Any tips for mixing with headphones?

[T Boog]

Hi. Ive been a musician for decades but I'm pretty new to mixing. My biggest issue is mixing at lower volume levels. The music just sounds better turned up a decent bit. However, the other night I overdid it to the point where my ears were ringing. I've since downloaded a break reminder app to remind me to take more breaks.

Btw, I do have  Rockit 5 monitors but my room is not treated and I have to watch to not disturb my neighbors.

I know some pro mixers mix with cans so I'm just fishing for any advice that might help me get good mixes without hurting my ears.

One lesson I'm learning is that lots of compression on the low end will punch the crap out of ur eardrums. Man, my ears are still sore ?

[Duncan Stitt]

Pro mixers work at a very low volume with nearfield monitors most of the time, turning it up now and then to check bass. They do this to keep their ears fresh. At higher volumes, it doesn't take long for our hearing to shift, so that, by the end of the day, we're adding way too much high end to everything. Pro mixers can't afford to do that.

I would use the headphones to check for details - occasionally - but not to mix for extended periods of time. Just because they're headphones doesn't mean you're going to avoid hearing damage by using them. Quite the contrary. I don't recall the exact numbers, but they say a significant percentage of young people these days  already have permanent hearing damage due to listening. to loud music on headphones or airpods.

To get used to working at a lower volume, try comparing your mix to a mix from a commercial CD you like the sound of. You'd want to import the CD mix into your project so you could do an A/B. comparison while you're working. It's just a matter of retraining yourself so you can work at lower volumes. Higher volumes cause hearing damage, and hearing damage is permanent.

[mark skinner]

 T Boog , After blowing an eardrum because of a medical reason  (not from loud music) my doctor insisted ,  I used open back headphones for mixing and listening. This was litterly a nightmare for about 6 months. Tinnitus came later and I got the "broken speaker" effect.  It was so real and happened so suddenly that I actually thought I had blown a monitor driver. I do overdo it too often but try my best now to keep my levels lower.    Rarely mix with headphones but use them pretty often for depth/width and panning choices.    It doesn't take much for old ears to be damaged further..     ms

[RexRed]

I use earbuds and close monitors to mix, I know, I know all the big sound people use cans. But I don't.

Why do I use earbuds? Well, because that is how my fans will listen to my music, in most cases.

But not just any earbuds...

Cheap Panasonic earbuds that are wired and cost me 20 bucks a pair (I keep spares).

Nothing sounds clearer and as full. Also nothing allows me to hear the effects as well as these.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E4LGVUO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title 

or

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J4GPPXF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title

They go right "into" my ears and are a perfect fit and I can listen to them for many many hours without any fatigue at all.

The only thing they lack is, I cannot tell how hot the vocal is with them.

I "must" listen to my mix in my near field monitors a few times to set the vocal gain right in the mix and that does it for me.

I usually use the earbuds to do 90% of my mixing because I can hear every single detail with them.

But the near fields are the only thing that can tell me how loud my vocal is in relation to the music.

I would never dream of mixing/mastering my music on only the near fields. Too much is obscured.

Notice how many of these earbuds have been sold on Amazon...

I believe they are the most bought item ever... many millions of people can't all be wrong.

Why not listen to your music in what your fans listen to it with?

Just a suggestion that works for me.  

My close monitors are BX5 Stereophile just in case you are wondering.

Any model of these would be fine probably.

And, very low volume if you plan to listen for many hours is the only way to prevent hearing loss.

Edited June 9 by RexRed

[T Boog]

42 minutes ago, RexRed said:

"must" listen to my mix in my near field monitors a few times to set the vocal gain right in the mix

Thanks. The day before I hurt my ears, I had a good mix when listening on my PC but then I exported it to Bandlab and used the free universal mastering and of course everything was different. The vocals were too loud, the piano was too quite, etc. 

Btw, I left out that I was using a reference song to A/B with. However, when I first imported it in, it came on super loud. But foolishly, I still didn't take a break. From now on I know that when one of those "ouch!" moments happens to my ears, I need to immediately take a break. 

[msmcleod]

The best advice I can give is to listen to everything on those headphones, especially lots of well mixed songs.  You want to do this for several weeks, so you need to get to the point where you instinctively know what a good mix sounds like on your headphones.

Pay particular attention to the levels of the bass and the vocals in relation to the rest of the mix.  When listening to commercial releases, I've always found the bass to be quieter than I expected, and the vocals far more up-front on headphones.  So be aware of this when mixing your own material.

