Mixing with headphones vs monitors

[greg54]

I just started mixing my songs (never mixed before).  My room is largely untreated.  It's 12' x 12'.   When I mix on monitors, the vocals have too much midrange and it's hard to get them to sound right.  When I mix with the headphones, they sound fine.

I have some reference tracks and listen to them on the monitors and through headphones.  They sound good through the monitors, but sound just like my vocals through the headphones.  Do I not trust my monitors and just mix with headphones?   I'm new at this, so I have no idea.

[Bristol_Jonesey]

I have always been from the "mix on monitors, check on headphones" school, but this comes with a few caveats

• it will be very useful to treat your room, even if it's just the corners and mirror points
• 12' x 12' isn't ideal, being square. but make sure your monitors are set up at the correct height & distance from the rear wall and your head. Ideally  your head & the 2 monitor should form an equilateral triangle with the tweeters pointing at your ears. Avoid if possible having your head at the exact centre of the room
• Learn your room. Play lots of reference tracks at CD quality in a similar genre to your music
• When using EQ, always try to cut unwanted frequencies, not boost wanted ones
• Get your mix working in mono before you pan anything out to the sides
• Read up on Complementary EQ which will teach you how to "carve out" different frequencies for different instruments

There is tons more to it than that but it's a start.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

It's a huge subject and thre's a lifetime of learning to be had. The main goal is to have your mixes translate well to other playback systems .

I would say making your mixes translate well is a more difficult skill with headphones than speakers but people do manage it .

I always reccommend " Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio " by Mike Senior, it's  a great step by guide to mixing that really helped me out when I needed to up my game.   

 

[msmcleod]

Really, unless you're a professional mixer, I would say the best thing to mix on is what you listen to music most on.

Thinking back to when I used to do record demos in my mid teens to mid 20's - everything was done on 4 track or 8 track tape-based porta studios.  Some of my friends tried treating part of their bedrooms and mixing down recordings on fairly decent speakers.  However there was one friend in particular who looked like his headphones were a permanent attachment.  His mixes were truly awful on speakers, but when he mixed on the headphones he wore 4-6 hours a day they translated incredibly well.

The point is, if you're constantly listening to music on headphones, you know exactly what a mix should sound like on headphones.  So mixing your own music on those headphones may be a far more familiar environment than mixing on a speakers.

Obviously there will be potential issues with the low end (simply because the headphones may not be able to reproduce those frequencies) but a high-pass filter should remove those you can't hear.  In any case, I've found with some consumer headphones the issue isn't lack of bass, if anything it's too much bass as they've quite often over-compensated in the design.

I also don't completely buy into the whole "headphones don't give you a true stereo image" thing.  If you always listen to music on headphones, then that's how you're used to hearing it, so your brain will likely adjust accordingly. 

Whatever you decide to mix on, the key is to listen to as much well-mixed music as possible on them, and over a long enough period (e.g. weeks to months) to truly get used to that environment.

[RBH]

If you choose to mix on headphones- I think it's important to get a truly good quality set. I've been using Hd 650's for a long time, they were the closest to A/B comparisons to my monitors in a  " decently "  treated room. I've since moved and lost the "studio " space I had built. I'm back to a dungeon of a basement space and I'm very glad for the headphones.

[greg54]

I appreciate everyone's response.  All great advice.  I'll keep trying to work through all the obstacles and find out what works best for me.

 

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

Thanks, everyone!

[Starship Krupa]

13 minutes ago, greg54 said:

I'll keep trying to work through all the obstacles and find out what works best for me.

There are plug-ins you can put on your final bus that do frequency correction and room simulation (be sure to bypass it before export!) HoRNet VHS is one, only 4 euros.

What headphones are you using? You can get some well-respected cans for not much over $100. If you're on a budget, I'm a fan of the Superlux 681/Samson SR850. In Samson form, $35 from Sweetwater. There is a profile in HoRNet VHS for these headphones.

As for your challenging room, anything you can do to kill reflections will help. Hanging blankets on each wall. Bookcases make amazingly good sound traps.

As mentioned earlier, whatever you use for monitoring, it's vital to listen to your favorite music using the same system. Keep those cans on your head and listen on your phone. When you're working at the computer, keep a radio station playing on your monitors.

In general, to get mixes to "translate," once you get it to a certain point, listen to it against a reference track, a song in a similar genre that you think is well-mixed. Play both your reference track and your own track on as many different systems as possible.

MeldaProduction's FreeFX bundle includes (among many other goodies) 4 tools that will be of great help to you on your journey: MCompressor, which is the compressor that many have cut their teeth on, due to its very informative display; MAnalyzer, a spectrum analyzer that comes with presets for a variety of genres so that you can compare your tonal balance; MOscillator, a tone generator that you can use to "sweep" through the audio spectrum at your listening position and find out what frequencies are over and under-emphasized; and MEQualizer, a 6 band EQ with a built-in spectrum analyzer.

When you're running compressor setup tutorials, there's nothing better (that I know of) than MCompressor for following along and getting visual feedback to go with what you're hearing. Eventually, of course, you'll let your ears take over, but visual feedback is important when learning.

[greg54]

I'm currently using Austrian Audio Hi-x60 for headphones.  I like them.

I did put bookshelves on the back wall, and put some blankets here and there.

