Oh brother.. another "CANS" ? (Accustic Simulat.)

[Dawacker3]

I have found that there is a widly accepted rule that headphones are not good for mixing. However my room is just not good for mixing. Thats why I am intersted in using headphones for mixing. Though I have been trying to listen to "production" CDs to learn how to get the sound I want while in my room.

I found this to be intersting information on the subject.

http://headwize2.powerpill.org/articles/mixing_art.htm


It seems that one of the biggest problems (not all) with "Headphones" is there is no "cross talk" between the stereo signals. There are apperently some ways to simulate this effect.

My question is does anyone have any experiance with "Acoustic simulators (crossfeed filters and virtualizers)"?

Are these "simulators" factord in to the previously stated "rule of thumb"?

Oh.. Also

http://www.theothersidebbs.com/html/..._Midi5_27.html

[Rabidium]

Listen, man, the audience won't be using an acoustic simulator. The reason people use reference monitors is because they broadly slice accross what the listenership will be using. If you want to mix in headphones, knock yourself out, but adding another step to the process isn't going to fix anything.
Here's five more reasons why cups aren't good for mixing, off the top of my head:
1. Volume isn't the same when something's right or left vs. center. So you'll get blasted vocals or center sounds. (snares, guitars)
2. Not comfortable. Even the akg's really aren't comfortable after 3 hours, and mixing is a ten-hour process.
3. You can over-focus on any instrument that happens to hit the sweet-spot of your headphones. You're sitting there thrilled about a guitar that no other system even hears.
4. Soundstage. Headphones actually give you too much of a separation, so the automation, panning and such gets all pooped.
5. Volume. No headphones have the right balance of bass, mid, treble, and presence. They just don't exist, I don't care what the other thread says about 7506's.

So, all that said, I can actually offer a solution. Buy some decent stereo speakers, look in a thrift store. You're looking for 'truth' not 'boom'.
Buy 4 curtains from ikea, they're 8 or 9 feet long and have built-in rings. Hang these around the area to deaden reflections. Voila! treated room. Keep the speakers away from walls and corners if you can, and you'll want to invest in some foam eventually.

Good Luck, and stop trying to mix in headphones. I wasted a year like that.
-Olaf

[Dawacker3]

Good points. In fact the first link i provided in the original post covers all of the ones you mentioned.

Listen, man, the audience won't be using an acoustic simulator. The reason people use reference monitors is because they broadly slice accross what the listenership will be using

Point taken, but I also don't believe the audience will be sitting in a professionaly spec-ed out room in a perfect triangle from referance monitors.

I understand what your saying. I am new to the mixing arena and I tried to use headphones to mix a session (before I was aware of the "rules". It sounded horrible when I played it back through my monitors (yamaha MP5s).
However. I mixed the same session using my monitors. It sounded horrible when I played it back in my car! And everywhere else. (sounded good in my room though).

The point is my room lies to me just a much as the headphones. But Now that I know a little physics behind why my room is not good, I also know that their is a way to make a good room (not practical for my house... including the curtin idea).
On the flip side now that I know a little physics behind why headphones are not good. I am trying to find out if there is a way to make them good.

By the way, I only been at it for about a year or two, and my mixes are starting to sound a little better just from experiance, but I just moved in August so I am trying to adjust to another room.

[Rabidium]

Yeah, sorry I didn't read the link, I didn't feel it was important to be informed before I gave my opinion!!! 8o) In my defense, it's kinda long...

If you're set on using headphones, you should probably go for an open-back or semi-closed design, say the AKG 240's. They'll give you a better sense of space than a closed design (like my beloved Sennheiser 280's) If possible, get a Y-splitter and two pairs of headphones you know well. That way you can switch between them to get a better idea of where things lie and how the frequencies are interacting.

Good Luck! Let us know when you have your first great mix on cups... it only takes time.
-Olaf

[Dawacker3]

True, its a very long piece. And I truly didn't expect everyone to read it. I figured the experienced guys would already know the issues (as you are obviously aware of them) and maybe also know a way around them (ie. accustic simulators). Thanks for your input.

[Dawacker3]

I guess it maybe a good idea to quote the part of the article that i am interested in peoples opinions on.

The Challenge of Mixing with Headphones

The close proximity of headphone transducers to the ears affects how the audio spectrum is perceived. The lack of physical sensation of deep bass in headphones was discussed earlier. Headphones also tend to be brighter than loudspeakers, because the air attenuates high frequencies from speakers before they reach the ears. Headphones direct all sounds straight to the eardrums, bypassing the acoustic shaping that occurs when sound interacts with the listener's head. Many headphones are now "diffuse-field" equalized so that they sound flat from within the ear canal - although that equalization is based on an average head shape and may not be a good match with every listener. For more information on HRTFs and diffused-field equalization, see A 3-D Audio Primer and A Quick Guide To Headphones.

