What is your preferred Alembic + Headphones setup?

[edwin]

I had some Beyer DT770s, which are great cans, although they crapped out eventually. I think they got some abusive signals (although not while wearing them, thankfully!) and in replacement, I got a pair of Ultrasone Proline 750s. They sound amazing! The bass is deep, but not at the expense of everything else. The Beyers were wonderfully deep, but the low end kind of overwhelms the rest of the signal. One big advantage of the Beyers is that they seem to have the most isolation of good sounding phones I have used. They were my can of choice for location recording. The Ultrasones sound more true (the actually match mixes very well with my Event ASP 8s I mix on, that replaced my Dynaudio BM5as, which are great monitors, but didn't translate well from my room, but I digress), but don't seal quite as well, requiring louder levels in noisy environments. If you don't require extreme isolation and can swing the price, the Ultrasones sound as good or better than anything I have heard.
 
I also have a pair of Ultimate Ears hifi 5 or whatever the model is. They are dual driver and sound wonderful as in ear monitors and to listen to music on an ipod, etc.
 
My practice amp with headphones when I am not using my home studio is a Raven Labs PHA-1. Great unit! Built like a tank and very hifi.
 
An all in one unit like the Tascam sounds interesting, but so far the PHA-1 with an ipod works fine, plus it can be used with all kinds of inputs.
 
Edwin
 
Edwin

[0vid]

Setup: basses into one of my preamps
 
either: F1X, trace V type or Demeter VTBP201 DBL
into Behringer 24 channel mixerwith EFX
 
mixer feeds: Amcron (crown DA 75), drives Sony 7506 headphones.
mixer mixes my bass to my MAC G4, which runs protools, midi, or MP3s.  I use Roni music's Amazing Slower Downer, which will slow audio OR MP3s and pitch shift as well. I can play along with most audio sources, and practice fast bop at speeds i can handle and work my way up.....I do a lot of sessions with different bands and musicians, so this helps with learning  and transcribing unfamiliar music very quickly. I also find slowing MIDI down to be very useful in working on my time and accuracy.
 
BTW for elec. guitar, I feed any of my guitars into any of the preamps (my preferred one is the trace) , and use a DBX 2 way crossover usually at 3.2 to 3.5Khz and feed the low pass to the mixer as 'speaker simulated' guitar audio. I use a RAT or a TS808 and you can get very good distortion sounds. I patch time based efx through the aux ends on the mixer. The variable crossover is much more flexible than a fixed speaker sim. You can patch a graphic or parametric EQ if you want to bump or cut off low end....
 
FWIW, I used to use a triaxis, JMP1, DMC control gear and speaker sim, Akai midi controlled mixers, , Alesis and Digitech efx, in a 12U rack...I am frankly happier with the clean sound for guitar with the bass preamps, than the triaxis, (the marshall clean is of course crap). The distortion is v good, not as good as the best of the triaxis or the marshall but then the triaxis or the JMP 1 could get the sound of these stompboxes anyway...  
 
And truth be told, at my age, I don't have much need for distortion .............LOL.
 
Of course, the F1X  low pass output can also be used as a speaker simulated guitar output. You can use it as 'old school'  speaker simulated bass if you  like.....
 
(Message edited by 0vid on September 17, 2006)

[drjenney]

I'm very happy with my Phil Jones Bass Buddy. The sound is warm and clear [though the specs only say

[dumfuxx]

I bought the mackie/audio technica rig off ebay for about 150, I can't wait to get off this oil rig and try it out.  Too bad putting one of my precious alembics on an uber-vibrating helicopter is not an option.  I miss my ladies out here. (offshore 4 weeks out of every 6).  I've been thinking of building some kind of all carbon fiber 'stick' type bass to keep my chops up.  portable and durable.

[rockbassist]

I use a Tascam BT-1. I sometimes play along with a cd or plug my IPod into it. This is the only way that practice on my own. Make sure you invest in a good set of headphones.