All the way from the start I can feel it in my heart like...
All the way from the start
Hey what's going on out there i'm Sean Divine hope you all are doing well today
I've got a new video i want to talk about the topic of
Mixing and potentially mastering with headphones. This is by request I get a lot of questions on this.
And so I just wanted to talk about some ways that you can get the best results
If you're mixing primarily with headphones or maybe even solely, while that's not Ideal
I'm gonna show you some things to consider and also some tips that are gonna help you get the most out of your
Headphone mixing. So the first thing I want to talk about is choosing the right headphones. It's really important to know the difference between
Open back and closed back headphones so if you're like me, I use closed back because they are isolating and
I'm generally recording near my computer and so I want to make sure that I'm minimizing the bleed and
Obviously you're not going to be able to record
Per se with open backs because you have that noise coming out of the other side of the headphone
That said, open back is going to be your best bet in terms of getting a better low-end response
so i would say if you're mixing just with headphones
Open back Is probably the way to go but if you're like me and you're tracking
Also with headphones that you want to be able to mix with
Then you're going to need a closed back headphone. The goal would be to aim for
The pair with the flattest frequency response so you can look some information up on the frequency response
For headphones and just mainly, you don't want to be mixing in a consumer headphone
you know, some of these really popular
Stylish headphones out there they're not gonna be ideal for mixing because they hype the low end and they give you misrepresentation
of the bass that's not gonna be your best bet. You want
To go with something that's going to translate to other systems as well as possible. Now there is a tool out there
By a company called Sonar Works I did a review on the plug-in and i'll put a link to it here in the video
but It will actually adjust the frequency curve of what you're monitoring Through headphones
Based on whatever pair you have. They have a lot of different settings.
Actually they have one for these
Sony Mdr-7506
is a pair that I use quite a bit but they're really bright and so i use the Sonar Works
Plug-in to flatten the frequency response on those Sony's and it helps tremendously
so that's something you may want to consider. So lastly in picking the right headphones, if you're on a budget maybe under
$200 USD I have a video on the channel that talks about my 3 best
recommendations for mixing headphones there so the next thingI want to touch on is you want to make sure to mix at low
Volumes when you're in headphones. You've heard of this concept of ear fatigue - it's a real thing when you're doing mixing and mastering
especially If you're doing this all day or for extended periods of time, you want to make sure that you're not damaging your hearing
But also just in the short term you don't want
to mess up your mix judgments by dealing with ear fatigue so it's a pretty big problem with headphones
If you start monitoring louder Than you should, if you want to talk about getting ear fatigue quickly - that is how to do it so
What I mean by that is if you've got your headphones up at a pretty high level
For more than a couple of minutes, you've already fatigued your ears and you're not going to be making accurate
mix judgments so you want to keep It as low as possible, just so that you can hear everything
Maybe getting a little bit of the low end response but you want
to leave It there and if you want to turn it up for very, very short amounts of time
That's fine. But just wanting to touch on if you're mixing primarily with headphones - you have to be especially careful
About ear fatigue and making sure that you're monitoring levels are safe and low.
Another really important aspect of mixing with headphones is to use an audio interface that has
Accurate high quality AD/DA conversion. If you don't know what i'm talking
About there...
Be sure and look it up. It just means that the sound that is going in and out of the computer or in and out
of your audio interface, it has to be translated from analog to digital and digital to analog and you want the most accurate
Representation of what you're hearing so a quality audio interface is going
To have you covered there. So look into that and do a little research.
I'll make some recommendations on quality audio interfaces in the description below. So touching on the audio interface, another aspect
There is going to be the headphone amplifier that is built into the audio interface. If you've ever plugged in a pair of
you know, good headphones into say, just your laptop, output you're gonna
Immediately notice a difference. Not only in just how loud the headphones get but also the quality of
The playback on the headphones so if I was to use this same pair just on my laptop output
And then I came and plugged them into my RME UFX, which has really nice
Headphone amplifiers - it makes these sound a lot better and they get a lot louder so you want to consider that and
If you're on the lower end of the audio interfaces
You may want to consider an external headphone amplifier. I don't have a lot of experience with these since i've used RME
Interfaces.They do have really good headphone amplifiers built-in
So again, that's something you may want to consider because it's not going
To sound the same just coming out of your computer output or a
Budget, not as High-Quality
Interface. So I have a simple but very
Useful
trick that I use all the time if i'm mixing in headphones and I'm having trouble kind of judging the low end of the sub
Frequencies. All you need to do is just put a channel
EQ on to your stereo bus or your Master Channel. We're just going to roll off a lot of the high end frequencies
so that we're just monitoring
Basically where a subwoofer would be engaged so...
Somewhere between 100 - 120 Hz and then we're just gonna set as steep of a curve as we can and
Then when we play back we're gonna be able to make a lot more accurate judgments on what's going on down there
When you you fall down, divine tracks got that new sound...
Gave you what you needed, instead of what you wanted... so it's just a lot more focused there and
You know obviously with headphones it's just tougher to monitor the low end because you're not getting the room response and
There's just so much that's right there on your ears it's
harder to pick it Out. This definitely I have found useful, I think it's going to be very useful for you all
Mixing in headphones. So the last thing I want to touch on about mixing and mastering in headphones is you want to do it in
Tandem with a set of studio monitors. Now I know a lot of you have stressed that you can't
Have monitors. Maybe you have neighbors or
Maybe you just can't disturb the rest of your family or whatever it may be
but I do think that you can get even just a small set of monitors: a 5-Inch monitor something with not a
disturbing amount of bass but enough to where you can just get the response of a speaker
Versus a headphone not everybody's gonna be listening on headphones
and it's a totally different
Representation when you're hearing your mix through speakers so you're gonna want to be able to
Do both and if it's absolutely not possible
At least take the mixes out to the car, go put them up on your TV or
Whatever you need to do just to get a representation in a speaker environment. All right so that's a couple of key
Things to consider when you're mixing and mastering in headphones
Also some tips to make sure that you're getting the most out of it, you want
To make sure and keep your monitoring levels low in your headphones. You don't want to damage your hearing and you certainly don't want
To get ear fatigue ten minutes into your mixing session. Keep that in mind and keep It safe
Also
Check out some of these things that can adjust the frequency response of your headphones. You want it to be as flat as possible
So you get a really nice translation. Finally I always stress that you want
To use monitors in tandem with headphones if
Possible so that you can get the most out of It. Hope this helps you all out there
Mixing and mastering in headphones. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. if you
Learned anything in this video, please like and subscribe and we'll talk to you soon!