I own a pair of 280's and whilst their isolation is GREAT for tracking,

Do you think the 280s exaggerate the treble?
 
Are the 290s better for mixing?

Tripecac

I own a pair of 280's and whilst their isolation is GREAT for tracking,

Do you think the 280s exaggerate the treble?
 

Hell no, they are quite warm and quite well balanced. I'm surprised that you haven't overcompensated on the treble when mixing with them and given the top end more boost than what you're hearing.
 
Are you absolutely sure there's nothing in your monitoring chain that could be hyping the top end?
 

wow, this has thread been hanging around out here for a year... anyway, I just bought a nice tool that I've just started to use...        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx5GaZ8-zxY
the Melda MMultiAnalyzer is a vst that you can add to several tracks and analyze the waveform of each track separately... you can put it on say, the drum bus and bass bus, then look at the interaction of the two waveforms.  There's even a collision option to view frequency collision depth.  Very nice.
Just another tool in trying to get the low frequency end under control.  

The suggestion to EQ each track using Quad Curve EQ in pro channel is a truly great one.

I don't think I would ever have the discipline to do this.  Due to time constraints (and habits), I work very, very quickly.  I do almost all my editing on the fly (during playback), stopping only occasionally.  Having to fiddle with an EQ effect on every single track would totally kill my flow, and probably my enjoyment and therefore motivation for making music.

Plus, as you pointed out, I would have no idea how much *extra* treble to add to each track, since it would always sound "too trebly" on the HD 580s.

It seems like the simplest solution is to mix with the HD 590s (or my Edirol monitors) rather than the HD 580s.  That way, the final mix would be more WYHIWYG (what you hear is what you get).

Mixing with the Edirol monitors might work, except I hate mixing loudly with other people in the house, and I also don't know where to position them.  Right now they are both on my left (on either side of my Triton keyboard), because there isn't a good place to put them in front of me.  This is because I have 3 computer monitors in front of me, for work (2 for my main PC and one for my laptop, on which I am typing).  If I were to put the Edirols on either side of my 3 computer monitors, it would be a very wide triangle, a bit wacky.  Plus, the one on the right would block traffic and the one on the left would block my view of the mountains and lake.  I wish I could hang them from the ceiling, but I'd rather not drill holes into the ceiling until I know it's absolutely necessary.  Anyway, this is why I've been mixing with headphones.

(Note: I guess since both Edirols are on the left, I could still mix with them, since I'd be effectively "mixing in mono" as both would be in my left ear).

So why not simply move the HD 590s to the Delta?  Well, I find the 590s more comfortable than the 580s, so would prefer to listen to music all day with the 590s.  This means they will spend most of their time plugged into the Xonar (my main sound card).  So in order to mix on the 590s I'd have to unplug them from the Xonar and plug them into the Delta. This would be an inconvenience, and I need to make music making as convenient as possible, or else it just won't happen.

Anyway, this why I was hoping for a quick software solution.  

I haven't tried the reference mix solution.  It would be easy, since I have all my CDs on my computer.  What sort of song do you recommend I use as a reference?  I listen to a lot of 80s post-punk, most of which was cheaply recorded.  And recently I've been listening to lots of 60s music, again with less-than-perfect mixes.  Of newer music, I like the recent New Order album.  Would a song off that be a good reference track?

And finally, I wish I could find a single sound card so that I could get rid of the whole 2-headphones business.  My Delta supports 2 headphones so perhaps there is a way to just direct all audio to the Delta and stop using the Xonar.  Hmmm...

Realizing that not all monitoring situations are ideal, even with reference tracks you may not be hearing the entire spectrum accurately. As you want a master buss solution, Google "EQ matching." I only know of two with good reviews (FabFilter has one, and iZotope the other).

Also realize that both of those are not free, and using them on the master buss would take dynamics out of the mix, but iZotope has a good write up on it at the link below. I am not sure if free alternatives are viable, nor at which level iZotope offers this feature offhand. Please research this further if you choose to try this route.

http://help.izotope.com/d...odules_matching_eq.htm

Tripecac

The suggestion to EQ each track using Quad Curve EQ in pro channel is a truly great one.

I don't think I would ever have the discipline to do this.  Due to time constraints (and habits), I work very, very quickly.  I do almost all my editing on the fly (during playback), stopping only occasionally.  Having to fiddle with an EQ effect on every single track would totally kill my flow, and probably my enjoyment and therefore motivation for making music.

 
This particular recommendation was for trying to achieve balance and clarity, and my recommendation included doing a one-time setup of a project template with the eq bands (gleaned from a commonly available chart) already preset, so you'd only have to do it once.  Honestly (and respectfully) it takes a lot less time trying to do something that will help once than to try a bunch of different simple fixes that don't actually fix anything. Why don't you just try it with a simple drum/guitar/bass scratch tune and see if it doesn't help? You'll be out maybe 10 minutes.
 

Tripecac
This would be an inconvenience, and I need to make music making as convenient as possible, or else it just won't happen. 

 
With the state of the art in DAW's and playback devices today, there really isn't a convenient way to produce a fine sounding mix that sounds good on just about any device you play it on. Someday we won't have to do any of this stuff, the software and hardware will figure it out on the fly and do it for us. Until then, we're stuck with the inconvenience of experimenting and iterative learning.
 

Tripecac
 Anyway, this why I was hoping for a quick software solution.  
 
