Mixing/Mastering on/for Headphones?

richardyot

The laws of physics simply dictate that sound waves below 150hz or so are going to be affected by the interaction between the speaker and the room, because there will be sound waves of approximately the same size as the room itself (an 80hz wave is 4.25 meters across, a 120 hz wave is 2.8 meters across). And of course the sound waves can interfere with each other causing doubling or cancelling effects.

This just means that getting accurate bass response with speakers in a room is a very tricky problem to solve. You can eliminate some problems with room treatment and room equalisation, but it's not a trivial issue. It takes time and expense to do it right.

Headphones don't suffer from these issues. It's much easier and much cheaper to get accurate bass response from headphones - of course that doesn't mean that all headphones are created equal. It's also much easier to find headphones that can go below 40hz than monitors.

So for the average person, using monitors in an untreated room is not going to give accurate bass. A decent pair of accurate phones (especially used in conjunction with something like Morphit) is definitely going to give you a much more accurate bass response.

Closed headphones however can also add some unwanted resonances, so that's something to be aware of.

IEMs are the best option of all because they deliver the sound straight to your eardrum, with no potential resonances coming from the ear itself. Sealed earbuds also allow for some physical air movement that gives a better feeling to the bass frequencies.

I've spent a ton of time researching this subject, and fixing the problems in my room. For those who might be interested I recorded a short two-minute video demonstrating the use of room EQ software to tame some of the standing wave issues in my own room, the difference it makes is huge, as you will hear in the video:

JeffChasteen

@Max23 said:
I guess it depends very much on the genre of music
if mixing and mastering can be done on cans or not

for bass heavy music this won't work
you get big surprises if you play what was good on cans loud on a big system

for bass heavy things rent a studio for a few hours
mix the low-end on their big system in their acoustic treaded room

and dont touch the low-end after that
again
This.
This is invaluable advice.

ecou

@Max23 said:

@ecou said:

@ecou said:
What about using the car stereo to check the bass? I brought my iPad in the car and used the aux plug of the car stereo to plug my iPad.using a 1/4 cable. That way I can mix from inside my car.

Does anybody know if the car is reliable to test the bass?

It’s the ghetto test.
Usually cars have way to big sub so they make a lot of racket Standing at the streetlights.
You know the bd you can hear a mile away...
It’s the equivalent of the 80s guy with Ghettoblaster on the shoulder.

That’s good then if you reference your music in the car to commercial mix. Thanks for you input.

supadom

Mixing on a single pair of speakers is a bit of a suicide mission. At least 2 or 3 are recommended: studio, cans, car. Make sure to include a cheap pair of earphones just to make sure you get all of the main motifs in the composition audible.

We’ve mixed a few songs at a very expensive studio last year. It was a trade for us in exchange for playing at a wedding. The studio was great, the mixes were shite. I had to rush mix them on a Panasonic consumer hi fi.

I’d risk saying that it is better to mix on several cheap speakers than one expensive one.

Carnbot

Not sure if already posted but here's a list of equalization profiles for headphones, which you can then use in Pro-Q3 etc

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/master/results/INDEX.md

david_2017

@Carnbot said:
Not sure if already posted but here's a list of equalization profiles for headphones, which you can then use in Pro-Q3 etc

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/master/results/INDEX.md

This is golden!!!

RevCornelius

@Carnbot said:
Not sure if already posted but here's a list of equalization profiles for headphones, which you can then use in Pro-Q3 etc

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/master/results/INDEX.md

Thank you very much for this. I can't wait to try these.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Fingolfinzz

Is it just not possible on headphones for low end? I’m mixing a few songs now and just having all sorts of trouble with the bass being balanced when I listen back in the car. I’m doing what I can with Morphit and I’ve carved out space for everything with EQs especially with the kick and bass but it just keeps dominating the mix. I’d love to just use some monitors but it’s not an option for me right now

cokomairena

@Fingolfinzz said:
Is it just not possible on headphones for low end? I’m mixing a few songs now and just having all sorts of trouble with the bass being balanced when I listen back in the car. I’m doing what I can with Morphit and I’ve carved out space for everything with EQs especially with the kick and bass but it just keeps dominating the mix. I’d love to just use some monitors but it’s not an option for me right now

are you using a reference track?

Fingolfinzz

@cokomairena said:

@Fingolfinzz said:
Is it just not possible on headphones for low end? I’m mixing a few songs now and just having all sorts of trouble with the bass being balanced when I listen back in the car. I’m doing what I can with Morphit and I’ve carved out space for everything with EQs especially with the kick and bass but it just keeps dominating the mix. I’d love to just use some monitors but it’s not an option for me right now

are you using a reference track?

Oof, yeah I guess I should try that. That one slipped my mind

Edit: yeah that helped get everything balanced out real well, appreciate it again.

jonmoore

Excuse me for the cut & paste from the Desktop sales thread. I just thought this was an apt place to post this info too.

Can't believe I missed this one. 73% off Sienna A (€40, down from €149). All of the extra volumes are 30% off too. I highly recommend Volume B, C & D on top of A, as these provide a great set of options from my favourite room (the Spitfire Mastering Suite). Plus lots of really useful consumer Hi-Fi options, car stereos and such like. There are other studio rooms in volumes A-D, I'm just highlighting my favourite.

Sienna really works as advertised, as it's not only a set of curves for a wide set of studio-grade headphones, it simulates audio played back through speakers in specific studio spaces (the quality of the sim is a multitude of times better than anything I've used to date). I find this especially useful when using Sennheiser open-back studio headphones (my model is the HD 660s). My advice if you do pick this up, is to pick a room and stick to it for your main monitoring/mastering workflows and then adjust the speaker models in that room to your heart's content. The consumer HI-Fi, boombox, tiny Bluetooth speaker sims and suchlike are a great sense-check for how your mix/master translates.

A friend of mine just picked up the core Sienna plugin (Sienna Volume A) and Volumes B, C & D and the total cost was less than the non BF price of Sienna A alone (€145).

https://www.acustica-audio.com/store/products/siennavolumea
https://www.acustica-audio.com/store/products/siennavolumeb
https://www.acustica-audio.com/store/products/siennavolumec
https://www.acustica-audio.com/store/products/siennavolumed
https://www.acustica-audio.com/store/products/siennavolumee
https://www.acustica-audio.com/store/products/siennavolumef
https://www.acustica-audio.com/store/products/siennavolumeg

Here's the Sound on Sound review.

And this is the blurb in the Acustica Audio page.

Sienna (Volume A) is an Acqua plug-in suite in VST, AU, AAX formats. It represents an ambitious project that took a lot of time in design and development, but that time, which we willingly spent, has repaid us considerably given the incredible results achieved, which will completely change the way people mix on the go.
The outcome of this effort is one of the most extensive and rich plugins that Acustica has ever created.
It recreates the same listening experience as if you were mixing in top-tier studios, mastering in audiophile-grade rooms, or playing back your tracks on HI-FI systems, car stereos, boomboxes, and more, all through your headphones.

Currently, Sienna - Volume A includes over 200 headphone emulations from the world's most famous brands that we carefully measured and profiled. Also, accurate models of 3 studios (Acustica's control room, HOG studio control room 1, and Spitfire mastering studio), 8 sets of high-end monitors, and 2 consumer devices.