Author Topic: Open-air headphones (Read 98 times)

juggernaught · « **on:** May 31, 2009, 06:16:37 PM »

I'm seriously looking into some open-air headphones for mixing and headphone preamps. Specifically I'm looking at 2 brands: Grado SR80i and Sennheiser HD 555. Does anybody have any experience with these for mixing? How about for using a headphone preamp with your Alembic? I'm all about the clean, accurate sound and leakage doesn't bother me. I'm open to other open-air headphones in the $100 or less range.

(Message edited by juggernaught on May 31, 2009)

sonicus · « **Reply #1 on:** May 31, 2009, 07:29:37 PM »

I have used my old Sennheiser HD 430's as well as HD 420s for mixing and often go right off the board. i like to use a Crown D75 as a head phone amp when having the need for several sets of head phones.(from the headphone jack) I like the Crown because I can feed it at +4dbu right from a mixing board. My experience with Sennheisers in general is that they might require a little more power then some of the other competitors.Beyerdynamic and Sony are very popular.

juggernaught · « **Reply #2 on:** May 31, 2009, 07:45:28 PM »

I guess it's worth mentioning I'm looking at the Sennheiser HD 515s as well.

mario_farufyno · « **Reply #3 on:** June 02, 2009, 06:18:25 PM »

I never use Phones to mix... I can't trust it will give me a real stereo image. Remember that the idea behind stereophonics lies on recreating the band's sound as they were in front of you. But when you use phones, a centered bass drum can be located between your ears - right in the middle of your head. If you try to correct this disturbing effect, you may move your sound field's center away and ruin your stereo image.

Also mind that you must actually hear stereo cabinets to check Phase problems. If you just listen trough phones, you can't hear left and right sound sources blending and canceling each other. This can makes wide open stereo sources (as synths or drum's overhead mics) to vanish when hearded trough conventinal stereo systems.

And there is no way to correct this issues after the mixing is done.

Sometime I may use phones to check how my mix works on an other reference (as I always do at some friend's home, at my own home or at car stereo), but would never use one as my main monitor. Remember we don't usually hear the world on phones, so ambience - the way some room behaves to sound and affects it - is a great part of our hearing experience. Decisions about the ammount of reverberation we should use on one instrument can be influenced by the lack of room reverberance during the Mix.

And there is the fatigue issue.

We tend to get tired faster using Phones than Monitors, so this means we loose our hearing frequency response in shorter time (and our ability to do good mixes, too). The disposition is to compensate highs and lows as we gradually loose our capacity to respond to them after working some hours. Hearing fatigue can makes us unbalance every Instrument's tone on a mix and we should avoid spend too much continuous time in a Mix. And this may be a problem since we get tired faster using Phones.

sonicus · « **Reply #4 on:** June 02, 2009, 07:23:03 PM »

Hi Mario.
In a studio setting some of what you say here is valid and I agree with much of it . How ever in many live settings such as remote tracking for film and FOH/or monitor concert work you might not even have the luxury of a control room much less a set of monitors! If you are a PROTOOLS HD or even TDM or LE user you will discover how much you can UNDO in post production and mastering .Back in the days when all we had was magnetic tape if you had 8 inputs going direct to 2 track or even mono you were stuck with your mix for the most part.In a perfect world I would agree with many of your claims but the world is never perfect. I do agree however that there is no way that I would ever do a final mix for a contracted release with JUST head phones. The longer that you are involved in the pro audio world the more you realize that there are many ways to approach a situation: sometimes you have no choice but to have to be versatile These are my 2 cents worth from just a little more of 3 decades of trial and error, LOL , have fun .

juggernaught · « **Reply #5 on:** June 02, 2009, 10:16:40 PM »

Well, I do use headphones to mix, and have been in plenty of discussions on whether or not it's a good idea. As far as the center of the head issue, Mario, are you thinking about closed phones? Open phones don't so much of the center of the head feel.

I like to do the majority of my mixing with phones and reserve the monitors for the last 5% touch ups on the mixing. Mind you I'm doing electronic/live instrument mixes, so most of my time is spent on composition. Besides, if I'm out of a studio situation, I'd still like to do some work.

I bit the bullet and decided on some Grado SR 80i headphones. Most of the people who like em like the clean accurate sound, which is what I'm all about.