Mixing with headphones vs monitors

[greg54]

1 hour ago, Herky Acuff said:

you may wish to consider room correction software like SoundID/Sonarworks

I'll look into it.  Thanks!

[greg54]

1 hour ago, JohnnyV said:

The Lower the volume the less the room will interfere with the sound you hear. 
That is why they call them near field monitors.  A lot of the focus on room treatment being critical is mostly only true for soffit speakers which are 6’ to 12’ away from you. 
The room will have way less impact when you know your monitors and what they sound like in any situation.  Turn them down to mix if the room sucks. Problem solved. 

I did not know that.   I've been listening to them at higher volumes. Thanks!

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

20 hours ago, greg54 said:

Mark Morgon-Shaw:   I will check out that book.

Thanks, everyone!

No worries, you've had a lot of advice here. Some good, some great - plus the odd thing I don't really agree with 😆. 

But I've made the journey from bedroom studio dabbler to writing for TV where it's expected that you mix and master your own tracks.  These are a few things I've learned on that journey.

1. You can deliver decent mixes on any playback system if you get used to how it sounds

2. Get decent stands for your speakers - they will sound at their best this way

3. Proper room treatment helps a lot and needn't cost a fortune - You can mix without it it but it will take you longer 

4. Plugins to even out the room sound like Sonarworks Sound ID are also a great help includindg the headphone version

5. Subs in a small room are a nightmare

6.  If the arrangement sucks so will the mix

7.   Being able to instantly switch between several different playback types is massively helpful i.e. Nearfields - Mono Auratone/Mixcube - Old Boombox  / Computer Speakers

8.  Taking a break is important to reset your ears every hour or so

9. A/B referencing against commercial mixes is the best free training and more easily accomplished with a dedicated plugin like Metric AB

10. It's easy to be tricked that something sounds better when it's louder

11. You don't need to tweak every single track in your mix - " Do no harm " is sometimes the best way

12. Topdown mixing is a good method to learn mix fast and effectively 

13. L-C-R Panning is also a good technique that will make mixing simpler and faster and forces you into good arrangements

14. You can learn almost anything on Youtube

15. But the best way to learn is just do a lot of mixing i.e.  My 600th TV mix recently was a lot better than my 1st from 6yrs ago 

 

 

[RexRed]

I was once told by a sound engineer that 70% of all room acoustics come from the border between the ceiling and the walls. Put your treatments there. A  couple years later this same sound engineer introduced me to Cakewalk for MSDOS. 

I know you are all going to cringe, but I use earbuds to do 70% of my mixing, not headphones. I like the direct connection to my ears they provide. 90% of my listeners use earbuds.

Headphones to me sound sort of dull and I have had some good ones. If I use headphones, I like Philips brand, and they will run you anywhere from 20 to 40 bucks. Sonarworks has my headphones tested for the frequency curve Philips SHP9500. But, I still prefer earbuds.

You MUST use headphones/earbuds and monitors to create a mix. I consider headphones and earbuds to be pretty much the same thing even though I have my preference . There are things you can't hear or judge in headphones and things you can't hear from monitors.

These are the things you listen for when using them. Earbuds will reveal if my bass is just loud enough to rattle the bones in my ears where studio monitors will mask that.

In earbuds, my vocal I can crank way above the music and the song will still sound fine (they lie), but when I use my monitors, I can precisely set the ratio of vocal to accompaniment.

I will put it this way, it is impossible to set the ratio of the voice to music in earbuds. Where, monitors tell you immediately if the voice is too loud. I use M-Audio Studiophile BX5 monitors. I have big PA speakers too, but I don't use them anymore except for live gigs.

Earbuds are like a microscope, you can zoom way in with perception and fidelity and detect even the slightest noise where monitors you zoom out and you can perceive the scope of the music.

Many times I have mixed a song in earbuds and convinced myself that the vocal was nestled perfectly into the music only to be horrified to find out the vocal was way too loud, or out front.

This can happen after a song has been published, and it can become a source of embarrassment.

So you use each for different perspectives on your mix. You eventually learn what to listen for with each. It is an uncomfortable feeling having to switch listening sources when you have become intently attuned to one for hours while mixing a song. Never release a song without listing to your song in both. Reverb sounds different in each, so you have to add up the pros and cons of this phenomenon. I use earbuds mostly because I can hear many minute and subtle things that are masked by monitors. Once I set all of the minute things right, usually by that time, I think the song is done. Only to find the monitors say, not so fast... I use cheap Panasonic earbuds, I think I paid 6 buck for them on Amazon (buy several pairs).  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J4WHNFC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title notice there are over 100,000 ratings. That means millions have been sold. I believe this product may be the largest selling product in the history of Amazon. I use them when tracking as well. I can wear them all day (and into the night) with zero fatigue.  😄

Hope this is some help. And, you need to cut some bass out of everything (prochannel works great for that). 

