(Intense and dramatic typing intensifies)
-If you're somebody who creates
any kind of audio and video production,
then a trustworthy pair of headphones
is a crucial piece of your workflow.
So today I'm going to do my best
to not get up all in my head
while I talk about these headphones
and I want to do a really good job,
I don't want to phone it in.
(Get it? Because "headphones")
So right off the bat, it's really important for you to know
that I've got probably somewhere between 15 and 20 years
of experience in the headphone...
I'm completely kidding.
I know almost nothing about headphones.
But I kind of think my lack of knowledge
of every kind of headphone that's out there
might actually come in handy because I can share with you
some just real world, everyday examples
that have worked and have not worked for me over the years.
So I have a selection of headphones in front of me,
these are the ones that I have,
so these are just ones that I've collected
all the way from several years ago to literally brand new.
So I'll just start by saying
that if you're working on any kind of project
that involves audio, headphones are kind of a must.
Even just like the ones that came with your phone
are going to be better than your laptop speakers.
If you're somebody who has a big old studio
and you have professional monitors
and everything's positioned and treated perfectly,
you probably don't need to be watching this video,
but if you're a normal mortal like the rest of us,
just using any kind of headphone,
as opposed to not using them,
is going to give you better results
because you're going to hear a lot more nuances
and a lot more details in your audio,
whether that's a video or podcast, whatever it might be.
When it comes to headphones for editing,
there are a few things that I look for.
One is just reliability and simplicity.
I really, really, REALLY dislike editing
with Bluetooth headphones because even though, you know,
like new Air Pods and stuff have gotten better
and there's very little latency, I still notice it,
and if you're somebody who's trying to sync up
audio with video, or you're trying to
make an edit where things like hit on the beat of a song
or a sound effect matches a specific movement,
even if it's off by just one frame or two frames [like this clip here 😉]
it's going to kind of take this super crisp thing
that you've edited together
and just dull it down a little bit.
So I like using headphones that are wired
because I know I'm hearing everything in exact real time
and I can then make the most accurate edits possible.
I also like sound quality that I call neutral,
I don't know if that's the right term or not,
but if you're doing something like
you put on a big pair of Beats headphones
with the bass turned up all the way,
you might make something that sounds amazing.
But when you're editing,
remember that the thing you're making
is probably going to be listened to
on a whole bunch of different speakers.
Everything from somebody's super nice sound system
in their living room to their broken phone speakers,
and you are trying to make something that sounds decent
on all of that and everything in between.
For my rough assembly edits
I'll use basically whatever I have, I don't really care.
Sometimes I will even just use my laptop's built in speakers
but when it comes time to dial things in
and start getting more of like the polish
and the little fine details,
I will always be using headphones.
Probably not going to be AirPods unless I have to use them,
I would actually prefer to use just the wired EarPods,
not AirPods but EarPods,
so listen HearPods, I'll tell you come NearPods.
The sound quality is okay on these.
Obviously, I'm sure you know it's not great,
but they're wired so that way
you can be very accurate with your edits.
Additionally, I've tried things like this
which are in ear monitors.
I'll put links to everything in the description,
but these are just little like $20 in ear monitors.
And what's nice about them is they go in your ears,
believe it or not, and then the cord runs behind you
and they're slightly less noticeable.
These ones are kind of isolating.
I don't know if you'd call it noise canceling.
What's cool about this is if you're doing
a stream or a video call,
you don't have cables and cords running around
but you still have zero latency
because you're connected with a cable.
My problem with these and these cheap ones
is you get them fitted in your ear,
and then if you're talking for a long period of time
they start to wiggle out of your ear,
and I have found that I'm constantly adjusting them.
So every time I've worn these,
I'm always like fidgeting with them
and it's really frustrating.
You can get higher end in ear monitors
which will actually be molded to fit your ear,
like they put a mold in your ear
and make you open your mouth while it hardens
so that way, when you get the actual piece,
it's able to stay in your ear
even when you're moving your mouth.
And of course, like I said, there are AirPods,
these are the AirPods 3, they connect really easily,
there's very, very, very little latency with them,
but there's just enough that I don't totally trust
doing like a final edit with them.
So I guess more for consumption rather than creating.
