Monitors or Headphone's

[garybrun]

I can recommend Slate VSX.

I have an excellent pair of monitors (Focal Trio 6 be) and also use the Slate system to check for translation.  also the mastering room in VSX is excelent.

[whoisp]

1 hour ago, batsbrew said:

FWIW, in the article i read of scheps discussing headphone mixing, he did mention that for his ears, he can only mix on MD7506s and cannot mix on anything else and make it work.

 

any good headphone with a decent range, you can train your ears to understand what you're hearing, versus how it will translate.

 

but we're talking about scheps,

not guys on a BBS mixing at home.

It's funny you say MD7506s which is my trusted go to and they are the cheaper cans i have in that irony. I worked for ITV as i tech sound engineer and we all used the MD7506s and the old V6. I find they are easy to train your ears with Bass, Mid and Highs. However it is good to test bass on monitors like you would with any isolation cans but they do give good "neutral” bass response to get near as dammit.  Its a fact, people generally really do have a different earing responses and range,  some people are tone death, can't tune a instrument, can't separate sound, so you can't expect them to mix is the reality.

Iv'e been to many of studios (i.e Abby rd)  spoken to many a engineer and you will find many mix and master on cans, but test on monitors. The ones that mix and master on monitors still check everything on cans and end up making changes. Every engineers i worked with would say "does that sound right" haha 

[bats brew]

3 hours ago, whoisp said:

Iv'e been to many of studios (i.e Abby rd)  spoken to many a engineer and you will find many mix and master on cans, but test on monitors. 

yea, it's that "test on monitors" that makes my point.

 

ultimately, the monitors are the decider.

 

[whoisp]

1 hour ago, batsbrew said:

yea, it's that "test on monitors" that makes my point.

 

ultimately, the monitors are the decider.

 

Im glad your confident the monitors because it was not the traditional way to go about mixing on headphones until sometime like the MD7506s came along but hey are now the  go-to tool for exposing sonic details which you can't do on monitors.  The big problem is unnaturally wide stereo image of crossfeed between your left and right ears panning and why many now use high-quality open-back flat frequency response or train your ears for isolation.  Conclusion you must use both 

[John Nelson]

A huge part of mixing on speakers is that you don't keep your head precisely fixed in one place. You get a sort of 'averaged' impression of the sound at different points because you're constantly on the move.

[whoisp]

15 hours ago, John Nelson said:

A huge part of mixing on speakers is that you don't keep your head precisely fixed in one place. You get a sort of 'averaged' impression of the sound at different points because you're constantly on the move.

And why speakers are not good at exposing sonic details because of reflections when your never in the same place and then all of a sudden your mix falls to bits. 

[RobertWS]

IMHO....

To get the bass level correct, I would opine only speakers suffice.   No matter how good headphones are, they ain't gonna have the low end of a speaker.

[whoisp]

10 minutes ago, RobertWS said:

IMHO....

To get the bass level correct, I would opine only speakers suffice.   No matter how good headphones are, they ain't gonna have the low end of a speaker.

Most headphones have the low end frequency which go much lower than what we can hear, you are one in a million if you can hear 20hz. However speakers help us "feel" the low end and therefore why you  should also test on a  sub which can high light rumble but monitor's don't.  Especially some jungle or drum n bass, EDM etc or big impact films scores. 

The big issues is, People often train themselves to have bad mixing and mastering habits, majority of the time has nothing to do the speakers or cans. The hardest thing to train is binaural, there’s no crosstalk between the left and the right, and as such you get a different perception of frequency, phase, and stereo position with headphones and speakers. Speakers are in front of you, and they’re directional, but they’re not laser-like, so sound waves from the left interact with the right and vice versa. So some frequencies can cancel out, others can get boosted, and so forth. This is why when people say you should only mix on monitors is because of the wives tails and myths in the industry.  You must use both, there's no way round it for the best mix.

 

Here's the bog problem if you choose one or the other “headphone mix” won’t translate onto speakers without testing. On the other hand, “speaker mixes” usually translate better to headphones but you still need to test headphones because you then start hearing sibilance and sonic.  Tools that can simulate speakers on headphones all do some form of “binarual correction” still best to check on speakers and check on headphones given the goal of natural and accurate sounding music is really only attainable if the room you are mixing in has proper acoustics but some music sounds great mixed on headphone from a stage in front of a crowd haha all about training those ears so when you’ve got something that sounds good on BOTH headphones AND speakers your vibing