Mixing primarily on headphones with occasional monitoring

Yes, you could surely benefit, but we need a budget first! $200? $500? $1000? Do you want some new headphones too that might be more ideal seeing as you're doing most on headphones?

Sharke, I've been doing 95% of my mixing through headphones for a few years now, because the room isn't treated. I use Audio Technica ATH-M50 headphones, with Tannoy Reveal monitors occasionally. A few others like these headphones too;

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2606011

jamesg1213


Sharke, I've been doing 95% of my mixing through headphones for a few years now, because the room isn't treated. I use Audio Technica ATH-M50 headphones, with Tannoy Reveal monitors occasionally. A few others like these headphones too;

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2606011

Thanks for turning me onto those, I'll definitely head down to B&H Video to give them a listen. They seem very reasonable at around $130 on Amazon too. 

Can't go wrong with Ultrasone...

http://www.spectrumaudio.com/ultrasone-pro-900.html?gclid=CKfZ88DXhbICFQTNnAodQGcANg

Don't forget there are systems that can be used in conjunction with quality headphones that can simulate a room environment and remove a lot of the problem with the over wide stereo image you hear from wearing phones.

http://global.focusrite.c...dio-interfaces/vrm-box

Hi Herb, basically no I don't. But I have heard a few good things about it and the reviews have been favourable. I think your headphones will sound better with this rather than without. You need pretty decent headphones for this to work well I understand. 

I am a speakers man and I am in a good position to be able to use them most of the time and loud if I want to as well. I only use phones for perhaps personal listening late at night or editing or stuff like that. Not accurate mix work. 

There are other systems like the VRM too I believe.  Worth looking into if you had to do a lot of work on cans. Sort of the opposite to ARC! 

Having just read a few favorable reviews of the VRM box I think it's going to be my next purchase!

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2606011

sharke


Little advice needed here. I'm basically a home hobbyist who pursues a music interest as a relief from the pressures of running a non-musical business. So while I'm committed to developing my production skills and would be over the moon if something came of it, it's not as if I have paying clients to keep happy on a deadline, and there's no hurry. 

Basically my current apartment setup is that I could not mix for long periods on monitors (I can make noise before 10pm, but sound travels in my building to the extent that I would not want to be bothering my neighbors with endless loops of 8 bars that I'm working on). Also, acoustically treating the room is out of the question. So mostly, I've been mixing with a pair of Grado SR80i headphones, which I certainly didn't purchase with a view to mixing, but they've got such a focused, balanced sound that it makes using them a joy. I've kind of gotten familiar with the sound and of their limitations. I also use the Redline Monitor plugin from 112dB which addresses some of the problems with the stereo separation of headphones (it's not perfect, but it really helps). 

I have an old pair of nearfields in storage that someone gave to me years ago, but to be honest I can't even remember what they are. I'm getting to the point now where I could really use some kind of monitor setup to check my mixes on from time to time, even though I'm doing most of my work with the cans on. 

I have a pair of crappy Bose computer speakers that I could use (having heard some mixers say they use speakers like this to really push them into improving their mids etc) but I was wondering if I might benefit from something like a pair of Avantone Mixcubes as well, to check my mixes on at a reasonably low volume every now and again (and perhaps in mono too). I figure this way, I have the highs and the mids covered, and I just have to make allowances for the lows the best I can, as I've been doing up to this point (to be honest I keep my low end as simple and uncluttered as possible anyway). 

Any thoughts? 

Hey Sharke,


As you may have read in that other thread that James linked, I first heard the ATH-M50s over at a friend's "studio" - in fact, he lives just upstairs from here and has to put up w/ the exact same type of environment as I - bay windows all around and no real sound treatment. 


I was surprised when he told me that he did all his mixing in the cans. He also has a pair of older KRK, which he uses to work, but the mixing is all done w/ the cans until we move to Vegas, gets his real monitors shipped from home and sets up a proper studio. But until then, he has to keep up w/ the gigs and keep the mixes coming.


I was blown away when I tried those particular headphones - that's w/o anything like Redline Monitor (which I also use) or VRM. Just the cans. His mixes are actually pretty impressive - layered stuff with lots of dynamics and movement which covers a lot of sonic ground. I've heard his stuff in a commercial studio operated by a common friend last night. Sounded absolutely great.


Personally, I think I'll always prefer to have monitors to work on as well. I don't think anyone would advocate using cans only in ideal circumstances.  But ideal isn't what we're talking about here. :)

Those AT can be found for as little as $99 these days. I'd recommend them w/o hesitation. Then maybe you could invest of a pair of budget near field monitors, like KRKs or little Mackies or Yamahas in the $300-400 range. These obviously aren't the same level of quality as the high end versions, but I think they'd be a big improvement on your current set of Bose. And anyway, it would make no sense to invest thousands of $ on monitors w/o proper room treatment.

