones for mixing?

Kirk's with sonar works template

Hi there,
             All I can say is I have not long bought a pair of open back headphones for the first time and was totally blown away with the difference. Its like the music is near your ears but not right in there, its a far more natural sound. For the first few days I just listened to my favorite music with them and it was great. They do bleed a lot of noise (at least mine do), something to consider. I know you said it wasn't a problem
 
I have the akgK240, thereabout £50 so would save yourself £50 or so.  I have loved them so far. Am fairly new to home recording etc so my opinion probably isn't worth much.
 
cheers 

Vastman
Kirk's with sonar works template

I just picked up my third pair of KRKs (the KNS 8400s) for about $90.00 at Amazon. They are very comfortable for long time wear on the ears, sound very clear, and are as Vastman mentions, frequently show up in standard reference software packages as one of the template or standard headphones - which is convenient.

paulf707
I'm currently thinking AKG K701 / K702 - and that is about my price limit (£100-£150 ish).
Anyone out there with experience of these - are they as good as people say?
 

100% positive-would-buy-again-right-away for K702. I use it a lot, it is comfortable, sounds very well balanced but you can also use it like an acoustic magnifying glass. It's amazing what it reveals ...
 
FYI, I bought the K702 5 years ago when it was 3 times the price (still worth every penny IMHO), after extensively testing it against the AKG K-701, AKG K-271 and the Beyerdynamic DT-880.
 
The K-702 felt like a siginificant step up from the K-701. The K-271 I kept for tracking, it's not something you want to wear for long editing sessions ... and I did not like the Beyerdynamic at all (but that may be because I have used AKG reference headphones for more than 20 years ... they sound superb and last for ages ... I still got one that is 25 yrs old, still sounding better than most of what you can buy in todays HiFi stores)
 
 

using sony mdr-7506 with the sonarworks plugin here, though i wish the tb plugin had arrived a bit earlier to save some moolah!

Keep in mind that flat-sounding headphones alone will not give you the 3-D effect of listening to studio monitors (Important when mixing).
 
While Sonarworks or Toneboosters Morph-It makes your phones "flat"....
 
For the 3-D aspect, you'll need to add something like Waves NX, Focusrite VRM, or TB Isone.

OK - first thoughts from a couple of hours testing.....
 
Sonarworks has a profile for my headphones (or certainly very similar) - that seems quite effective. I sort of knew there was a bass boost on them, but the way Sonarworks reduces that sounds much more natural than if I try and use EQ to do it.
I tried experimenting with the 'simulate' options in Sonarworks - there's only a few options in there (I assume that's because it's a demo?) but there are options for AKG701 and Sennheiser HD650... I'm not sure how accurate they are but (to my ears) what they are suggesting from the AKG 701 is quite an 'alteration' to the sound compared to 'flat'. The HD650 seems much closer to 'flat' (to me) - but I guess that is why they cost more. (This ties in with what Soundwise posted earlier about frequency graphs - thanks again for that).
Couple of things about the plugin itself - doesn't seem to respond too well to touch screens (not sure why - most buttons seem to need two 'taps' when a mouse is a 'single click'). Also, the plugin drops the volume considerably - this is quite annoying when trying to A-B test this against other plugins.
 
Also tried Morphit - doesn't have a preset for my Sennheisers - so harder to test. After hearing the 'proper' correction on Sonarworks I managed to find one on Morphit that was similar for testing purposes. Seems to do a similar basic job (and is cheaper). Doesn't have the option for simulating other headphones / speakers, but a) is cheaper and b) doesn't appear to cause a volume reduction.
 
Lastly looked at TB Isone (speaker / studio simulation). Really not sure about this.... Firstly, it is another one with a significant volume reduction - and to make this worse there doesn't appear to be a bypass option within the plugin (making A-B comparisons even harder). In terms of stereo imaging I can hear what it is doing - 'pulling in' extreme panning to a slightly more central bias. I already know that stereo image is more obvious on headphones, and I'm not sure that is a problem (for me) when I'm mixing on headphones. However, I'm less convinced about the 'room / speaker simulations' - all that seems to do is roll off some of the top end (to varying degrees) and make things more muffled? That's not my experience of moving audio from headphones to speakers - some may have slightly less treble, but others have more.
 
 
So conclusions from this?
I think I am convinced that headphones with (as close to possible) flat response are what I need. Sennheiser HD558 are a strong contender at the moment (but I'll be doing more research).
However, having a pair that are covered by Sonarworks / Morphit presets are vital to making use of those tools.
I'm currently leaning towards Morphit, due to the lower price and the better volume matching. And they have Sennheiser 558s on their list of presets....
The lack of 'simulation' may be an issue, but I think I'll look into that as a separate requirement - try to find something like Isone but with more useful sounding options....
 
