[vergesslich2]

[...]

I hope I conveyed the notion of complexity without losing you entirely.

Yes, I understood it, thank you very much.

It looks to me that a good consumer buying decision might be to build a headphone arsenal. To look what characteristic (that a brand goes on using) is still missing in the arsenal. Like, 600 and 650, and 880 and 1990, and 701 and 712. Plus some closed back, and some planar. I just try to think of the most popular headphones. They should be the ones that the sound engineers make the productions for, if at all. In order to use different headphones for listening, per interpret or album. Although, I still think some headphones might be fatiguing a bit. Just saying, I will probably re-start with a 'most compatible' headphone, which might be the most popular headphone anyways.

And for a producer, so, I guess (?) they need an arsenal too, because they need to find where their production sounds the worst, and later maybe what slightly perceived qualities should "cancel each other out" in the "market" (I'm trying to refer to a place in Toole's book). Although Toole does not propagate replicating faulty equipment when it comes to speakers. But that has to do with different rooms, too. So, maybe "many faulty headphones" might still be a legitimate approach. I mean, some people just do it, but I'm not sure why exactly.

[...] as a post process from good old mono tracks.

I'm a bit lost here. So, mono recordings are a good way to go in general? Or maybe even mono samples for everything in 'purely artistic works'?
Concerning the recordings - since I have no idea how mixing engineers work - do they today "just" process mono recordings with convolver plugins and impulse response files from several microphone positions? I mean, I'm not wondering about their mixing work in particular. But I was always imagining that with two microphones placed near an instrument, like within one or two meters, one might record some cool "corpus" sound. Sorry, I'm lost on some sound ideas here. And I have only last year tried to record some instruments for fun.

Sorry that I couldn't bring the thread back to the driver distance to ear topic. But somehow I concluded that... well.. I might just want to buy as many different headphones and things as I can afford and have time for. It's like that for me personally. Because the possible situations to watch out for are so many.

 

[bigshot]

Engineers mix on calibrated speaker systems. They don’t use headphones for anything but isolation when recording.

There’s no reason anyone needs more than one set of headphones. All you really need is your own personal target curve. And even assuming you want the chaos of multiple curves, it’s more efficient to do that with equalization instead of swapping different sounding headphones on and off.

 

[vergesslich2]

Engineers mix on calibrated speaker systems. They don’t use headphones for anything but isolation when recording.

There’s no reason anyone needs more than one set of headphones. All you really need is your own personal target curve. And even assuming you want the chaos of multiple curves, it’s more efficient to do that with equalization instead of swapping different sounding headphones on and off.

It would be easier with one set of headphones indeed. The only thing that drew me into this idea, was that somehow the fatiguing peaks (DT 880, K 701) seemed to be at certain frequencies in the measurements with dummy heads, whereas untreated rooms would all differ. And there is (?) some verbal agreement on such weaknesses of some headphones. So it looked meaningful to me to test with them. But if the peaks could move on the frequency line for different listeners, or if enough listeners don't mind them because of how their ears just are, then it wouldn't be sensible to buy all these headphones. And it would be cheaper. : )

 

[bigshot]

The problem with headphones is that they don't consistently present sound across different volume levels. If you have a little too much bass in a mix and you turn the level up loud with headphones, the cans will suck up a lot of the energy and sound fine. But when you play the same mix back on speakers, the bass is presented at full volume and it blows you out of the room.

Speakers are more precise for judging levels and frequencies. Headphones are fine for listening to finished mixes, but you don't want to balance on headphones. It can cause problems down the road when you go to play the mix back on speakers.

I had this problem when I was restoring the sound in old 78 rpm records. I used headphones to monitor and set the basic EQ in the transfer to keep everything out of the red, and headphones were great for identifying clicks and pops for noise reduction. But if I tried to adjust the final response, things that sounded like slight adjustments in the headphones were huge differences when I played it back on speakers. When I did the final EQ balance on speakers, it sounded fine on headphones, but not the other way around.