Headphone suggestions anybody?

teb · Post by **teb** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 4:37 pm

I'm not interested in anything horribly expensive (maybe $100-$125 tops) but would like something more accurate than the cheap Best Buy Sony pair I have. Currently, when I take them off and turn on my Event studio monitors things sound very different - and usually not in a good way. Suggestions?

jps · Post by **jps** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 4:57 pm

I have always sworn by good AKG headphones, but not the garden variety models. I have a K401 which do not think is made anymore.

Try these:

www.akg.com/site/products/powerslave,id,910,pid,910,nodeid,2,_language,EN.html

This may be out of your price range but good headphones are a long lasting investment that is certainly worth the price.

Another quality make is Grado, they get excellent reviews; I tried a set and they sounded great but for me, were a bit uncomfortable as they sat on my ears, unlike the AKGs that sit around my ears.

www.gradolabs.com/frameset_main.htm

sharkboy · Post by **sharkboy** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 6:25 pm

Headphones really do sound different from studio monitors, and IMHO should be avoided for using as a first reference. They are great for finding problems on individual tracks and essential for doing a headphone reference, but using them much for mixdown usually influences the mix in bad ways, with respect to effects and EQ (especially bass.) Of course, unlike speakers, they have no acoustic interaction with a room and that makes it difficult to avoid trying to put the room back into a mix done on headphones.

My current faves, the Sennheiser HD-265's, are only a bit more than your budget (they used to cost a lot more), but are extremely useful for tracking, listening and as a headphone reference. They are a closed design and I like their response for the music I listen to and record. My more expensive 580's seem a little soft on the bass and have an open design, so they don't lend themselves well to tracking. The 580's might lend themselves a little better to acoustic and classical music.

I have a pair of Grados that sound great, but as Jeffrey suggests, they are uncomfortable (the original foam pads disintegrated and having foam schmutz dirt in the ears really was a non-positive experience.) The replacement pads haven't changed in the least, so hopefully that problem is over. All the Grados I've used have at least behaved like open style headphones, as far as bleed.

steve_hershberger · Post by **steve_hershberger** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 4:35 am

What Mark says in his first paragraph is extremely true. So don't use headphones as your main referrence.

I use Sony MDR-7506.

teb · Post by **teb** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 5:57 am

I found out early on that phones weren't very accurate for anything serious like mixing, which is why I bought a set of monitors, but it would be nice to have something with better accuracy and less distortion than the cheap ones that I currently have. I also play a lot late at night through the recorder and headphones, instead of an amp, so they get a lot of use.

charlyg · Post by **charlyg** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 6:19 am

I LOVE my Sony headphones. THey are the most comfortable I have used and isolate well.

jps · Post by **jps** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 12:13 pm

Most Sony headphones I have listened to had a hyped up high end; in general I know that the German makes (AKG, Sennheiser) are far more accurate for judging recordings vs. simple listening pleasure. The same usually holds true for speakers for listening pleasure vs. monitoring in the studio. Most poeple would not want truly accurate speakers as part of their stereo system except for us "holy grail high end nuts"!

charlyg · Post by **charlyg** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 12:15 pm

But I have my bass cranked to compensate!!!!!!!!

jps · Post by **jps** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 4:29 pm

lyle_from_minneapolis · Mon Jun 11, 2007 4:49 pm

Brian Eno used to mix things until they were just right, but then he'd give it one more listen through a boombox and make further adjustments. Or so I read somewhere.

It took me a long time to realize my headphones were the reason why my mixes used to be tinny.

teb · Post by **teb** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 10:34 pm

That used to be standard procedure. I think every studio that I recorded at back in the early '70's had a ****** looking wooden box about the size of a shoe box sitting somewhere on the control board. Inside was one of those horrible 6" by 9" oval speakers that they used to put in car dashboards. After you did your mix through the big monitors you checked it through the box to see what it sounded like in a typical automobile system of the day or a transistor radio. If it was too tinny, too boomy or distorted, you went back and re-mixed it. Luckily, audio systems have come a long way since then.

sharkboy · Post by **sharkboy** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 5:10 pm

Yes. And people used to use Auratones a lot in studios. I still use little Radio Shack or other small speakers to check the "fart level" of my mix- where a cheap speaker crashes at volume on its diminishing bass response curve. This sort-of simulates the dash speaker in my old Ford Pinto when "Tuesday Afternoon," by the Moody Blues came on the radio- I just would like to know at what volume and note where the song hits limits.

I was a little surprised to see NS10s in the control room for a session on one of my songs and the engineer (kind of famous engineer/producer/musician) said they belonged to the studio, but he wanted to see if I would notice them. He put up his own Dynaudios and we went for it.

Later, I was chatting with him about it and he said that a good engineer should probably always go for accuracy and reasonable bandwidth. For less experienced engineers, NS10s were probably great, so they wouldn't be able to say how much better the mix was in the studio. His thinking was that if you can make it sound good on an NS10 it will probably sound good anywhere else, and that still makes sense to me many years later.

jwargowski · Post by **jwargowski** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:52 am

I do all my initial mixing and effects settings using headphones (Sony MDR-V700's) and I've got a pair of NS-10's for the final mix monitoring. The NS-10's are old and probably not so accurate, but they are very flat, especially compared to the headphones. I always end up burning a few different mixes onto Cd's and listening to them in my car, home stereo etc. Then going back to tweek the mix.

I know Sunset Sound and a few other's went to the extreme of actually having a low power transmitter and they used to listen to mixes out in the parking lot on car stereos.

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 8:01 am

I have a headphone suggestion: don't sing along while listening to them on public transportation.

elysrand · Post by **elysrand** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 8:18 am

Har! I do it all the time on the DC Metro. It only takes about three minutes of singing along after the train starts up to make the neighboring passengers all suddenly want to get up and move to another seat. Then, I have lots of empty seats all around me to stretch out in for the rest of the trip. I can sit my briefcase next to me on the empty seats, and the newspaper and coffee thermos on the other adjacent seat.