 
Thanks once again everyone for you comments and suggestions - as always I've moved completely away from where I thought I wanted to go, but I feel I am now making a much more informed decision.
 
Cheers!

I agree - the software emulation can only be an estimation.... But what I heard from the software seemed to agree with the frequency charts that Soundwise showed above - the Sennheiser's seem to be 'flatter' then the AKGs..
 
@Soundwise - where did you get those frequency charts from - is there a website that tests headphones and provides these??
 
Thanks all
Paul

paulf707
....
Couple of things about the plugin itself - doesn't seem to respond too well to touch screens (not sure why - most buttons seem to need two 'taps' when a mouse is a 'single click'). Also, the plugin drops the volume considerably - this is quite annoying when trying to A-B test this against other plugins.
....

At least how I use Sonarworks, it's a "set it and forget it" app. The first time I used it, I selected my headphones from the dropdown and set this as default. Now, I just drop the VST in the Master buss FX bin. No extra clicks or setting-changes required. If you don't need to change the settings, I wouldn't worry about the touch compatibility (but that's just me).
As for the volume drop, I noticed that the faders on the right side of the GUI were originally set to lower the output by 3 or 6 Db. I pushed the faders back up to 0 and that solved the volume problem for me.
If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't. For me, Sonarworks has been a big help. When I listen on other sources now, there aren't nearly as many surprises in the mix.

@BitFlipper - thanks for the link - very interesting reading.... Brings into perspective the relatively small differences between many of the high end headphones (compared to the relatively big difference to my current headphones! - looks like any of the ones I've been looking at will be a significant improvement!!)
 
I'll look again at the SonarWork controls again... I do remember seeing a level control on the right hand side - I though I pushed it as high as it would go, but again, it was struggling to respond to my touch screen, so that could be the answer....
 
Panning - my views are that I tend to mix most instruments within about 50% left / right, and only push 'special effects' type sounds out to the edges. I've not tried mixing in mono - I always find that with everything default to centre pan it's really hard to distinguish between some sounds, and even a small amount of panning tends to 'separate' them. So I tend to pan sounds early on - but maybe that's not a good idea??

paulf707
 

interesting chart, never bothered to look before but explains why I did not like the DT as it sounded too HiFi (which the bass boost on the chart explains quite clearly)

Thanks bitflipper... which Senn's do you use?

Welcome to the discussion! - and thanks for bringing more options into view....
I couldn't find the AT models you are looking at on the graphs site, but here are the frequency responses for the others:

From what I've read K702's are considered 'flat' and show the most detail (as you mentioned) - but are possibly a little 'light' on bass response (although slightly better than K701s)
Based on that description the HD600 seem to have similar frequency response. The bass is slightly lower below 40k (but I doubt that is noticeable), but slightly higher above 70k - which I assume would translate into 'more bass'. They do appear to have slightly difference peaks in mid/treble (2k-3k vs 3k-4k) - not really sure how much difference that would make to listening?
The DT880 would appear to have more bass (and DT990 significantly more). They both seem to have a peak around 8k-9k so I assume they would sound considerably different to the other two.
 
Not sure if that helps....??
 

I have looked at a number of articles / reviews on head-fi and similar, and I wonder if their needs / requirements etc are different to those we look for (from a mixing perspective). From a logical point of view, I'm also sceptical about the 'burn in' issue, but (as you said) there are far too many people discussing it for it to be completely irrelevant.
I'm coming to the conclusion that while my Senn HD25-SP headphones have their issues, they are not 'that bad' compared to some others. I think I will look at getting some 'open' headphones as I'm keen to see the difference. I'm thinking that if I make sure that the ones I get are significantly different (from a frequency response perspective) to my existing HD25's, then at least (if nothing else) I will have 'different options' for listening / mixing etc. I can use the two different headphones to compare mixes, and also vary the sound (which may help with 'mix fatigue' and similar).

Yep, saw those in the last SoundonSound.... not really sure..... They're a bit above my budget (but if I was that impressed by the idea I'd probably find a way to increase the budget!) - I think I'm discounting them because a) they're closed (I think I want open backed), b) I don't think a 'mono' switch is a particularly great benefit and c) I'm not sure that emulating 'mixcubes' are of particular use/interest to me....
But I have to say I love the design / colour :)