But little things can do a difference - finding the best spot to place them, not placing them directly on your desk but on isolation pads, and such... 

I'm considering the VRM box as yet another way to check my mixes, but in any case, if you must work with cans, the most important part of the chain are the actual headphones, IMHO. 

horror tones.

I see a small speaker (s) such as the Avantone the second option and headphones the third option. I prefer one speaker to two as well. The mini monitor(s) could be a great solution for those who still want to work with a speaker but do it at very low volume so it does not disturb anyone.

They are amazing at getting your mixes sounding so good. By taking the extreme lows and highs away you hearing the all important mid range components of everything and once you get all that mid range stuff in balance the rest takes care of itself. One speaker highlights the situation where two parts in the music are sounding too similar. It forces you to modify one of them a bit more, improves separation.

Once you have got the balance of everything sounding great in the small speaker you switch back to your main monitors and this is when you need them. Your main speakers allow you to:

Complete/create the stereo placement of everything.
Observe extreme bottom and high end and allows you to bring those parts of the spectrum back and into balance with the well balanced mids.
Hear very well reverb and other more subtle effects and set their levels accordingly.

The small speaker is an amazing thing. Anyone who says otherwise is mis informed. When you listen to a great ref mix on your main speakers and then you switch to the small speaker the mix changes. You learn how a great mix sounds on the small speaker. You sit in front of it directly. There are no room acoustics involved with using it. It basically allows you to get a fantastic balance of everything in your mix. It allows perfect vocal/music relationship to be set once and for all. This is harder to do on big speakers up loud. The small speaker also is great for checking mono compatibility from stereo sources. It makes your ears open up and listen harder. The idea is to work with the small speaker at quite a low SPL level such as 65 and 70 dB SPL.

Then the fun part. You listen on your main speakers at 100 to 105 dB SPL. (for a little while only!) Then you hear any other problems that may be still around. But after doing the work previously mentioned first this last bit is usually a home run and god it sounds bloody great!

Rain


Last time I checked, B & H had the VRM for $75. Never managed to visit the store despite its proximity due to their weird opening hours (like, being closed from 2 pm on Fridays!).

They drive me nuts. Every time I go they're closed. I cannot seem to grasp their opening hours. 

Jeff Evans


I see a small speaker (s) such as the Avantone the second option and headphones the third option. I prefer one speaker to two as well. The mini monitor(s) could be a great solution for those who still want to work with a speaker but do it at very low volume so it does not disturb anyone.

They are amazing at getting your mixes sounding so good. By taking the extreme lows and highs away you hearing the all important mid range components of everything and once you get all that mid range stuff in balance the rest takes care of itself. One speaker highlights the situation where two parts in the music are sounding too similar. It forces you to modify one of them a bit more, improves separation.

Once you have got the balance of everything sounding great in the small speaker you switch back to your main monitors and this is when you need them. Your main speakers allow you to:

Complete/create the stereo placement of everything.
Observe extreme bottom and high end and allows you to bring those parts of the spectrum back and into balance with the well balanced mids.
Hear very well reverb and other more subtle effects and set their levels accordingly.

The small speaker is an amazing thing. Anyone who says otherwise is mis informed. When you listen to a great ref mix on your main speakers and then you switch to the small speaker the mix changes. You learn how a great mix sounds on the small speaker. You sit in front of it directly. There are no room acoustics involved with using it. It basically allows you to get a fantastic balance of everything in your mix. It allows perfect vocal/music relationship to be set once and for all. This is harder to do on big speakers up loud. The small speaker also is great for checking mono compatibility from stereo sources. It makes your ears open up and listen harder. The idea is to work with the small speaker at quite a low SPL level such as 65 and 70 dB SPL.

Then the fun part. You listen on your main speakers at 100 to 105 dB SPL. (for a little while only!) Then you hear any other problems that may be still around. But after doing the work previously mentioned first this last bit is usually a home run and god it sounds bloody great!

Is it possible to output to mono in Sonar?

I think most DAW's have some sort of plug that can achieve a mono output. I have a small passive mixer that combines the stereo signal from a spare output on my digital mixer so it is always in mono.

The reason why one small speaker is better is because even if you feed mono to two small Avantone type speakers you are still hearing stereo to a certain degree. The sound won't arrive matched on both your ear drums you will start perceiving this as a form of stereo. You don't need it at this critical balancing stage.  A single point source speaker works very well in this context.

I would not rule out the software that can simulate rooms while on cans either. I think this is a very interesting area of development.