Loudspeakers play in a real acoustic space. Headphones sound artificial because each audio channel is isolated to one ear. Sound waves from loudspeakers interact with each other (interchannel crosstalk), with wall reflections and with the listener's head before they reach the ears. The resulting soundfield is a complex amalgam of phase-shifted amplitudes, which may amplify, cancel and/or delay select frequencies. It is impossible to determine through standard headphones how the phase and amplitude variations in one audio channel will affect another when played back over loudspeakers. Consequently, an otherwise smooth headphone mix can have a decidedly rough quality when heard through loudspeakers.

Acoustic simulators can improve the distorted perspective in headphones. Even the simplest of acoustic simulators, a crossfeed processor, can recreate interaural crosstalk in headphones for a more natural presentation. Beyond mere crosstalk is the whole issue of true spatial perception. Binaural recordists must monitor with headphones to hear spatial information, but the narrower soundfield of headphones can result in regular stereo mixes sounding almost monaural over loudspeakers. Until surround sound came into vogue, few audio engineers spoke of mixing for true spatial placement. Yet, with a good microphone configuration to capture localization cues, a stereo soundfield from quality loudspeakers can reproduce a sense of spatial depth and height as well as left-right width. The average headphone is not capable of re-creating these spatial artifacts in a stereo recording.

In terms of spatial editing, engineers have had a limited set of spatial options for stereo recordings: pans, delays, reverberation and other special effects. Headphones are perfectly good for auditioning spatial effects, unless the effects phase shift signals so that they sound different when heard over loudspeakers. And of course, standard headphones trap the soundfield in a straight line between the ears, so are of little value for directing placement of voices and instruments in a 3-D surround field.

[Dawacker3]

This is interesting as well

It is here:
http://headwize2.powerpill.org/articles/lxh2mix_art.htm

Thoughts And Processes As Relating To Mixing With Headphones
(How Not To Hang Yourself By Mixing With Headphones)

by LXH2

It can be easily demonstrated that doing your final mixes with headphones can produce stellar mixes when the mixing engineer is familiar with the practices of mixing with headphones. But how is this possible? I have heard from so many mixing engineers that you can not mix with headphones for many reasons. The one that most frequently is that things sound too good in headphones to get an accurate mix. How can this be true? If you can hear things better in headphones, then why not mix with them? The answer lies in the familiarity of the environment. Most likely the mixer has always mixed using loudspeakers, and can be rather confident that the mixes produced will sound correct on the largest variety of playback devices.

Then why mix with headphones? For one thing, the loudspeakers react with the room so that you hear the room effects while you are mixing. Sure, most of the best recording engineers can mentally ignore the room sound so that they can create a mix what is not befuddled by room acoustics. For the home studio person, we usually do not have a professionally designed control room to work in. We also do not have luxury of using the best sounding room in ones residence. So we are relegated to a little room that is virtually impossible to mix in. What sounded great when you were mixing it, now sounds anemic when played elsewhere. What happened? All that bass that piles up in such a small room, the inaccuracies if the "monitors", and the total collapse of any likeness of a realistic soundstage. Wow!

Slip on a correctly calibrated pair of high quality headphones, and listen to your favorite CDs for a while. Then listen to your mixes that you made using speakers. Do you notice the difference? Are you mixes lacking clarity and life? Do not start blaming this piece of gear or that piece of gear. Most likely it is the result of mixing with loudspeakers in a bad room. Why not eliminate the room altogether? So lets use the headphones!

Another advantage of mixing with headphones is the clarity of the sonic picture due to perfect time alignment inherent in headphones. You do not have to deal with the room resonances and phase cancellations due to reflections off the walls and the console. The time smear caused by the typical nearfield monitor situation can gloss over things you will want to hear clearly when you are mixing. This is where you can lose control of your mix and run into trouble using speakers.

Mixing with headphones will take some getting used to. You should make a copy of your mix, and play it through various playback systems such as boom boxes and car stereos. Try listening in a variety of environments,and not the same little room. This will keep things in perspective, as a "reality check". If your headphone mix does not sound good in these situations, then you are doing something wrong. But what are you doing wrong? Like any new skill, you must gradually familiarize yourself with different acoustic space that headphones create. This takes some time and practice. You will know when you have it down when your mixes sound correct on a variety of systems.

[Dawacker3]

bump

[Super Seven]

I am in the same situation....my next purchase will be a decent set of headphones. I truely think that through trial and error, one can learn to get an ear for mixing with headphones. Just like the pro's get there ear when mixing on hi-end Genelecs. It all is a learning curve.