Oh, and shut the doors, an echoey hallway can ruin a recording.

Edited July 12, 2023 by RexRed

[bitflipper]

On 7/11/2023 at 4:03 PM, msmcleod said:

...the best thing to mix on is what you listen to music most on.

This is the most important advice you'll get here. The more you listen on the same headphones (or speakers) the more your ears will become attuned to what a good mix sounds like on those headphones. Even if they're not perfect.

[Will.]

13 hours ago, greg54 said:

I put some bookshelves on the back wall and put a lot of stuff in them, and I put up some acoustic squares.   I'll have to figure out more stuff to do.

Thanks

🙂 I dont mean treat your room. Turn it from a square room, into a rectangar room side to side. 

[mettelus]

8 hours ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

15. But the best way to learn is just do a lot of mixing

+1, You will always learn best by doing. Studying will only get you to a certain level before experience will allow you to go further, and experience will provide tools to accommodate gaps you may encounter. Never fear making mistakes either; those are often the best learning tools.

[HOOK]

I fought and fought these problems as a younger man - even in a well treated room - thinking I could make due with what I had.  I'd burn 10+ throw away CDR's a day trying to dial in a mix until I got speakers I could trust, and not just speakers I had listened to a lot.  It was very frustrating.  I was using Alesis Montior One speakers in the beginning.  I thought they sounded great.  And heck...they were studio monitors, right?

You can have speakers you love to listen to, and know very well, and they can still straight-up lie to you when you mix on them.

To be totally honest, I don't like listening to music on the speakers I mix on, even today.  But they deliver a mix I can trust.  And I knew that when I did my very first mix and took it to my car many years ago.  They still astound me when I take a mix out in the real world, how well the mix translates.

Some good advice has been given in this thread.  And if none of it gets you where you need to be, I'll just add that - if I were a young man today and I was broke like most young people are, I'd certainly look into the Slate  VSX, Waves NX or Sonarworks software and consider mixing that way until I saved enough cash to demo my first set of great  monitors.  Not just decent.  Not just what I can afford today.

A wise man once told me to stop buying cheap crap just because you can't afford the good stuff - when you already know you'll want to upgrade later.  Save your money and buy a world-class solution once and move on.  Speakers are definitely on that list of crap.

 

[greg54]

14 hours ago, Will. said:

🙂 I dont mean treat your room. Turn it from a square room, into a rectangar room side to side. 

I dont know how to do that, since it's square.  I put bookshelves on the back wall to make it more rectangular.  Other than doing that, I wouldn't know what else to do.

[greg54]

12 hours ago, mettelus said:

Never fear making mistakes either; those are often the best learning tools.

That's what I do best.  😁

[greg54]

5 hours ago, HOOK said:

I fought and fought these problems as a younger man - even in a well treated room - thinking I could make due with what I had.  I'd burn 10+ throw away CDR's a day trying to dial in a mix until I got speakers I could trust, and not just speakers I had listened to a lot.  It was very frustrating.  I was using Alesis Montior One speakers in the beginning.  I thought they sounded great.  And heck...they were studio monitors, right?

You can have speakers you love to listen to, and know very well, and they can still straight-up lie to you when you mix on them.

To be totally honest, I don't like listening to music on the speakers I mix on, even today.  But they deliver a mix I can trust.  And I knew that when I did my very first mix and took it to my car many years ago.  They still astound me when I take a mix out in the real world, how well the mix translates.

Some good advice has been given in this thread.  And if none of it gets you where you need to be, I'll just add that - if I were a young man today and I was broke like most young people are, I'd certainly look into the Slate  VSX, Waves NX or Sonarworks software and consider mixing that way until I saved enough cash to demo my first set of great  monitors.  Not just decent.  Not just what I can afford today.

A wise man once told me to stop buying cheap crap just because you can't afford the good stuff - when you already know you'll want to upgrade later.  Save your money and buy a world-class solution once and move on.  Speakers are definitely on that list of crap.

 

I hear ya'.    You may not agree, but I consider my Adam Audio A7v monitors to be very good, as well as my Avantone CLA 10's.  

I have received a lot of good advice here and am going through all of it.

Thanks 

[HOOK]

To be frank, it doesn't matter if I or anyone else agrees or disagrees with your speaker choice.  Neither of those sets of speakers are "cheap".  But you are here asking why your mixes won't translate when you mix with your speakers.

For future reference, you can "demo" the higher end gear through the on-line gear shops.  Basically, you pay for it and they ship you a demo unit.  That gives you a few days to use it and decide - in the real world.  If you don't like it you can ship it back and try something else or get your money back.  Once you decide you love a piece of gear you can ship back the demo and get a new one delivered.

