Engineers have been telling me this for years, and this is another reason why you don't want to use audiophile headphone to mix and master.
Originally Posted by inthere /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I know that "inspiring" vocals and musicians doesn't sound technical at all, but that's my personal goal.
RudeWolf,
A thought crossed my mind: inthere has mentioned the possibility of flattering headphones being the best choice for performers, with the idea that if they like their voice better through the headphones it can lead to a better performance. Couldn't a program like yours offer such a "sweetly colored" option ... and then reproduce it as EQ on the recording itself, so that what the performer hears (his performance, but better) is transferred as is to the recording? A bit like an EQ preset the sound engineers can use or discard or tweak during the mixing stage.
As I said, just a passing idea.
Hard to say really. Pretty sure that professional vocalists know how their voice sounds and wouldn't like extra sugar to the mix. We have options to emulate many sound signatures (HD650 could be considered to sound sweet), but there is no way to be sure what exactly qualifies as sweet for all people.
I was thinking of a program that could (1) bring the headphones to neutral then (2) allow the performer to make adjustments starting from there. Those performer's adjustments-starting-from-neutral could then be transferred as an EQ pattern to any kind of recording software or plug-in. This said, as I said, it was only a passing idea. Forced to bet, I'd still put my money on as-neutral-as-possible monitoring. Especially when you've got several performers, plus a sound engineer!
This very interesting discussion has raised several questions for me. As you know, I'm a professional musician, and I also have a life-long passion for Hi-Fi. As one aspect of my work I have a small home studio which I usually use to record myself over a track which someone sends me. I then send them the dry recording which they then mix and use on a CD project. For me, a studio headphone has to be closed and good for tracking and monitoring. I don't do any music production myself so I don't need headphones to mix on, and in any case I have both near field (PMC TB1 in the studio) and full size (ATC SCM 100 ASL with the Hi-Fi) as well as Sennheiser HD 650 and HD 800 headphones to listen to mixes on if I need to.
One thing that has struck me as as result of the recent discussion, some of which I've quoted above, is that it would seem to me that a flat and neutral frequency response is not necessarily desirable in a studio headphone. I can certainly relate to and understand inthere's point about a headphone 'inspiring' singers and musicians. There are headphones, such as the Sony 7506, which are very popular with vocalists because it allows them to hear themselves very clearly in the mix. It's not so much necessarily that they 'flatter' (in the way that a certain headphone algorithm might do) their voices, but, because they hear what they need and want to hear very clearly it 'inspires' their performance (or can do).
It also seems to me that the most important virtue of a studio headphone used for mixing (or for some part of that process) is that the mixes done on it translate well. As I've said I don't do any mixing myself, but I can think of one headphone in particular which, according to several respected sources, translates extremely well but doesn't have a flat frequency response.
So the main question seems to be, is a flat frequency response even desirable or 'correct' in a headphone? The Harman target curve is not flat for example. Certainly, most 'studio headphones' (especially those good for tracking but also, as I said above, some which are good for mixing) are not flat. I'm wondering why (or if and how) a program which makes the FR of any headphone flat is a good idea? Then, additionally, having a program which makes the FR of a headphone flat and then introduces a 'flattering' response for singers (for example) seems a bit pointless........
I'm not being critical of any of the ideas here, and certainly not of RudeWolf's work - I'm just trying to understand..............!