Personally, I try to have one mix consistent through my main (temporary again) nearfield monitors, the small ones (Alesis M1-320) and headphones. I'll even unplug everything and listen to my mix on the laptop speaker every now and then. Which is the ultimate lofi - but it sometimes help me figure out things. I wouldn't try to mix w/ them of course, but they're worth checking out, imho.

I try to be very careful, particularly w/ the low ends. I'd rather set a low cut than to leave something my monitors can't represent accurately. Just last night, I've had the opportunity to listen to a mix that was most likely done on an average set up - like the one I'm currently using - in a proper environment on high end monitors. There was some incredibly exaggerated bass in there which ruined the mix. 

However, I've had to work exclusively w/ the Alesis and the cans while we were in Russia last winter, and by being careful w/ the bass - I even put socks in the port to kill the added bass - I managed to create some mixes that translated relatively well when I got back to my bigger monitors. 

And then, what I fixed using the bigger ones affected mostly low and high ends. The mids themselves required very little adjustments. Listening back to the fixed mix on my small monitors again sounded just as good. Somehow I guess, not having the low ends to add punch, I had to really work out the mids to make the mix stand out. And it did - it actually sounded like a decent mix, but w/ the bass knob turned down.

I should probably mention that my intention was not to come w/ a real finished mix, but it was a personal challenge, to hear how far I could go using the most basic tools I had. 

 I have been cheating a little bit recently by using ARC 2 for its virtual monitoring on headphones. It allows for mono and virtual speakers of several kinds. I know ARC acoustically changes waves based on your room but it seems to be working well for me in headphone monitoring as well. When I go back to my M-audio Bx 8as the mix translates pretty close.Close enough to make it worth using. It gets me by during those late night mix sessions.

That is a good point that Danny makes. And it also applies to the other speaker simulators too. What are they doing. I think adding in the sound of the room and two speakers within that space is a good start. They are obviously not compensating for frequency response variations so much. 

I have got a few questions though when in speaker simulation mode.

And are they using a flat response from the input to drive the speaker simulator. Would the ARC response of your room come into it at all? Is there a way the response of the headphones can be measured with the measurement mic so a special ARC response could be applied to the headphones too?

Maybe we are trying too hard to be able to do accurate mixes on phones when really it does not need to be done that way and in any serious applications it is usually not. Any pair of good quality phones will do the job of letting you hear your stereo buss late at night. (I have got a pair of AKG K77's and they sound just like the speakers. I often check the speaker output thinking the speakers are on by mistake) But speakers (and small mono speaker) are probably still the best way to accomplish a great mix.

I am still interested in this software though because it is only a matter of time when any headphones will be able to sound like any speaker in any room and that will be fun. If they can release a plug-in now that can effectively remove excessive reverb in a wet recording and do it very well then this cannot be too far away. Imagine the mastering possibilities when this becomes a reality. To be able to check your great mastered sound on the most expensive Duntechs in the finest acoustic environment.

Rain

Danny Danzi

Starise


I have been cheating a little bit recently by using ARC 2 for its virtual monitoring on headphones. It allows for mono and virtual speakers of several kinds. I know ARC acoustically changes waves based on your room but it seems to be working well for me in headphone monitoring as well. When I go back to my M-audio Bx 8as the mix translates pretty close.Close enough to make it worth using. It gets me by during those late night mix sessions.

I'm curious Starise, how well is this working for you? You know me, I will always brag about ARC as you know how important it's become in my production, but for the life of me, I can't see how that virtual monitor would work on headphones?

Each pair is different...how can you trust that? For example, I get more bass than I want to hear through my Sennheiser pro's...yet slightly fall short with bass on my AKG's even though they are the best can's I've ever used and are the flattest ones I own. If I use the ARC headphone sim, it's not very realistic to me as far as how my headphones are sounding. My AKG's sound near identical to my A-7's in my opinion when my sub is turned off. Though I would like just a little more bass in the AKG's so it would force me to mix a little bass lighter if I used them, I'd much rather do that using an eq to push exactly the area the AKG's are missing for me which is between 50 and 60 Hz. The Sennheisers have too much 50-60 Hz so I'd need to cut there.

That said, doesn't the ARC headphone sim totally change the sound of your headphones? To me it just seemed very unrealistic. It's like the label "headphones".....how can this even be credible when there are how many headphones out there today? LOL! Yeah, ok we can adjust things in it....but how do you know you're adjusting the right stuff? You don't do you, until you mix a few things and experiment, right? To me that's kinda shooting in the dark. It's one thing to have ARC draw your curve for your monitors to where you may need slight fine tuning here and there....it's another to have your headphones blindly "simulated" with something that isn't even true to YOUR set of headphones, know what I mean? Maybe I'm missing something here? I just don't see how any of these headphones sims can work correctly. I have 2 of the ones that have been discussed on this forum plus ARC 2 and to me, none of the headphone sims make a difference for the better at all.