Yes I understand if the option to use speakers is very difficult then of course headphones are going to be the number one priority. 

I have thought about the EQ idea Rain has mentioned on the main monitors. It could be worth trying it for sure. I think the fact though the sound suddenly moves away from your main speakers, goes into mono and jumps into a small speaker somewhere else has quite a profound effect on its effectiveness. It's nice to sit a foot or so away from it too looking straight at it at low volume, something you cannot achieve easily with your main speakers. As you can tell I love the small speaker. I spend much more time on it. But when you do go back to your main speakers the rewards are high.

I would like to add something extra the small speaker is good at and that is highlighting the situation where you have unnecessary or cluttered musical parts that don't need to be in your mix. This sounds worse on the small speaker. Turn that stuff off and the mix sounds clearer with more space around things. A good analogy might be a lot of parts can exist in a mix like a lot of people can be in a large room without issues but cram them all into an elevator and see what goes on then. There may be some conflict or issues. That is what it is like when you feed a complex mix into a small point source speaker. Everything is trying hard to coexist there. It could also be a reason why EQ ing your main speakers may be not be as effective.

Now my last post looks redundant since you edited your post :-) 

It's still a nice piece of software that addresses the OP issue.

Jeff Evans


I think most DAW's have some sort of plug that can achieve a mono output. I have a small passive mixer that combines the stereo signal from a spare output on my digital mixer so it is always in mono.

The reason why one small speaker is better is because even if you feed mono to two small Avantone type speakers you are still hearing stereo to a certain degree. The sound won't arrive matched on both your ear drums you will start perceiving this as a form of stereo. You don't need it at this critical balancing stage.  A single point source speaker works very well in this context.

I would not rule out the software that can simulate rooms while on cans either. I think this is a very interesting area of development.

Yes I understand if the option to use speakers is very difficult then of course headphones are going to be the number one priority. 

I have thought about the EQ idea Rain has mentioned on the main monitors. It could be worth trying it for sure. I think the fact though the sound suddenly moves away from your main speakers, goes into mono and jumps into a small speaker somewhere else has quite a profound effect on its effectiveness. It's nice to sit a foot or so away from it too looking straight at it at low volume, something you cannot achieve easily with your main speakers. As you can tell I love the small speaker. I spend much more time on it. But when you do go back to your main speakers the rewards are high.

I would like to add something extra the small speaker is good at and that is highlighting the situation where you have unnecessary or cluttered musical parts that don't need to be in your mix. This sounds worse on the small speaker. Turn that stuff off and the mix sounds clearer with more space around things. A good analogy might be a lot of parts can exist in a mix like a lot of people can be in a large room without issues but cram them all into an elevator and see what goes on then. There may be some conflict or issues. That is what it is like when you feed a complex mix into a small point source speaker. Everything is trying hard to coexist there. It could also be a reason why EQ ing your main speakers may be not be as effective.

So, here's a question as I am listening to a track through buds with both HP and LP filters on. Here's the question - do you need different mixes? It's easier to discard clutter in the arrangement, but as I said in another thread - not everybody has to play on the stage floor.


You've heard before that the mix has to sound good across all types of speakers. It's impossible to get this 100% accurate unless you're and ME, but that's mastering and not mixing. And yes, I agree how using smaller speakers can point out problems. However, to me, it's unnecessary to have a "Frequency Combination" of mixes. Do so to compare, but again, some things are going to be lost when going to smaller speakers anyway.


That's like converting a WAV to MP3. Bits end up getting lost and there's this feeling of compensation.


Small speakers have no bass, so crank that up, but the bass is still lost due to the frequency pickup/response. EQ or Filtering (LP/HP) is a great way to gauge this (even on your main monitors which have what small speakers don't). Btw, if you have just a 2.0 main system (or completely silence the sub) you are missing alot of low end as the satellites can only pickup so much low end (Range is effected by filter if present). This is where pitch comes in.


So, again, I ask, do you need a "Main Speaker, Small Speaker and Headphone Mix"? (by headphone mix, I don't mean how they are traditionally used).


Main Speakers - EQ 1-Comp. 1 Small Speakers - EQ 2-Comp. 2 - Headphones/Buds - EQ 3-Comp 3.


That's even less effective because if you fix problems in one area, you've got problems in another. Especially with busy/complex mixes - and arrangement reduction only fixes so much as does EQ/Compression. Same when compressing files. Digital Information is lost (quality) despite the file size being smaller.

Big Speaker-Large File-Every Nuance (Frequency/Pitch-Digital Data). Smaller Speaker-Smaller File-Nuance Reduced (Reduced Frequency/Pitch) ... you get the point.

You're right. but the issue is every set of speakers is different since they are really like a set of ears and we know that they're different, too.