Closed back headphones for mixing music?

R

RyanTrapstar

New member
do people do it? Right now i'm looking at the audio tecnicha m40x and the reviews are said to have a very clear balanced sound. Is it safe to say that its good to mix my music on a closed back headphone like this?
 
I have always used closed back headphones. If you buy the right kind, they are well worth it. Sure you can spend the extra money on some studio monitors, but in my opinion, headphones can mix a song just as well.
 
I've heard good things about the Focal Spirit Professionals. I'll probably get those next for myself.
 
I always try to use near-fields for mixing, with Beyer DT250s for reference, but I've had to mix in tight quarters a few times, and it's just been the Beyers. Had those puppies for about 17 years.

Never met any bit of kit made by Audio-Technica that wasn't bloody awful. YMMV.
 
There's no rule to say that you can't exclusively mix on headphones. I use AKG K77's a lot of the time. But you need to familiarise yourself with them. What may sound good in a pair of cans, may sound awful out of quality (and usually accurate) monitors for example. It's why you should always try and test your mixes through as many sound sources as possible imho. I still do the car test, iPod, crappy desktop speaker, hi-fi etc. You'd be surprised how certain frequencies jump out (or disappear) on different monitoring systems.
 
I think that the Focal Spirit Pros are quite good because they have quite a good amount of low end and low mids, so the mixes turn out quite clear sounding yet they allow you to hear what the mix sounds like when the speakers have a little more low end, which is a quite common listening configuration.
 
RyanTrapstar said:
do people do it? Right now i'm looking at the audio tecnicha m40x and the reviews are said to have a very clear balanced sound. Is it safe to say that its good to mix my music on a closed back headphone like this?
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You can do it, but as usuaul you need to understand what sound curve they have and how that should impact on your mix process. A mistake many do is to use bass light headphones and balance the bass and kick early in the process. That yields often very congested and unclear sounding mixes. So you need to be aware of what you mix against, so that you can setup a good mix balancing process that works well on your particular headphones.

It helps to have a few cans to work on, I would say ideal is to have 3 different cans, learn their sound well and hence incorporate them well into your mix balancing process to extract the right frequencies.
 
Frankly, while I think it's possible to get good mixes in headphones, I think that's either in specific cases or with already experienced engineers. A pair of nearfield monitors and bass traps can cost just as much as a pair of headphones and will get you better results. Headphones tend to exaggerate certain things. In fact, I'm starting to just produce in mono out of a yamaha hs7 now, before I've even begun mixing. That way I'm not tricking myself into thinking my song is better than it actually is with wide stereo sounds.

For headphones, I use AKG k702's. I had a pair of Sennheiser 280 HD Pros and the AKG's were much better in my opinion. It was easier to tell where things were panned, and I don't really like closed back headphones at all because I find them uncomfortable.
 
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You don't have the low end on headphones, so if you mix on headphones I would definitely have monitors (with sub) to adjust the low end.
If you don't have the budget make sure to explain the mastering engineer your situation and ask him to help you adjust the low end before mastering
 
Mixing only on headphones i realy weird.
after a while you ear gets focused only on what you concentrate on. On monitores aswell but your ears also get fatigued much faster.
i use headphones during mixing for reference. Sometimes you hear things that you didn't pay attetion to on hte monitores and vice versa.
 
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Personally i've always used open back for mixing and closed back for tracking. I find that there is greater clarity with open back headphones.
 
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