And so in front of me here I have
three more traditional style headphones,
sort of like the cheapest, medium,
and then the most expensive,
but the most expensive in my case being $200
because even though I will spend a bunch of money
on cameras and microphones,
for some reason I'm just not someone
who will spend a bunch of money on headphones.
I know, it's weird.
So a couple years ago I bought these,
the Sony WCH700N, super catchy name.
These are Bluetooth headphones but you can also connect
a 3.5 millimeter cable to them, and they are noise canceling
but they're not like gonna blow your mind
by how good they are at noise canceling.
And they're all right.
My problem with them is that I actually find them
really uncomfortable.
It's usually only after maybe like 40 minutes to an hour
that I start getting like a lot of discomfort right here
on the top of my head.
And I, there's no way I can really adjust these
to work well, so I don't use these that much for editing.
These have kind of now become my,
if I'm vacuuming and I need to block out the sound
and listen to a podcast or something like that,
that's what I use these for.
So I don't really use these for projects,
but they are cool because they have all
the built in controls, the battery lasts forever,
maybe they'll fit your head better than they fit my head.
For Christmas of 2020, Ron from the YouTube channel
New Record Day, definitely check out his channel,
it's amazing, and Ron is a super nice guy
who's way more knowledgeable about headphones
and audio gear like that than I will ever be,
he sent me these as a Christmas gift
and these are what I've been using pretty much ever since.
These are Meze 99Neo headphones,
and they're so incredibly comfortable.
There's nothing really fancy about them,
the cord does have a microphone on them,
and a little like volume control.
The cable's not permanently attached to the headphones
so you can swap it out.
They block out sound a little bit,
but they're not noise canceling,
like I can still hear the room around me pretty well.
The sound quality on these is phenomenal,
and I think that it's phenomenally accurate
which is very, very important.
They're pretty lightweight, they sound really great.
Again, they're super accurate.
It seems like after I started using these,
even though I still make a lot of mistakes,
I have not said adios to my audio mistakes,
those are on me, that's not on the headphones.
I try to do the best that I can,
and generally speaking, since I started using these
to monitor and edit my audio,
I've got more compliments about my audio
in videos and podcasts and stuff like that.
So these definitely have helped me to make better audio,
and having just that very neutral reproduction,
very accurate audio helps a lot
because these aren't going to make something
sound better than it actually sounds.
Here's a good case in point.
This is a Fender Telecaster that I got 20 years ago
this year, actually, and it was my first Fender guitar.
And when I bought this somebody told me
that the Telecaster is like the polygraph machine
of electric guitars because it's very unforgiving.
It doesn't make your playing sound better than it is.
[Steam Gardens from Super Mario Odyssey]
There are some guitars out there that,
and this doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad thing,
but you can play kind of sloppy
and it's like the guitar almost covers it up
and it still sounds good anyway.
But with a Telecaster, it's going to capture
every bit of nuance in your playing.
So if you're good, it's going to shine through
and if you're bad, that's also going to shine through.
[previous failed guitar attempts] Nope.
No, no, no.
No, no.
And I bring that up because these headphones
are pretty much the same.
They're not going to make something
sound better than it actually sounds,
which means when you're listening to these
if something sounds good to you on here
it's probably going to sound pretty decent
on a very wide variety of speakers and sound systems.
And I've been super happy with these,
that is, out of nowhere, Rode shows up
with their brand new first pair of headphones ever,
and Rode did send these to me, I don't have to
make a video about them or anything like that,
but I'm so interested in these
because for a company that's made podcast recorders
and microphones and boom arms and all that stuff
for so many years,
they've never made a set of headphones before
and these things are freaking cool.
And I mean that literally because the ear pads
have some sort of magic in them
that helps them to feel cool to the touch all the time
making it easier to wear them for extended periods of time.
And while the Meze 99Neos retail for $200,
the Rode NTH-100s will Neo-t cost you as much
since they retail for $149.
They're really well built and they are super comfortable.
So now the Mezes and the Rodes
have sort of been my like side by side headphone companions,
and I do use them for different things.
The padding is Al-Alcantara.
Al-can-tara.
It's basically just a super, super soft material
that you can also replace,
you can pull these out and replace them
if you need to, as time goes on.
