Is Flat Bass or Harman Bass Better for Mixing on Headphones? (Professional Mixing Engineers Only)

[Sharur]

I hate Adele and I hate the mastering on it, and no did not watch it, don't really care what one person does when the entire industry says different. Adele's music has WAY TOO MUCH boosted bass and the treble roll off is ridiculous IMO, maybe that is cause it's mixed on headphones...

Armin Van Burren said he mastered/mixed his first album with headphone exclusively as well, but that doesn't mean it's right since I guarantee he doesn't any more.

"21 sold 18 million globally in 2011 and 8.3 million the following year"

 

[Sharur]

tbh tho I agree that 21 sounds too dull. Probably because scheps headphones are too bright.

 

[ziddy76]

"21 sold 18 million globally in 2011 and 8.3 million the following year"

You trying to make the dumbest post of the year?

NSync sold 1.8 million in their debut first week. Wasn't mixed on headphones. Does that mean I should care?

250 Million sold by Rihanna... not mixed on headphones I would bet and should I care? Hell no... Does that mean Rihanna's music is genius and her mixing/mastering is incredible?

Eminem over 200 million sold and everyone can say his music mixing and mastering was and is horrendous. Definitely was tuned for apple earbuds and cheap car audio.

My favorite album is Eric Clapton's Slow Hand and if that dude mixed or mastered that album, I can only imagine how much worse and awful it was, probably cause he uses headphones exclusively.

I'm almost vomitting with the thought of listening to Layla with Adele mixing.

 

[abdo123]

You trying to make the dumbest post of the year?

NSync sold 1.8 million in their debut first week. Wasn't mixed on headphones. Does that mean I should care?

250 Million sold by Rihanna... not mixed on headphones I would bet and should I care? Hell no... Does that mean Rihanna's music is genius and her mixing/mastering is incredible?

Eminem over 200 million sold and everyone can say his music mixing and mastering was and is horrendous. Definitely was tuned for apple earbuds and cheap car audio.

To be honest i would still listen to those over Adele's music. I can't argue that these artist have their music mixed incorrectly, but for Adele that is definitely the case, it just sounds wrong.

There is no reason to throw famous producers under the bus, people like Dennis Pop and Max Martin are musical geniuses the same way Mozart or Vivaldi are. Their work will probably be remembered just as well.

 

[ziddy76]

There is no reason to throw famous producers under the bus, people like Dennis Pop and Max Martin are musical geniuses the same way Mozart or Vivaldi are. Their work will probably be remembered just as well.

No they won't. Mozart is known globally by everyone. Same with Vivaldi, his Four Seasons is not just famous, but will be taught forever by anyone interested in violin. Very very very few people know or will remember Dennis Pop and Max Martin unless they are in interested in mixing/mastering, studio work.

And even then, their work will be tied to another artist. It's like who is Quincy Jones? Oh.. isn't he the guy that did something with Michael Jackson?

And with music tools evolving so much, I won't doubt the next following generation of studio geniuses will have developed their own methods and be setting the trends and best methods.

There is a reason why no one is producing an album like Clapton's Slowhand any more. I think that era is gone and not coming back.

 

[Tom C]

"21 sold 18 million globally in 2011 and 8.3 million the following year"

Honest question: does anybody sell music anymore? If so, what format? I thought everything was streaming these days.

 

[Tom C]

I’m just a casual observer, didn’t vote, but for the sake of discussion, isn’t it so that from time to time recordings are made in remote locations? I thought headphones were sometimes used for sound checks and mixing in those situations out of necessity.

 

[ziddy76]

I’m just a casual observer, didn’t vote, but for the sake of discussion, isn’t it so that from time to time recordings are made in remote locations? I thought headphones were sometimes used for sound checks and mixing in those situations out of necessity.

But the answer to that question is I don't think it matters. Like I said, there are people using HD650, AKG K702/K712, Shure 1540, Sony 7506, AT M50x, AT M70x, Focal Pro whatever, can you think of a more diverging and different collection of sound profiles than those? Clearly, flat, V shaped, Harmon target, whatever doesn't matter for headphones, it's just what you know and used to.

 

[abdo123]

Very very very few people know or will remember Dennis Pop and Max Martin unless they are in interested in mixing/mastering, studio work.

What do you mean by 'mixing/mastering studio work', that's their job to begin with.

The reason these two names aren't as famous as Mozart or Vivaldi is because they chose not to be famous.

