[DJGeorgeT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot I can't believe some of the advice in this thread. I guess some people just aren't familiar with what sound engineers need in a set of cans. It doesn't matter what type of music you are monitoring... electronic, acoustic, rock, classical... It doesn't matter if you personally like lots of bass or treble either. The last thing you want are cans that are detailed or analytical. You don't want ones that have a sound signature that suits a particular type of music either. What you need for mastering are balanced headphones with a *flat frequency response*. Otherwise, you'll end up with music that sounds fantastic in your cans and sounds totally bizarre when you play it back on speakers. The point of monitors, whether they be speakers or headphones is to provide a baseline. The only way to determine whether headphones are good for monitoring is to compare them to the output of a known source... ie: good monitor speakers. See ya Steve

Geez thanks for that recommendation from utopia. I'm pretty sure you have no clue. There is no such thing as "flat frequency response". You may find a headphone that in your opinion sounds balanced, but all headphones have their own "sound signatures". Nothing wrong with it. But good and widely used monitors include the MDR-V6, MDR-7506, K204S, and others. I have tested the V6 against my mackie monitors and they are highly comparable and widely used for the type of music I am producing...I can only do a direct comparison of material I am working on. FYI, nothing replaces monitoring speakers such as a good pair or Alesis ones. Some producers play their stuff on many different systems as well. In the club, in the home system, through the monitors, etc. I think a good chunck of work can be done with headphones, but it is not final. Some of us refer to "analytical" as in not veiled or rolled at the high end. I am not talking about exagerated top end.

 

[SurroundGeek]

I too am an electronic music producer. I find my HD600s and E4Cs to be a great referece at night when I want to put my mix "under the microscope", but I use my Sony MDR-V700's.....wait.....don't stop reading because I use the ugly dreaded silver things....

The ugly DJ headphones are very handy for doing realtime effects while the rest of the mix is playing over monitors....easy to take them off and put them back on...or do the one thing sometimes. In-ears (plus the Senn's HD580, 600, 650) just don't allow for that sort of flexiblity.

The Sony headphones that others have mentioned in this thread would probably all work for late night production.....I just would not trust my mix to headphones. I would go over the work from the previous night on my monitors to make everything sounds "right"....especially the bass. Never trust the bass in headphones when you are mixing!!!

So the short answer....buy a pair of MDR-7506s and use those for music production. You can get them cheap...plus they sound pretty good, offer fairly good isolation, are easy to put on and take off, and are pretty durable. They are pretty much a standard in the pro audio world. If you want something to do critical listening with....the HD600s (for open headphoes) are a darn fine choice. I also like my Shure IEMs, but I am totally biased

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJGeorgeT Geez thanks for that recommendation from utopia. I'm pretty sure you have no clue. There is no such thing as "flat frequency response".

Do you own a test tone oscillator? Have you ever run a sweep across the audible frequency band correcting for wolf tones and dropouts in your monitoring system? There most definitely *is* such a thing as flat frequency reponse, and it's absolutely necessary to act as the baseline for your basic mix. Without a baseline, who knows what you're laying down?

It's a lot easier to achieve flat response with speakers than it is with headphones, but at the very least, your cans should match your monitors as closely as possible. The way to do that isn't to go on the internet and ask for a laundry list of brands and model numbers... you need to sit down with a variety of cans and compare them to the way your monitors sound. The way I did was to ask every one of my friends and co workers at the studio to lend me their headphones to try. After about 25 sets, I was ready to start narrowing it down.

An engineer doesn't need ten different sets of headphones for all different kinds of music... he needs one set that matches his monitoring baseline as closely as possible. Next time I go into a recording session or mix, I'll remember your advice to bring a variety of sound signatures to match to the types of music I'm working on. Wait a second guys... let me put on my "jazz cans"! (rolls eyes)

See ya
Steve

 

[recstar24]

Kind of unrealistic to get your hands on because they are out of production, but they are such a godsend in the studio

 

[SurroundGeek]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot An engineer doesn't need ten different sets of headphones for all different kinds of music... he needs one set that matches his monitoring baseline as closely as possible. Next time I go into a recording session or mix, I'll remember your advice to bring a variety of sound signatures to match to the types of music I'm working on. Wait a second guys... let me put on my "jazz cans"! (rolls eyes)

I totatlly agree.....a good sounding headphone should sound good with whatever material you throw at it, but for producing electronic music, a set of sealed headphones is almost a requirement for realtime tweaking of sounds...so you can easily switch between your monitors and headphones without having to mute your monitors.

I have listened to many headphones, and there is a difference between sealed and open headphones......where sealed comprimises ultimate sound quality in exchange for isolation. In the audio world, there is almost always a trade-off between ultimate sound quality and something else (size, cost, color

...), and headphones are no exception. It's a shame we don't all have anechoic chanmbers to listen to our open headphones.

 

[bias]

except insofar as they can provide a baseline with which to reference your mix. For instance, i'm mixing country songs for TV this week. I monitor out of NS-10's and other Yam speakers. After I do a rough mix I listen to it with my Sennheiser HD-280's because I know what they sound like. I've listened to other recordings so often in the cans that I can tell how my mixes are standing up to other recordings. You can of course do the same thing by A/Bing your mixes with other records through speakers that you know well too. Since I don't spend a lot of time listening to music through the NS-10's I don't have the instinctual knowledge of how well-mixed records SHOULD sound through 'em. The headphones are also good because they eliminate problematic room acoustics.