You rascal! You beat me to the punch...

Saw this & hesitated posting because of those who do not fully understand what is required to mix on headphones.

1. experience
2. good quality headphones matched to the equipment they are being attached to (impedance, sensitivity).
3. translating mix to 80% of open air devices from kitchen radios to club/concert systems.​

Just to name a few.

 

Yeah I feel like you have to have mixed on monitors and know the rules of engagement on them to be able to cheat the headphones from it's pitfalls because they basically eliminate the stereo field. Which is why I always saw a split between people who say mixing on cans is fine whereas the other half always swore them off unless they used the cans to create or track.

Headphones force the sound into your ears while monitors let you bathe in the sound. I'm no expert but I had the worse time mixing on headphones but then again my cans aren't made for that.

 

Last edited: Aug 4, 2021

Didn't watch. Later.
What I know is that when you mix/master/listen with headphones, left ear hears left channel, right ear hears right channel.
When you mix/master/listen with monitors, loudspeakers, left ear hears left and right channels, right ear hears right and left channels.
Different stereo perception.
Also headphones are closer than monitors, loudspeakers - proximity.
Also, room.
Different monitoring workflows. Everything is different....

 

True. But the game has changed. Kids nowadays listen to music on ear buds or crappy laptop speakers.
Its more important that the song is in balance regarding the frequencies, that is all that matters.
People can get lost mixing on studio monitors easily as well.

 

the statement is about as correct and useful as saying the opposite, which is that your studio monitors would not be stereo.

in fact, with headphones the listening situation is always foreseeable since it is always the same (180 degree, no room reflections, no room modes, no neighbours ranting) but with speakers it is not; for speakers you can only mix a compromise, while for headphones you can record cross, AB, XY, or ambisonics and treat it respectively to retain something very close to the original situation.

(of course one might argue that a bit of room reflections are not the worst listing situation when it comes to track the direction of wildely panned 150 Hz material...)

 

I guess with Experience one can get to a proper/balanced Compromise.

But I'm thinking in reality there may not be an absolute/perfect solution to this problem..

The only really good solution would be to provide different mixes, or adaptations of the same mix,
for the different listening situations..

-A Regular mix to be listened with Stereo Speakers.

-A Headphone mix with the particular FX, like adding some HRTF simulation,
delaying/filtering the Mid, the Lows, or whatever way you want to prepare/improve it..
(although Speakers and Headphone mixes are easier to equate and find a working compromise, than with mono..)

However is also worth mentioning that the Presentation can vary a Lot from one headphone to the next..
like headphones that Soundstage vs headphones that don't. Or In-ear vs Over-ear etc..

-A Mono mix for listening with phones, portable speakers, and whatever Crap ppl is using.
And this one will be specially useful because regular mono summing techniques sucks, and will kill your mix whatever you do.

There's better (yet more complex) ways than L+R to effectively do a good mono sum, and it's possible some devices are doing it good/better, but probably not all phones and portable speakers do it the same way.. so the result could differ from one device to the next.


So yeah, it sucks that there's no solution,
but at least the problem would be different, and could be addressed/dealt with..

(my ignorant 5 cents ofc..)

(and ofc I enjoyed the video and found it interesting,
I certainly didn't know/thought about the last automated technique/approach..)

 

Last edited: Aug 4, 2021

Mixes in air with monitors tend to translate quite well to headphones, though the opposite isn't always true even with correction and crossfeed. Honestly though in this day and age, just do what you do, especially if nobody is paying you to do and/or your target audience or clients are happy with the results.

The same axiom pretty much applies to anything musical, if it sounds good and people like it who cares and you can only do what your tools allow you to do if you work with tools.

 

the entire premise of the video is to prove that this is not true , for example lcr mixes sound good on monitors but really weird on headphones

 

I mix using the Slate VSX and it translates everywhere without any major issues - just saying...

 

I used to produce/mix non-stop with headphones. I was also taking a lot of amphetamines.

It got to a point where I would have to take a break every 5 min and take the headphones off, because I would get paranoid and think some crazy serial killer could break into my house and I wouldn't hear him.

I quit amphetamines, but still can't make music with headphones today. Feels extremely claustrophobic.

Also I think I damaged my hearing by listening to music at stupid levels with headphones when I was younger, so I'm not that crazy about that either.

Which is funny, because I used to LOVE cutting myself from the world like that. I must've walked hundreds of miles just tripping with headphones. But as I got older, I've come to believe music works best when it fills the air.