 I haven't tried the reference mix solution.  It would be easy, since I have all my CDs on my computer.  What sort of song do you recommend I use as a reference?  I listen to a lot of 80s post-punk, most of which was cheaply recorded.  And recently I've been listening to lots of 60s music, again with less-than-perfect mixes.  Of newer music, I like the recent New Order album.  Would a song off that be a good reference track?

 
Pick one and try it. Just about anything produced professionally will sound better than anything I can do. That said, I tend to go for the musical genre and sound I'm trying to get close to. Just drag it onto a new track, mute your stuff, play it for a bit, then mute the reference, play your stuff, and so on. You'll quickly hear the differences.
 
I'm afraid that unless you're willing to experiment a little and learn what works for you, you're going to just have to get used to bass-heavy tracks.
 

Hi, these days I deal primarily with soft synths (Cakewalk and Native Instruments).  Very rarely do I add audio.
 
A typical project has 8-10 MIDI drums tracks fed into one virtual drum kit (usually a Kontakt or Battery kit), and then 6-10 tracks of other instruments, some of them sharing the same virtual instrument (e.g., separate MIDI tracks for left and right piano).  So maybe a total of 15-20 tracks of MIDI, and 5 or 6 soft synths.
 
Here are is an example of a song that sounds muffled when I playback on anything other than the HD 580s:
http://tripalot.com/tripecac/albums/motions/#growup  ("Growup")
 
Here is my most recent song, to which I added treble via an EQ on the master bus:
http://tripalot.com/tripecac/albums/motions/#so-tired-im-wired ("So Tired I'm Wired")

To my ears, the second song sounds noticeably crisper than the old one.

My idea was to apply the same master EQ technique to all the other songs on this album and see how it goes.  And then, if they all sound better (on every set of speakers/headphones I can find) then I can do the same for older albums.

I plugged both set of headphones into the Delta 44, and did a quick A/B comparison.  The difference was startling; the HD 580s (which I use only for music) sound very crisp, while the HD 590s (which I use for every day listening) sound very muffled.
 
So, I then applied treble-boosting EQ to the master track on all the songs on my album.  I listened before each mix down, and tweaked the EQ here and there, and sometimes even the hi-hat levels.  Hopefully this relatively crude "fix" will get the songs sounding crisper on other devices, but I won't know until I have time to listen on the main stereo.
 
So here is a question: Could the HD 590s be muffled because I listen to them all the time?  Do headphones lose their treble due to constant use?

Tripecac
I plugged both set of headphones into the Delta 44, and did a quick A/B comparison.  The difference was startling; the HD 580s (which I use only for music) sound very crisp, while the HD 590s (which I use for every day listening) sound very muffled.
 
So, I then applied treble-boosting EQ to the master track on all the songs on my album.  I listened before each mix down, and tweaked the EQ here and there, and sometimes even the hi-hat levels.  Hopefully this relatively crude "fix" will get the songs sounding crisper on other devices, but I won't know until I have time to listen on the main stereo.
 
So here is a question: Could the HD 590s be muffled because I listen to them all the time?  Do headphones lose their treble due to constant use?

Both sound "right" on my system too.
 
Do you think you're getting bass heavy, or treble light?  I kicked my sub on for kicks.  Definitely bass heavy with a sub set to sound correct for a variety of commercial tunes - not that I mix with it on.
 
I do NOT hear muffled or anything lacking in the top end.  I DO hear good separation and balance across the freq spectrum.

Both songs sound equally balanced and crisp (in their own right) given that they are different instrumentation etc.

 
Sorry, your listening test was a bit too late!  The mp3s on the site are the new, "remastered" versions which I uploaded this morning.  So you're not able to compare the old mixes to the new mixes.
 
What I mean by "remastered" is I simply added a treble-accentuating EQ to the master bus, without changing the other parts of the mix.  It's not sophisticated or "real" remastering by any means, but I didn't want to say "remixed" because that would imply I took the time to re-mix the individual tracks together again, which I didn't!
 

Both sound "right" on my system too.

 
By "both" do you mean both songs, or both sets of headphones (HD 580 and HD 590)?
 
If you mean the songs, then great, mission accomplished!  The older songs on the album all sounded very muffled (to me) until this morning.  Now they sound better.
 

I work on the fly too, when I track, and I try to get the best sound going in, but when I mix, I spend ten times more effort on getting the tracks to sit together well.

 
Mixing is my least favorite part of making a song, so I try to minimize it.  Someday, if I actually come up with a decent song, I'll try to polish it better.  But for now, I'm content to just crank out my little instrumental jams as quickly as my kids, work, and Steam library allow, which means minimizing mixing...  I enjoy listening to the tracks "as-is", and usually don't fret about unbalanced mixes, as long as the songs don't sound too muffled or distorted!
 
So in other words, I'm still at the crayon stage, and properly mastering (framing) a crayon song is a bit overkill! :)

Tripecac

Both sound "right" on my system too.

 
By "both" do you mean both songs, or both sets of headphones (HD 580 and HD 590)?
 
If you mean the songs, then great, mission accomplished!  The older songs on the album all sounded very muffled (to me) until this morning.  Now they sound better.
 

 
Yes, both songs. 

Yep , both songs sound good here as well, but the snare and hat 
sound a bit "pale " on -so tired I´m wired - you know ?
 
Anyhow, nice to hear your music.
 

I have been using Sonarworks' headphone calibration plugin with my Focal Spirit Pro headphones for the past few months.  Works a peach, I am much more confident in my mixes now, and they sound so much more consistent across different listening situations.