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Mixing completely on headphones . Headphones vs speakers!

KehaDNb

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Does that work? And only have a mini speaker and maybe a car stereo to check the panning…. . What’s your opinion ?


A reviewer spoke about it on YouTube, and I want to know your opinion.
 
I've never quite understood the supposed problem with mixing on cans. Did this truism come to be in the era when headphones produced nothing but midrange or something?
If it's a reasonably good headphone and it's that's what you're used to listening to music on, seems like you should have a pretty good idea if your mix sounds good or not compared to your references. Headphones/in-ears of some sort are also how the average person does the most critical music listening they're likely to do these days. And if you're paranoid, check on a few different setups before calling it done.
 
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The pros will tell you not to mix (or master) on headphones but there are exceptions.

Here are two opposite opinions I collected from Recording Magazine.

The 1st is from Readers Submissions where they critique mixes that readers send in. The guys using monitors get better results than the guys using headppones:
As those of you who have followed this column for any length of time can attest, headphone mixing is one of the big no-no's around these parts. In our humble opinion, headphone mixes do not translate well in the real world, period, end of story. Other than checking for balance issues and the occasional hunting down of little details, they are tools best left for the tracking process.

The 2nd is from an engineer who moves from studio-to-studio and he uses headphones for consistency:
Can I mix on headphones?

No. But in all seriousness, headphones can be a secret weapon and it really doesn’t matter what they sound like…

Over time, after constantly listening back to my work from different studios on those headphones I really started to learn them. They became sort of a compass. Wherever I went… It became a pattern for me to reference these headphones to see if what I was hearing was “right”…

I learned them, I knew them, I trusted them. It didn’t matter whether or not I loved them…

So, can you mix on headphones? Probably. I just think you really need to put some time into learning them first…

Mark Hornsby
Recording Magazine, March 2020

And only have a mini speaker and maybe a car stereo to check the panning
Even pros usually check their mix on a variety of different (and "imperfect) systems, including headphones & earbuds, etc. For inexperienced "home engineers" without good monitors or treated room it's going to tame more back-and-forth to get a mix that "translates" and sounds it's best on a variety of systems.

Pros also usually keep reference tracks in a variety of genres. That's to "match" the reference but more to "keep their ears calibrated".
 
In the end, their mix gonna pass to the mastering studio. The work is on the master studio. If you done a lot of headphone and access to studio monitor, you could "bypass" studio monitor. You are already custom the sound of headphone related to the studio monitor as mention above.
 
With headphones you might overestimate panning, but it's much easier to check bass. You give up room interaction for low end accuracy.

That's about it.
 
I've only done a little mixing. Maybe real pros with more experience can manage it. When I've tried mixing on phones, it never translates well. I end up starting over once I put it on speakers. Even on cheap small speakers I end up unhappy with a headphone mix. I would say you do need to check mixes on phones. Sometimes mixes are fine on several speakers and sound weird on phones though usually small changes fix the phone perspective.

Hard for me to get any kind of soundstage to gauge the mix on headphones. I seem to suffer from this more than most headphone listeners. Maybe my ear shapes are far from average as I also don't get much from binaural recordings versus most people.

The perspective of phones to me is simply too different from speakers. Speakers mixes seem to go fine on headphones usually and the reverse has not worked for me even once. I have some pretty good phones, but have no way of knowing if something like the Audeze would change this for me. I rather doubt it would.
 
One could mix on headphones under specific conditions.
One would either have to 'learn' the difference between a headphone and studio monitors in that studio... or EQ the headphone to the exact same FR as you hear with the studio monitors in that studio.
One would have to use a good crossfeed IF stereo image is important.

I would recommend to use (good studio monitors) for mixing and maybe check the final result on 'accurate' headphones.
If there is no possibility to use good monitors then under the conditions I mentioned above using headphones could be an alternative when the goal is to produce a recording that sounds good on speakers.
 
One could mix on headphones under specific conditions.
One would either have to 'learn' the difference between a headphone and studio monitors in that studio... or EQ the headphone to the exact same FR as you hear with the studio monitors in that studio.
One would have to use a good crossfeed IF stereo image is important.

I would recommend to use (good studio monitors) for mixing and maybe check the final result on 'accurate' headphones.
If there is no possibility to use good monitors then under the conditions I mentioned above using headphones could be an alternative when the goal is to produce a recording that sounds good on speakers.
I never tried the crossfeed during headphone mixing. However when I have done mixes via monitors that sound weird on phones my first step is to add crossfeed in a small amount. Usually that fixes it on phones. Is there an amount of crossfeed that you recommend to make it translate best to speakers? Usually I find taking one channel, lowering level by -12 to -15 db and putting in the other channel fixes things up.
 
I have experimented with crossfeed (made one adjustable) and found it frustrating that I could not find a single setting that was always satisfactory.
Thought it worked best on the HD800.
Eventually settled for almost no crossfeed and then started to prefer headphones with crossfeed off in most cases.
 
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