jamontoast
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2008
- Posts
- 36
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- 0
Hi all!
Just got back from the studio a week ago, doing some intensive sessions tracking drums, bass, piano and guitars. The studio was filled with AKG K240s, which sound fantastic for tracking but are wide open, making them not so good for drums and guitars with an amp in the room. For a test, I thought I'd grab my Westone UM1s out of my bag and see how they did for tracking.
I understand these are professional stage monitor headphones, but I was completely blown away at how well they performed in a real world environment. For tracking drums, bass and guitars live (in the same room as a blastingly loud 40 watt tube up turned up to full blast), they isolate perfectly, giving you a detailed, crisp, punchy desk sound straight into your head. I can only compare it to listening to an mp3 from my Walkman, only you're actually playing the music!
The snare drum is usually the instrument that kills headphones while monitoring because of it's incredible dynamic range in its raw, unprocessed state. The Westones can handle MASSIVE dBs before distorting! Bass and kick are deep and accurate, I can see why they roll off the bass slightly with the UM1s, they preserve accuracy over bloat beautifully!
Guitar sounds unbelievably clear, it's actually better to hear the amp through the UM1s rather than straight from the amp.
One word to describe the tracking sound these give is 'crisp'. They are perfectly tuned for musical instrument monitoring.
The Westone UM1s sound fantastic for personal audio, but to know they can handle a full dynamic mix, snare drum and all with no distortion whatsoever just blows me away!
I've never had this sort of experience while tracking, just wondering if anyone has tried their IEM in a 'real world' application such as this?
- Jam
Just got back from the studio a week ago, doing some intensive sessions tracking drums, bass, piano and guitars. The studio was filled with AKG K240s, which sound fantastic for tracking but are wide open, making them not so good for drums and guitars with an amp in the room. For a test, I thought I'd grab my Westone UM1s out of my bag and see how they did for tracking.
I understand these are professional stage monitor headphones, but I was completely blown away at how well they performed in a real world environment. For tracking drums, bass and guitars live (in the same room as a blastingly loud 40 watt tube up turned up to full blast), they isolate perfectly, giving you a detailed, crisp, punchy desk sound straight into your head. I can only compare it to listening to an mp3 from my Walkman, only you're actually playing the music!
The snare drum is usually the instrument that kills headphones while monitoring because of it's incredible dynamic range in its raw, unprocessed state. The Westones can handle MASSIVE dBs before distorting! Bass and kick are deep and accurate, I can see why they roll off the bass slightly with the UM1s, they preserve accuracy over bloat beautifully!
Guitar sounds unbelievably clear, it's actually better to hear the amp through the UM1s rather than straight from the amp.
One word to describe the tracking sound these give is 'crisp'. They are perfectly tuned for musical instrument monitoring.
The Westone UM1s sound fantastic for personal audio, but to know they can handle a full dynamic mix, snare drum and all with no distortion whatsoever just blows me away!
I've never had this sort of experience while tracking, just wondering if anyone has tried their IEM in a 'real world' application such as this?
- Jam