I guess I could see it if you had really bad cans...but my AKG's K-240 DF's are so good, I can literally mix through them with good results just the way they are. Like I say, they sometimes make me mix a little bass heavy due to the cans themselves lacking a little thump, but I've learned them so well through the years that I've been able to compensate now. If I add something like a headphone room sim etc, they not only sound terrible, it no longer sounds remotely close to what I've tracked and there's no way I can mix using stuff like that. God bless those of you who can. :)

-Danny

I don't know how they pull that one, whether it's ARC or VRM. 


But then again, I started thinking in terms of guitar, because, well, I'm a guitar player. :P


Whether we listen to a recorded guitar using headphones or on small speakers, and even, no matter which mic was used to capture it, if we're familiar w/ the cab, chances are that we'll recognize the sound of the cab and the speaker, and even whether it's a Les Paul or a Tele or whatever that's playing through it.

So what I'm thinking is that, if you capture the sonic particularities of a pair of monitors in a room, what you'll get on the other hand will, of course, be colored by the headphones that you're using, but still recognizable to some extent. 


I don't know. I haven't used either VRM or ARC. I use 112db's Redline Monitor - but it's not really "speaker" simulation, more a spatial gimmick that compensates for the issues of stereo image using headphones. At least, that's why I use it. 

The way I see things like VRM is more like a way to give you an idea of how the mix may sound on various set ups, keeping in mind that, ultimately, that sound is also shaped by your headphones.  But no more and no less than you'd still be able to tell the difference between a 1 x 12 Fender cab and a 4 x 12 Marshall stack through whichever speaker configuration - they'd still bring forward certain particularities. 

I don't think these devices are primarily intended to mix through, using one particular virtual set up, but more to evaluate how your mix may sound through a variety of different set ups. To a certain extent. 

I agree with your assumption there, Rain. The thing that gets me though, how can these things compensate for ALL headphones to where people use them with good results? For example, ARC doesn't really have a dedicated "headphone" sim preset. You get lots of other things. This is another reason why I was asking Starise about his findings with it.
 
The good thing about ARC 2 is, you can actually manually eq anything you create with it. I see this as both good and bad depending on the user. It's like...if you don't like the correction that ARC 2 came up with, you can alter it. That sort of scares me if you're someone that isn't "in the know" about this stuff. For example, my ARC 2 curve is so close to my ARC 1 curve, the only difference I noticed was ARC 2 was a little crispier running it "flat" with my curve. That little bit of crispiness would force me to take away highs in my mixes where in reality, I'd not want to do that when compared to my mixes in ARC 1. I've never had high end issues with my stuff in my opinion.
 
However, because this little high end boost annoyed me, I was able to drop the high end manual eq ARC 2 gives me down like 3 increments and it totally fixed the problem. A guy that is a novice at this stuff may over-compensate and be stuck with lots of trial and error...which in my opinion defeats the purpose of ARC.
 
That said, if you were to try and create some sort of headphone ARC curve, it would be like shooting in the dark unless you were positive that your headphones were missing something specific. Like for example, I could probably get away with tweaking the ARC 2 eq for my AKG's and wind up successful. When I start to hear bass in them while mixing, I usually lower the bass -1 dB because I know they will force me to mix a little bass heavy. The right amount of bass in those cans always leaves me with a bass heavy mix on real monitors. What I like about them the most though is how highs and mids are perfect. I just wish they had a little bit more bass kick that was accurate. So I could probably manufacture an eq curve in ARC for them pushing 50-60 Hz a little more to compensate.
 
That said, I'd need to use one of the virtual enhancement choices they give because using the correction curve for my A-7's, NS-10's, Rockit's or Genelecs will not work on cans. I haven't figured out if the ARC 2 virtual enhancements work off of the correction you have loaded up for your monitors or that possibly they work independently. I would *think* they work independently and do no rely on your monitor curve as that would be silly to try and use a curve from a set of monitors and then use it within headphones. However, you can't even load the ARC plug unless a saved correction is present so I believe it DOES work off of that correction for everything. Whatever the case, other than ARC 2's real correction functionality with real monitors, those other enhancements it offers are not for me and unfortunately are also not very realistic other than like the laptop sim, multimedia speakers sim and TV speakers sim.
 
As for the Redline and VRM, I've always thought of them as "different" but not really better. The cool thing about both of them in my opinion is how they narrow up your mix a bit instead of how headphones make things way too separated. The problem there is these plugs can also make a person forget that the spectrum has been narrowed up to where they can mix things too wide thinking a mix may not be panned wide enough. I definitely can hear where these plugs are attempting to make a difference, though none of them have ever helped me to mix better in cans unfortunately.
 
If I can sort out the low end in my AKG's to where what I hear in them is what I get, I'd not need anything really. This is where an eq used like ARC just for heaphones boosting a little 50-60 Hz would most likely fix my lack of lows issue. I'd just have to remember to remove the eq just like ARC before an export. I've been meaning to try this but always seem to forget. LOL! :)
 
-Danny

Oh and ahhh "Rocks!"