mixing on earphones [Archive]

evets

14 Oct 2009, 23:04

I need a portable set up that allows me to record and mix while away from a studio, Lately I have been travelling a lot and I'm currently living abroad for 6 months so don't want to treat a room and buy monitors I am them going to have to sell etc.

I have never used any but I'm thinking about the triple driver earphone/ buds over regular headphones and using them with something like REDLINE MONITOR plugin from 112db.
http://www.112db.com/redline/monitor/

I have never tried mixing purely on phones and not really sure what would work best. Does anybody have any experiences of mixing on this type of earphone and how it may work out. Is the earbud the best option (if anyone has a better idea please suggest it!) and is it worth spending $500 on some earphones? Obviously I would prefer a pair of monitors in a nice room but unfortunately monitors and a control room won't fit in my hand luggage!!

I've been considering the Ultimate Ears triple.fi 10 or Sony SE530, M-audio have released the IE-40 but I think its just a re-badges UE triple.fi.

AndrewHutchinson

14 Oct 2009, 23:42

I sympathize with you; I'm moving abroad for a year in a few weeks, and I'm still trying to figure out what to do with my Dynaudio BM5's. I use Ultrasone HFI-550s as headphones, and they sound incredible. They have a great stereo image and a pretty balanced frequency response. I don't like earbuds; I think they're bad for your ears and bad for your mix. I'd invest in a pair of AKG, AT, Sennheiser or Ultrasone headphones. I got mine in a package deal from school, but I think they list at about US$250. As far as the redline monitor plugin is concerned, I demoed it and it clipped the bejeezus out of my master fader. I inserted it before the emergency limiter I put on. I try not to have any gain reduction occurring on the limiter, (Sonalksis Maxlimit, for what it's worth,) unless there is a crazy peak. I don't want any distortion or compression on my master fader, which is why I only used the 112db plugin for a few minutes before getting rid of it. There is a "dim" function that is, supposedly, designed for combating this gain increase, but, even that clipped, and I mean maxed out, my 2-bus. I won't say I enjoy, but I'm not unhappy about mixing on my Ultrasones. I'm torn; I don't want to live for a year without my Dynaudios, but I also don't want risk shipping them across the ocean. Let me know what you decide. Best wishes,
Andrew

evets

15 Oct 2009, 00:17

Thanks for that Andrew, sounds like you are in a very similar situation. From what you have said I think I will give the Redline Monitor a miss. Do you know of any similar plugin that works better and is available in AU format?
I had never considered buds until I read a review of the M-audio ones. I came across it while browsing the net for headphones. Here is a link to the review, you need to scroll down to the section on the IE-40.
http://remixmag.com/gear/reviews/remix_maudio_studiophile_ie/

I had previously never considered the high end buds for mixing and just thought of them for in-ear stage monitoring. As for being bad for your ears I can understand how that could be the case as its firing right inside your ear canal but on the other hand as they are noise isolating maybe the user would be more inclined to monitor at a lower level than with regular headphones thus making them better for your ears than regular headphones. Like I say I have no experience of them so I am kind of guessing here.
The trouble is with buds is that unlike regular headphones for hygiene reasons you can't walk into a shop and try them before buying so I'm going purely on peoples opinions. The 3 driver buds start in the $300-$500 range and I can't compare them without buying.

albert

15 Oct 2009, 05:23

Hey, no super expensive headphones necessary.

May I recommend:
Grado SR80
Audio Technica ATH-M50s (the s is for straight cable)
Beyerdynamic dt770
Beyerdynamic dt880

The Grados are the most comfortable and least fatiguing headphone you might ever wear. Open headphones really tend to be superior.

The Audio Technicas are very "correct", sometimes in a weird way, they are a little bright, and if you are someone like me who tends to mix a bit darker, they will take you all the way to the dark side.

The Beyers are excellent, less fatiguing than the Audio Technicas, but still very "correct". Oh, and much more comfortable than the Audio Technicas as well. If you don't need them to be closed, the dt880's are beautiful.

