I admit my investigations into the subject are limited but what i've tried was nonsense. It all seems like snake oil. Kind of like, oh, our software makes your $100 SM58 sound like a $10K vintage C12!! Gee, the entire mic industry would pretty well be out of business if that were true now, wouldn't it?

 

Yeah, the FT3 is harman-oriented and sounds great (a little too strong in sibilance, but a literal sheet of toilet paper fixes it). The HD58X isn't that far off, either. I don't really love the full Harman curve, but it is an improvement to a lot of headphones, and people are missing out if they don't use it for mixing instead of flattening their headphones with Sonarworks.

It seems that "flat is not important" and "headphones are a valid method for mixing" are finally having a turn around recently. I've been saying that for a long time, but of course all the old heads around the community will try to gatekeep mixing behind very expensive rooms and monitors.

 

i have Acustica Sienna, and Slate VSX. I own a wide variety of headphones, beyer dt990 pro, hifiman ananda, VSX, Audeze mm100, apple pro, and some others. I also have Focal Shape 65 and Alpha Evo, PMC 6, and the small adams. I find the best mixes i do are either on my macbook pro speakers, or with the slate VSX headphones with room correction on. I like the mike dean room , or stevens mix room. Its also nice to switch around to the club's and cars here and there to hear things differently, but i really stick to one. You need to spend some time listening to music through the room, to get an understanding of it. It doesnt hurt to listen to skim through some songs you are very familiar with / referencing before every session.

Acustica Sienna is great as well, but like many Acustica plugins, can be a pain in the ass. I find Slate's plugin much easier to use, and just feels / sounds more natural.

When i say i get my best mixes on laptop or with VSX, i mean i mix 80/90 % on those platforms, and then of course check and finalize with actual monitors, or switching back and forth.

You may laugh at the laptop thing, but no joke, some of my best mixes come from starting a mix like that. Its not fun, nor inspiring, but if you can get a mix sounding good on a laptop, it will likely sound good elsewhere. I use tools like tonal balance control or spectrum analyzers to let me know if im in the ballpark for sub, but i'll adjust things as needed when i switch to monitors / headphones.

 

I've been using HD650s for quite a while but found it difficult to get the low end right with them. I use them with DearVR Monitor on the Analytic Dry setting without the headphone correction. This creates a workable front-to-back space. I also tried Morphit for correction but found instead that if I EQ-ed them to the Harman Curve using a stock digital EQ the results were better. Still, I have about ten other things that I check the mix on and that I know will tend to highlight mix problems e.g. DT770s show up sibilance, Equator monitors highlight boomy low end, Apple earbuds highlight midrange balance problems, etc. I'm also using Sonible's TrueBalance and MTM's Bassroom.

Cheers!

 

My Neumann NDH 30
translated better now with
https://autoeq.app/
than with Sonarworks.

 

Last edited: Oct 16, 2024 at 12:29 PM

Yeah. It's in accordance with studies, that more educated listeners and mixing professionals prefer a less pronounced bass range, because of the ability to conentrate on the low parts anyway and its easier to hear the important low mids and midrange, but in general to tame the pseudo bass bumps and especially not flat flattening the high mids and treble is a huge improvement and can't be compared to the idiotic flattening of headphones.
Without knowing it, but that's obviously why I always liked Sonys 7506.

 

Last edited: Oct 15, 2024 at 1:13 PM

With your correctly EQed (=Harman-curve-like) headphones, go on the APL Virtuoso 2 homepage and listen to the binaural sound demos.
I was flashed and blown away, even without a personalized HRTF. You can hear each string bow contact and where the player is. Absolutely unbelieveable.
So until now it may have been a gimmick, but I think that is about to change (I expect the Genelec binaural HRTF system will also sound that good).

 

No, not if they are all unknowledged.

 

With Sonarworks you can select the target, and eq the headphones. If you choose "Flat response" It is normal it gets flat response.

 

Absolutely. And some prefer to work flat, some with the Harman curve, equal loudness (Fletcher-Munsen...ISO 226:2023), custom curve or whatever... I personally like to have my headphones flat (Pink noise) as a starting point. For me, it is essential to have a FLAT preset as accurate as possible as a reference/starting point because I'm used to work with it but also because any "most pleasant curves to the ear" and/or room simulators will translate as accurately as possible afterwards.

 

Last edited: Oct 15, 2024 at 7:09 PM

It's not only a matter of taste for headphones: it was proven by numerous studies, that flat headphones are universally (from professionals to laymen) seen as muffled sounding and that headphone calibration was not comparable to speaker calibration, where a flat response is working very well.
Make sure to try it out, before trying to guess upper mids and treble instead of hearing them, and therefore wasting time with plugins calibrating your headphones wrongly.

 

Just got the HD 6XX. Sonarworks makes them sound awful. What would you guys recommend for these, if anything? Also, thoughts on using CanOpener in conjunction with something like Sonarworks?

 

The following eq settings:

Filter 1: 21 Hz; Gain 6.0 dB; Q 2.400
Filter 2: 32 Hz; Gain 12.0 dB; Q 0.500
Filter 3: 660 Hz; Gain -1.3 dB; Q 0.500
Filter 4: 3100 Hz; Gain -2.4 dB; Q 3.000

Maybe: ( Filter 5: 11000 Hz; Gain 8.8 dB: Q 0.700 )

 

Do you like how they sound out of the box? If so, listen to a lot of music on it and learn how your favorite mixes sound there. After a while, your brain adapts and knows how much is too little or too much of a certain frequency.

Setting on a specific curve (Harman or flat) will only be useful if you dislike how the headphones sound or you are constantly swapping headphones and need to keep sound consistent.

 

how is it even called? i want this

 

I love this guy's videos.

 

I'm not a fan of Paul Third, but this video he did of Headphone EQ-ing is useful:

 

I do not agree. You do not hear, if the headphones have rising mids to teh 1k, then rise stronger to the upper mids. I always liked the 7506s and had acceptable-good translation, but correcting the bass torwards a Harman curve resulted in extended subbass and much less bass, an upper bass hole filled and that correction has been very helpful (and it sounds better, too; IMO the 7506s with that kind of correction could easily cost 500 bucks).

There is simply no reason, for everyone with EQs at a fingertip, not to try it out. If it does not improve translation, fine, then don't use it. It cost's nothing.

 

Last edited: Oct 16, 2024 at 12:27 AM

I bought the 7506 to be my double checkers on top of my HS-8's but I almost never use them. I'm going to try to implement the EQ curve that @Lemmy suggested from https://autoeq.app/ to see if my opinion changes.

EDIT: I have to admit this made a huge difference, since I no longer get fatigued by the piercing sounds around 6kHz!

 

Last edited: Oct 16, 2024 at 12:41 AM

Meh... Inappropriate target and some unnecessary filters.

@bigdogmusic
Try this:

These settings pin it to the target curve. But I guess the low shelf needs manual adjustment according to your ears.
In my memory, the HD 6XX do not tolerate too much boost in the (sub-)bass range without causing driver distortion.

 

Last edited: Oct 16, 2024 at 1:24 AM