Happy mixing!

[AB7]

The important thing is to get to know your speakers.  Check out your mixes in cars, headphones, whatever your audience is likely to listen to music on.  

And get to know how your speakers translate.   Example: Are your speakers bass starved for instance, and then you find out that there is a lot more bass on the headphones or elsewhere?  Or the opposite?  This is one of many examples.

Once you really get to know your speakers, they can be great.

There are a lot of great speaker choices out there from relatively inexpensive to expensive.  Yamaha HS8 on the more inexpensive side.  I like the Zen Pro Audio mod on those speakers.

I mostly use Adam S3H and am very happy with those.

Enjoy!

 

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

4 hours ago, greg54 said:

I hear ya'.    You may not agree, but I consider my Adam Audio A7v monitors to be very good,

I mixed a ton of music on the original A7's that's on TV.....they translate well ( in a well treated room ) except for the real low end/sub. For that I had to rely plugins to see what was going on down there and adjust by eye.  

[Will.]

4 hours ago, greg54 said:

I dont know how to do that, since it's square.  I put bookshelves on the back wall to make it more rectangular.  Other than doing that, I wouldn't know what else to do.

Use dividers. 

[hockeyjx]

6 hours ago, Alan Bachman said:

The important thing is to get to know your speakers.  Check out your mixes in cars, headphones, whatever your audience is likely to listen to music on.  

And get to know how your speakers translate.   Example: Are your speakers bass starved for instance, and then you find out that there is a lot more bass on the headphones or elsewhere?  Or the opposite?  This is one of many examples.

Once you really get to know your speakers, they can be great.

There are a lot of great speaker choices out there from relatively inexpensive to expensive.  Yamaha HS8 on the more inexpensive side.  I like the Zen Pro Audio mod on those speakers.

I mostly use Adam S3H and am very happy with those.

Enjoy!

 

I LOVE my Yamaha HS8s!

[greg54]

18 hours ago, Will. said:

Use dividers. 

I just ordered these exact ones 😄

[Glenn Stanton]

as a note - to shift the modal response of the room - those dividers will need to be solid / mass in order to  create a change. and if you're looking to shift the shape of the room (e.g. the bookcases), then maybe consider some deep side absorption units which have membranes to force the modal response and provide LF absorption w. appropriate reflection units (e.g. diffusers, panels, etc) to support proper MF/HF balance if the side units don't do it. 

[Craig Anderton]

The real problem isn't headphones or speakers, it's that every playback system will be different. These days, the differences are even more radical then they were a few decades ago - earbuds, sound bars, traditional speakers, portable bluetooth speakers, etc. Sadly, one of the main ways people listen to music is through computer speakers and even (the horror!) laptop/tablet/smartphone speakers. I believe earbuds are the next most common. No matter what the music sounds like to you, it won't sound that way to others.

I used to mix on speakers and do a reality check on headphones. These days, I mix on headphones and do a reality check on speakers because I believe more listeners will be listening on headphones, or otherwise compromised playback systems.

If you mix on headphones, I feel the Sonarworks system is essential. Most headphones "hype" the sound in one way or another. When you flatten the response, whether with Sonarworks or something like the Slate VSX, the sound will seem flat and dull. This is as it should be. Aim for a high quality, balanced, accurate mix. The consumer playback system will add the hype.

The best you can hope for is a mix that sounds a little bit bad on everything haha, rather than superb on some playback systems and like crap on others. One trick I use to help rock mixes translate is tape saturation on bass. The added harmonics allow the bass to be heard better on systems that can't reproduce the fundamental frequencies. Psychoacoustically, your ear fills in the missing fundamental when it hears the harmonics. Because bass lines are usually single notes, you don't get unpleasant intermodulation distortion.

When I "finish" a mix after using speakers and headphones, the reality is that it's not finished. I check it out on a Samsung S23, IK Multimedia iLoud, MacBook Pro, YouTube's nasty data compression, and a Honda car stereo. If I can hear all the elements I want to hear on those systems, then the mix is truly finished.

(P.S. If you want to hear a mix that translates well over just about anything, set the time machine for 1979 and check out Tom Petty's "Damn the Torpedoes." It doesn't matter whether you like the music or not, just listen to how it uses the audio spectrum to create something eminently translatable.)

 

[greg54]

3 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

as a note - to shift the modal response of the room - those dividers will need to be solid / mass in order to  create a change. and if you're looking to shift the shape of the room (e.g. the bookcases), then maybe consider some deep side absorption units which have membranes to force the modal response and provide LF absorption w. appropriate reflection units (e.g. diffusers, panels, etc) to support proper MF/HF balance if the side units don't do it. 

I plan on covering the panels with some kind of blanket.