There's always the danger that you're ignoring frequencies that can simply not be reproduced by your headphones, so check your mixes on your monitors, home hi-fi and/or car and take note of anything that is overexaggerated in those environments. Again, bass will probably be the area that will give you most trouble.  A high pass filter can help to eliminate these frequencies - especially on tracks that don't  have anything useful in the low end (e.g. vocals, guitars).  Get to the point where you're aware of what you can't hear in your headphones.

Also consider getting ARC or Sonarworks for your Rockit speakers - it won't make your room perfect, but it will at least improve things for referencing.  

Finally, use reference material often.  A/B your mix with a similar commercial track and compare the levels / balance of each instrument against your own.  Bear in mind that the reference track will be mastered, and your track is only in the mix stage, so turn down the volume of the reference track to match yours.... not the other way around!

 

[T Boog]

Btw, from what Ive researched they call this, "Acoustic Trauma". I'd say trauma is the perfect word cause just the SIGHT of heaphones makes me wince.

They said it usually last just a day or two(like after a loud concert) but can sometimes take a week a two. It's been about five days. Luckily, the ringing stopped after the first day, now my ears are just kinda sore and sensative. But I've been resting them completely and they're starting to get better. 

Fwiw, I've always been very protective of my hearing but this was a big reminder that it only takes one time to cause damage.

So from now on, I refuse to mix any louder than -80 db. If no one else can hear my song, that's their frickin problem. ?

 

 

[charles kasler]

I like mixing with everything in mono and FX turned off. It helps me to get a truer balance between different voices and then when I convert to stereo with FX toward the end, it's magic.

[Tom Taylor]

There's an excellent 6-part series of articles by Greg Simmons on the AudioTechnology website, on the subject of mixing with headphones. Highly recommended:

https://www.audiotechnology.com/tutorials/mixing-with-headphones-1

 

[T Boog]

12 minutes ago, Tom Taylor said:

There's an excellent 6-part series of articles by Greg Simmons on the AudioTechnology website, on the subject of mixing with headphones. Highly recommended:

https://www.audiotechnology.com/tutorials/mixing-with-headphones-1

 

Wow, Thanks bud. I'll def check it out.

[RexRed]

6 hours ago, T Boog said:

Btw, I left out that I was using a reference song to A/B with. However, when I first imported it in, it came on super loud. But foolishly, I still didn't take a break. From now on I know that when one of those "ouch!" moments happens to my ears, I need to immediately take a break. 

Many years ago when I bought a set of Peavy speakers with 16' woofers and radial horns they came with an OSHA warning in the manual.

It went something like this. You can listen to very loud music for about an hour with no hearing loss (like a rock concert). Or you can listen two hours if the volume is relatively lower with no hearing loss. You can listen three hours if it is even lower and still have no hearing loss. And subsequently, you can listen like 6 or 8 hours if it is very low volume and still get no hearing loss. The worse thing that can happen is if you have listened for many hours (at a low volume) and then listen to something very loud without resting your ears in between. Consider the hearing  loss is permanent in many cases.

Another issue is bass frequencies.

A high pass filter should be placed on every track in your mix including the bass and bass drum. Bass frequencies in a track can go much deeper than your hearing is able to perceive and thus can damage your ears.

You cannot depend on a streaming, mastering service to do this because each track needs this high pass filter in different degrees.

The majority of the power of your mix is in the bass and subsequently the bass may deliver the most damage to your ears.

I use the pro channel EQ on every track to cut the bass. This can save your ears as well.

I make YouTube videos of how I mix and master. You can find them on YouTube by searching for @MIDIMAKERTV .

Go backwards when watching the videos on my channel. Some of the stuff I did years ago I do not do anymore.

You have to click the "live" tab on my YouTube channel to find my videos. My videos are mostly live so they can be long and exhaustive, please bear in mind that because they are live they are not scripted and edited.

Please like and subscribe there and click the bell for "all' notifications. Join me in the chat when I am live.

I need many more hours of viewing time by fans before my channel is monetized. So if you can binge watch my videos I thank you very much (in advance) for helping me get monetized. I have another channel that is monetized but my Cakewalk midi channel has proven to be a hard nut to crack.   

Edited June 9 by RexRed

[Terry Kelley]

I will rough mix in headphones but final mix at around 85db at 4ft from the monitors. I find it still sounds good a lower volumes but not always the opposite.

I do like the suggestion to level balance in mono with no effects and realized I somewhat do that now but not specifically. I want to try that out.

But I don't end with a headphone mix. It always sounds wrong on speakers be it home or car. And because of my room size I have to be very aware of the bass level and check it on other speakers. Standing waves are tricky.

One last thing I do is when I think the mix is finished is to turn off all effects and start over with just them while leaving the levels alone. I find I often use less effect levels than when I started.  What I call the  Harrison Mixbus effect.