I do listen to a lot of music.  I have about 10 reference tracks I go to, like Tears for Fears, Luther Vandross, Boz Scaggs, Gino Vannelli, Michael McDonald, etc.

They are all different and are mixed differently.  But they all are good.

Maybe the issue is just that I don't know how to eq bad frequencies.  I'll get the book mentioned earlier and keep working on it.

Edited July 12, 2023 by greg54

[John Vere]

My favourite new tool is this cheap mono Bluetooth speaker I got in a thrift store .  It is super revealing  of flaws like too much bass or solo levels.  My computer has Bluetooth so I can export the mix and use media player and set computer output to Bluetooth. It doesn’t interfere with ASIO and Cakewalk can still be running . 
My mixes are always very close because I’ve used my Yamaha NSM 10’s For almost 30 years now. But the cheap speaker is closer to reality.
I also like to use this app called SonoBus which sends my master buss to my cell phones.  I then listen with my Bluetooth headphones as I do the dishes upstairs. 
I also use my studio headphones of which I have about 6 real good ones I will swap around. But the problem I have is everything sounds really good even when it’s not so I don’t trust headphones to translate to the real world. I mostly will trust that cheap Bluetooth speaker. 

[Will.]

13 hours ago, greg54 said:

I just started mixing my songs (never mixed before).  My room is largely untreated.  It's 12' x 12'.   When I mix on monitors, the vocals have too much midrange and it's hard to get them to sound right.  When I mix with the headphones, they sound fine.

I have some reference tracks and listen to them on the monitors and through headphones.  They sound good through the monitors, but sound just like my vocals through the headphones.  Do I not trust my monitors and just mix with headphones?   I'm new at this, so I have no idea.

Your room is also dead square! It is not an ideal room shape to mix in, especially with it being untreated too. This means that there is a far greater amplitude that your ears receive causing you to make negative decisions in your mix. 

Try trimming down some inches behind you by hanging some drapes/curtains. This does not have to be wall to wall just two in the middle down. You can also just make some panels and place them behind you to get a more rectangular shape side-to-side in width. You could even use what you have at home. An old  rug or some old blankets you dont use anymore. 

[Alan Tubbs]

Most rooms can be made decent for little money.  I made some traps and it cleaned a lot of sludge out of the way.

these are simple to make.  Buy some rockwool at a Home Depot or such, order some pillow covers from Amazon and have your coffee roaster or find one that will give you enough 70 kilo burlap bags.  Cut the rockwool into pillow sized panels, stuff them into the cases to keep fibers at bay and put them into the decorative burlap bag and hang them in the corners and reflective spots.  It will clean up your soundstage for under $100 and an afternoon.

[greg54]

12 hours ago, JohnnyV said:

I also like to use this app called SonoBus which sends my master buss to my cell phones

I just installed it and will check it out.  Thanks!

[greg54]

4 hours ago, Will. said:

Try trimming down some inches behind you by hanging some drapes/curtains. This does not have to be wall to wall just two in the middle down. You can also just make some panels and place them behind you to get a more rectangular shape side-to-side in width. You could even use what you have at home. An old  rug or some old blankets you dont use anymore. 

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

[greg54]

1 hour ago, Alan Tubbs said:

these are simple to make.  Buy some rockwool at a Home Depot or such, order some pillow covers from Amazon and have your coffee roaster or find one that will give you enough 70 kilo burlap bags.  Cut the rockwool into pillow sized panels, stuff them into the cases to keep fibers at bay and put them into the decorative burlap bag and hang them in the corners and reflective spots.  It will clean up your soundstage for under $100 and an afternoon.

Interesting.  I may try that.  Thanks

[greg54]

I got this to put behind me to make the room smaller.  Worth a try . . .

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Costway-3-Panel-Folding-Room-Divider-6Ft-Rolling-Privacy-Screen-withLockable-Wheels-Black-JV10723BK/325317965

[lapasoa]

Mixing with monitors is always the better choice but the monitors have to be studio monitors not pretty listenings monitors.

Mixing with headphones, also the best ones headphones, have one of the most deficiencies in listening: the lack ot true basses that is the lack of a real listening of the project.

[Herky Acuff]

It is not a magic solution but in addition to room treatment, you may wish to consider room correction software like SoundID/Sonarworks. For me, having the full room and headphone version brought my mixes to sounding better a little faster. Still, it meant relearning my monitors and headphones!

[John Vere]

I’ve owned the same monitors for a longtime and those monitors have been in possibly 20 different spaces. Most were less than ideal many were horrible. But I’m sitting 3’ away and I use a lower volume level for critical listening.  
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. 

[AndyB01]

14 hours ago, greg54 said:

I'm currently using Austrian Audio Hi-x60 for headphones.  I like them.

I have the same ones and mix on them almost exclusively - for two reasons:

1. My room is multi-purpose and not treated; I have zero plans to change that.
2. Something of an unwritten rule in our house not to subject the others who happen to be in residence to your music (and I like a quiet life) - my son is in to Dance music and D'n'B - I have zero tolerance for him to start playing that on his speakers any time soon!

So I think you can get decent results mixing on cans (others who have listened to my output my well disagree) but you certainly won't be short of opinion - that's for sure.

Good luck with it.

Andy

[greg54]

1 hour ago, lapasoa said:

but the monitors have to be studio monitors not pretty listenings monitors

I'm using Avantone CLA 10's and Adam Audio AV7's.