Well, I wish you the best, this is all based on my experiences, and I have spent countless hours with all of these headphones.

p.s. I haven't heard the 112db headphone translator plugin, however, I have used a sampler by them called Morgana which I like quite a bit, hm, I don't know though, I'm a little skeptical of that sort of plugin though

cheers,

seaneldon

15 Oct 2009, 11:13

I'm torn; I don't want to live for a year without my Dynaudios, but I also don't want risk shipping them across the ocean

You do know that shipping across the ocean is how they got here in the first place, right? Ship them in their factory boxes, or pack them professionally if you don't have the boxes. If you don't want to live without them, why live without them?

evets

15 Oct 2009, 12:31

AndrewHutchinson

16 Oct 2009, 20:30

You do know that shipping across the ocean is how they got here in the first place, right? Ship them in their factory boxes, or pack them professionally if you don't have the boxes. If you don't want to live without them, why live without them?

That's the conclusion I arrived at as well. I'm sure they'd like to travel back to europe. I might even take them back to Denmark to visit their family. I just had a bad experience shipping a guitar to Paris when I lived there. It bounced back and forth around western europe before it finally got returned to sender back in the U.S. with a cracked headstock. I was able to fix it, and it still plays well. Fortunately, I kept the factory boxes for the Dynaudios for just such an occasion. I should also state that other people speak highly of the Redline Monitor, and, since you can demo it for free, I'd suggest giving it a listen. Maybe I was doing something wrong. As always, it's great talking shop with you guys.

Halfway Competent

17 Oct 2009, 15:05

I have heard good things about the Grado headphones, maybe I will check them out and I do have some experience with one of the other ATH models. Maybe triple driver buds isn't the way to go and would be extra money that doesn't need to be spent. Would like to hear from someone who had used some though!
Thanks for the advice on the different models,its always nice to hear from someone who has experience with several different brands etc!

I was recently on a quest to find a fantastic set of studio 'phones. A friend of mine in his project studio had a set of AKG 240s that weren't working right (one of the driver's was polarity-reversed, or so it seemed -- weird). We went to the local unnamed big box store and listened to a half dozen headphone models:

Sony MDR-7506
Senn HD-280 Pro
AT M50s
Beyer DT770
Beyer DT880
Shure 440

The Shure set just sucked. Tubby midrange, resonances all over the board, and they weren't very comfortable.

The Sennheisers were very midrangey... It didn't sound natural.

The AT M50s was better... Relatively neutral, but still had an uneven response.

The Beyer DT770 was leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else at this point; with the big, soft earcups it was easily the most comfortable headset of the group, and it had pretty good sound. The mid-bass was a little bit tubby. I wonder also if some of that was a "room resonance" as it were, since the diaphragms felt a bit more distant from the ear than, say, a 7506.

The Beyer DT880 wasn't as good as the 770; oddly enough, it sounded like there were more peaks and dips in the response. The 770 definitely won against the 880. (Yes, I'm aware the 770 is 80 ohms and the 880 is 250 ohms, thus a volume difference. I corrected for that. :) )

The Sony 7506, while not as good as it used to be, still stood out ahead of the whole bunch. Bias: I've been using 7506's exclusively for probably 15 years now, and so I'm very familiar with how they sound. Whatever I think I might be hearing through speakers or other sources, I check it out on the 7506... Because if it will be heard anywhere, it will be heard through these.

My friend ended up buying the Beyer DT770, as the 7506 was out of stock and the DT770 was a close second-place. Not quite the super-close inspection that the 7506 is, but very pleasant to wear, and very good sound.

"But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong." -- Dennis Miller

airecordings

17 Oct 2009, 16:17

I'm in a fairly identical situation to you. I'm going to school in England for the next 5 years and I wanted to have a little mixing setup here. I have monitors but they aren't working here due to the power supply difference, but I have been really happy with the headphones I got (Sennheiser HD 380 Pro). They're really comfortable and the mixes I've worked on with them have sounded great when I heard them on a full monitor system. It definitely takes some getting used to having the sound going straight into your head with no room ambience, but that being said a good pair of headphones eliminates the concern about room acoustics etc.

As for the earbuds I would think it would be hard to get a decent bass response out of anything that tiny but I could be wrong. Hope you find the best solution.

-Brendan

evets

17 Oct 2009, 22:12

Cool, I'm going to go and demo some of the models mentioned.

As for the buds, the triple driver in ear monitor style ones like those used for in ear stage monitoring are meant to have a good and natural bottom end, the few reviews I've read really rate them and say they are mix worthy. I certainly like the portability of them but I'm not sure if they would work better than a normal pair of headphones in reality or if they are any worse/better for your ears.