Edited June 10 by Terry Kelley

[John Vere]

Proofing your mix.  Lots of great workflows are at your disposal and most cost absolutely nothing. 

This was the best tidbit of advice ever passed along to me from a friend of mine who was a real audio engineer.
1- listen at all volume levels. Never stay at one level. Turn your monitors right down to 0 and slowly bring them up. What is the first thing you hear? It should be the vocals and you should understand each and every word. 
2- never mix with a subwoofer system on. Only use a sub to check for low end artifacts. 

[Duncan Stitt]

More on proofing the mix -  I try to set the balance between vocal and drums/bass first, and then bring in the other instruments. At the end of the process, when I think I'm finished, I turn off all the instruments except bass/drums and vocal to make sure the balance between vocal and bass/drums hasn't gotten skewed. Virtually every time I get to that stage, I have to bring the vocal down a touch, along with the instruments that are competing with it, so I don't lose the power of the rhythm section.

Another trick is to listen to the mix from a different room. This can reveal volume balance relationships that are disguised when you're right in front of the speakers hearing the highs that give everything more presence. 

[Bristol_Jonesey]

Mixing in mono kind of forces you to carve out separate spaces for the different elements of your project, usually through a combination of complementary EQ & level.

Get this right and you'll be amazed at the separation you get when you do eventually pan things out in stereo

[John Vere]

What @RexRedsaid about listening over the same system as where your songs are going is definitely one of my top of the list proofing tests. 
I’ll upload to Sound Click and then go sit on the couch with my cell phone and Bluetooth cheapo headphones. I have a set of close backs that are ridiculously bass heavy and some ear buds. 
I will also bypass the Sound Cloud step by putting Sono Bus on the master. This will stream your audio over the network. But I can’t wander too far from the studio that way. 
The best so far is my $15 thrift store Bluetooth mono speaker. It is amazing at pointing out flaws in the mix. I export the songs and play directly from Media Player. I can leave Sonar open( not playing)  and Windows will send the WMP audio to the Bluetooth audio out. 

Edited June 9 by John Vere

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

There's no one best way to mix because it depends a bunch of other factors, like the room you work in or the style music you make.

A few things  thing I can share from my experience mixing 100 tracks a year that mostly end up in TV shows for the past 8yrs

1.   Doing lots of mixes improves your ear / skills - If you only mix one track a month , try mixing at least one a week for a year. I guarantee the mix from week 52 will be miles better than the mix from week 1  - you will also think your early mixes sounded rubbish and likely be right.

2. You can mix on anything, monitors - cans - buds etc.  as long you learn how they translate to other systems. 

3. Most bad mixes I hear are as much down to performance issues like timing , tuning etc. so get those right first or it will just sound bad regardless

4. Try to have several monitoring options you can switch between whilst mixing. Nearfields, headphones, boomboxes etc will all tell you something different so it's about being able to understand what each is telling you about the mix

5. Listing in mono is a great free tool for getting your arrangement right as it's easy to hear if instruments are speaking over each other

6.  If you're serious then acoustic measurement / treatment is really helpful in taming your mix room, and products like Sonarworks or Arc can really help too

7. If your domestic situation means you have no choice but use headphones I can reccommend Slate VSX which I use late at night and also as a virtual car test. They sound 80-90% like mixing on speakers. 

8. If you're in need of some sort of mixing course my own favourite is Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio by Mike Senior because it deals with the reality of mixing in non-professional studio and is very comprehesive.   

Edited June 9 by Mark Morgon-Shaw

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

8 minutes ago, John Vere said:

The best so far is my $15 thrift store Bluetooth mono speaker. It is amazing at pointing out flaws in the mix. I export the songs and play directly from Media Player. I can leave Sonar open( not playing)  and Windows will send the WMP audio to the Bluetooth audio out. 

Suunds like a poor man's Auratone ! Good for checking mid range tranlation and balance 

[Helios.G]

Mixing at low volumes is a literal cheat code my friend.  If a mix works at low volumes, it will sound amazing loud.  Also, at low volumes, things that poke out too much or are too prominent in the mix are easier to hear than when it's all loud.  It takes getting used to, but you should give it more time.  The saving your hearing is also a great side benefit of course. 

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

2 minutes ago, Helios.G said:

Mixing at low volumes is a literal cheat code my friend.  If a mix works at low volumes, it will sound amazing loud.  Also, at low volumes, things that poke out too much or are too prominent in the mix are easier to hear than when it's all loud.  It takes getting used to, but you should give it more time.  The saving your hearing is also a great side benefit of course. 

Yeah I should have put this on my list, I always check mixes so you can only just barely hear them. Anything too loud sticks out like a sore thumb

Edited June 9 by Mark Morgon-Shaw