Hello all! new this this forum and i love it so far. Great community. Anyways i noticed most pair of cans recommended for mastering are open back. I have a few reasons for looking for closed back including noise isolation, convenience, and a tip from my Mastering mentor who oddly enough prefers closed back if he was forced to master on headphones. btw he doesn't ever master on headphones he has a very good control room with top notch Acoustical treatment.
Since i simply cannot afford or have the luxury of having a control room/ we are looking for suitable pair of cans for me. His current owned list of headphones are the Sennheiser HD 280 Pro, a pair of grado's (im not sure which model,) and the slate digital VSX headphones.
Surprisingly he states that the Slate VSX headphones with goodhertz can opener is very similar to his current monitoring control room. he was impressed.
[I currently have the Hifiman Sundara. Even though its highly praised its just not working for me (and my mastering mentor noticed this too. I have this slight suspicion that the pair i bought from amazon are not as good as buying from sweetwater or something. Ehh im probably just paranoid lol..]
Anyways the plan is to do the following.
1. Connect new "to be determined" closed back headphones to my SMSL m500 Dac/amp.
2. Try different EQ profiles from AutoEQ, until i find the best one.
3. Put Goodhertz Can Opener as a last plugin on my monitoring channel. (i use Reaper daw)
4. Carefully consider Dsoniq Realphones instead of Can Opener just for the HRTF application. (Might do occasional room simulations to check different platforms.)
So this is the basic overview. Completely open to any pair of closed cans under $600. If its a little more that's okay.
*If recommending a pair of closed back i would be interested to hear your use of Headphone EQ, and use of those pair of cans in a mixing/mastering context.
Thnx all!
Edit 1: oh also having a neutral eq response is preferred. However most important is how the pair of cans will translate to studio monitors, clubs, cars etc.