Just look at Billie Eilish's brother, Phineas, for example, he shows up at every single award show next to Billie, he 'performs' in her shows and has chosen the 'popular lifestyle'. And he what produced one successful album?

Max Martin alone sold Billions of tracks, and his success objectively would succeed many historically renowned composers and producers. I can bet you 1000$ that everyone I know in my life that is under the age of 40 at least knows and likes one song produced by him.

 

[stevenswall]

With what is available now, I don't see why mastering on headphones should be encouraged.

Checking the bass is the most common argument I hear of... A friend down the road who makes a living recording and mixing music wrote a theme song for a lantern festival that he used Yamaha monitors for. Not checking the deep bass on headphones, it was apparently an earth shaking event because he had to boost it so much since it was rolled off on his monitors.

Even a cheap IEM can have even, flat bass.

Now he uses a pair of Barefoot monitors that should also solve his problem, along with Sonarworks to make things more flat.

 

[Sharur]

Funnily enough, the treble on Adele's 21 album sounds normal on DT880 but just not there on Etymotic ER2SE.

 

[Anonymous Alex]

Funnily enough, the treble on Adele's 21 album sounds normal on DT880 but just not there on Etymotic ER2SE.

dt880 scientifically best

 

[Shazb0t]

I think that if you HAVE to mix on headphones that you should target the diffuse field curve.

*I'm not a Professional Mixing Engineer. I missed that in the thread title, so please disregard my vote if that's important to you.

 

[Sharur]

I think that if you HAVE to mix on headphones that you should target the diffuse field curve.

Diffuse field is the sound of anechoically flat speakers in an anechoic chamber reproduced at the eardrum. It would sound too harsh for commercial recordings and the final mix would almost certainly sound veiled for anyone not using DF headphones.

 

[thewas]

Diffuse field is the sound of anechoically flat speakers in an anechoic chamber reproduced at the eardrum.

Diffuse field curve is in a highly reflective room like a reverberation chamber, free field curve is what you write above.

 

[Sharur]

Diffuse field curve is in a highly reflective room like a reverberation chamber, free field curve is what you write above.

Thank you, I misunderstood the whole anechoically flat speakers in an anechoic chamber relation to headphones then.... But my question about how diffuse field is good for mixing remains.

 

[Shazb0t]

Diffuse field is the sound of anechoically flat speakers in an anechoic chamber reproduced at the eardrum. It would sound too harsh for commercial recordings and the final mix would almost certainly sound veiled for anyone not using DF headphones.

Diffuse field curve is in a highly reflective room like a reverberation chamber, free field curve is what you write above.

As stated, it's literally the opposite of what you said.

 

[thewas]

Thank you, I misunderstood the whole anechoically flat speakers in an anechoic room relation to headphones then.... But my question about how diffuse field is good for mixing remains.

You are welcome and diffuse field, is, as also free field, not a good compensation for headphones (even less for mixing) as recordings are usually mastered with loudspeakers to be listened with loudspeakers in rooms with reverberation characteristics in between those two extremes.

 

[Sharur]

You are welcome and diffuse field, is, as also free field, not a good compensation for headphones (even less for mixing) as recordings are usually mastered with loudspeakers to be listened with loudspeakers in rooms with reverberation characteristics in between those two extremes.

wouldn't the ideal frequency response in the highs be somewhere between diffuse field and free field then?

 

[Shazb0t]

Thank you, I misunderstood the whole anechoically flat speakers in an anechoic chamber relation to headphones then.... But my question about how diffuse field is good for mixing remains.

So acknowledging that this is all opinion, the reason I think the diffuse field curve makes the most sense for mixing/mastering on headphones is because it attempts to recreate what an anechoically flat speaker would sound like in a room with reflections. Since we acknowledge that mixing is usually preferably done on anechoically flat measuring speakers in a real room, it seems the diffuse field curve most coincides with that.

My understanding of the current Harman curve is that it is essentially the diffuse field curve with added bass. The added bass being the result of preference studies which allowed people to add bass to their previous Harman Linear In-Room (diffuse field?) curve by crunching the numbers of where people ended up settling with the bass dials. There is nothing wrong with the Harman curve targeting a statistically preferred preference, as you should always tune your setup to preference. But if you're the one doing the mixing/mastering then I think you should be doing it with something that is "flat" and leave the preference tuning to the manufactures and end users.

If you're mixing in extra bass per the preference testing results and I'm using equalization to add even more bass because of a preference curve also derived from those results, won't I end up with double the extra bass than what would have been preferred in the original testing? That's essentially my line of reasoning.