They do have a weird shape.
Most headphones kind of have a circular or an oval shape,
these sort of have like this strange,
it's a different shape,
call it an "organic" shape, I don't know.
And it is easy to see R and L,
which ones are the right and left,
and the right one also has this red little dot right here.
And when you put them on, they go over your ears,
and for me, I guess I have a pretty average sized head
with like average size ears.
So for me this fits perfectly and they're super comfortable.
And this definitely, again,
they're not noise canceling headphones,
but they do have a pretty high level of isolation.
So I don't actually wear these if I'm gonna be using them
for long, long, long periods of time,
like four, five, six hours.
I'm more comfortable wearing these for that long
because I don't feel like I'm isolated
from the rest of the world,
I can still hear stuff and have a conversation if I want to.
But if I really wanna just dive into a project
or something that I'm working on,
that's where I wear these ones
because they do block things out just enough
and they sound really, really good.
They do sound a little bit different,
but I would say both of these are super accurate.
And for whatever reason, I've actually
come to trust the Rodes just a little bit more
in terms of accuracy, but again
these really are designed to be listening headphones,
and these are designed to be production headphones
like specifically for podcasting and videos.
These aren't Bluetooth headphones or anything like that,
so there's no controls on the headphones themselves,
but you are able to adjust them
by using these little locks here and then locking them in.
So once you get the headphones set
to exactly where you want it, it's never,
wait, I put them on backwards,
it's never going to come undone unless you want it to.
The outer part of the headphone cups
is a really tough plastic, and the band itself is all metal.
And of course, like pretty much all of Rode's products,
these were made in Australia, which I think is pretty cool.
They design and manufacture everything.
And again, this video is not sponsored,
I know it sounds like a commercial, but I really like Rode,
and one of the things that I like about them
is when they make something like this
they don't just go out and find a headphone company
like overseas that's making headphones
and just put the Rode logo on it.
They start from scratch, from the ground up,
building their own headphones.
And in this case, they knew that they wanted to make
headphones going for podcasters, streamers, video editors,
and these just work really well
because that's exactly what they're made for.
But as someone who likes bright colors
I appreciate that Rode did also come out
with headphone cables for these,
and these happen to be the exact same colors
as the XLR channels on the Rodecaster Pro,
so you can easily match them up.
What I like about these cables is that they're
really high quality and they don't tangle very easily.
I don't know what mad science technology is there.
One end of the cable does have a twist lock on there
so you can attach the adapter to it.
And the other end sort of has
like this strange proprietary lock on it
which is really neat 'cause you just put it
into the headphone and then twist
and now it won't get pulled out.
And there's a 3.5 millimeter jack on either cup,
so you can put the cable on either side.
For example, when I'm editing on my MacBook Pro,
the headphone port is on the left side of the computer,
so then I connect the he phone cable
to the left side of the headphones
and then I can have these connected here
and it's totally out of the way,
it's not running around here
or through here or anything like that.
That's a cool little quality of life feature.
So while I haven't had the Rodes
as long as I've had the Mezes,
these have become my main like production headphones.
So if I'm doing like the final pass through
and I'm listening to what the audio on something
is going to sound like before I send it out to the world
or share it with somebody,
these are the headphones that I've been using
to make sure that it sounds as good as possible,
including on this very video.
So my headphone collection here,
everything from the Rode to the Meze,
to the Sony, to the little in ear things,
and the EarPods, and the AirPods, oh my gods,
this is kind of a hodgepodge,
but each of these does play a specific role
and when it comes to the headphones that I use
for actual video podcast editing,
audio that other people are going to hear,
I always stick with a pair of headphones
that is reliable, simple to use, super comfortable,
and gives me a completely neutral sound
so that I can make things sound as good as possible
on the widest range
of other people's sound systems as possible.
And that's what I recommend you look for
in a good pair of headphones yourself,
even if it's not one of these specific ones that I have,
something that meets those qualifications
is going to help you create better work.
Speaking of helping to create better work,
thank you to everyone who helps support my channel
through YouTube channel memberships and Patreon.
And check out these videos right here
if you want to learn more ways
to level up the quality of your audio and your video.
(Thanks Linwood for this awesome song!)