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Mixing with Headphones, Waves plug-in


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Was perusing Music Radar and this article came up. Didn't know this was a thing. Basically Waves has a plug-in that simulates the real world sound cues and 3D sound of speakers in an optimized studio. Apparently, you miss alot of that when using headphones, making whatever you mix using headphones something that doesn't translate that well to real speakers, and makes listening through them much more fatiguing. It even follows your head movements to better simulate the experience of being between 2 speakers.

 

Music Radar article on mixing with headphones

 

Waves NX Virtual Mix Room.

If you scroll down on this link, Waves has an article that explains how this plug-in helps to correct inherent problems with mixing using headphones.

 

Reviews at SW and reference to $49 price.

I put this link up to show how low the price can go on this, one of the reviewers mentioned that price.

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There are a number of different plugins like that out there. I use one by 112dB called Redline Headphone Monitor which is pretty good. Obviously being in a well-treated studio with good monitors is the best, but other than that, there are many situations where headphone monitoring is a good call. An acoustically inferior environment (like an untreated house room), or non-flat studio monitors can wreck a mix. The nice thing about headphones is that they control the environment at a fraction of the cost. Studio Professionals will call blasphemy, but often times, particularly if you live in a city, it's pretty much impossible to create a controlled acoustic environment, and then headphones become the best option. I used to live in a cabin in the woods in rural Alaska, and I spent thousands of dollars treating it, and getting solid near fields. My mixes were the best I've ever done. But now that I live in an apartment in Honolulu, that's just not possible, so I switched to headphones. It's not 100%, but with a monitoring plugin, you can get most of the way there.

 

Monitoring plugins aren't magic, what they do is pretty simple. The main thing is that headphones are 100% isolating from L/R ear, which room speakers obviously are not. So the plugin narrows the stereo field a bit, bleeding a bit of signal to the opposite ear. This allows you to pick up on stereo phase problems that can occur within an acoustic environment. You can have a terribly phased stereo mix in headphones and it will sound just fine because each ear is completely isolated, so that's important. The plugins typically also use a mid/side crossover to boost the perceived hole in the center caused by headphones, as well as some mid/side eq adjustment. You could probably recreate most of these things with a few normal plugins if you know what you're doing, but it's nice to have it all in one pre-tuned package.

 

Here's the redline monitor. I haven't used the WAVES one, I don't think it was available when I got mine, there's a 60-day demo if you want to try it out:

https://www.112db.com/plugins/redline/monitor/

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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Huh, like I said, I had no idea these plugins existed for mixing with headphones. I suppose its much the same idea as using in-ear monitors and having a room mic to add some 'naturalness' to the sound.

Numa Piano X73 /// Kawai ES920 /// Casio CT-X5000 /// Yamaha EW425

Yamaha Melodica and Alto Recorder

QSC K8.2 // JBL Eon One Compact // Soundcore Motion Boom Plus 

Win10 laptop i7 8GB // iPad Pro 9.7" 32GB

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Huh, like I said, I had no idea these plugins existed for mixing with headphones. I suppose its much the same idea as using in-ear monitors and having a room mic to add some 'naturalness' to the sound.

Sure, I guess same concept, but completely different execution. As I said, plugins are just doing basic (and fairly simple) algorithmic processes. They're not doing anything "artificial" like convolution or adding delays, they're simply using mid/side processing (which is INCREDIBLY simple, mathematically) to approximate the sound of an open-air speaker. That said, they're far from exact, and they're really only useful for objective analysis. What they can't simulate is the actual direction that the sound is entering your ears, those are specific to individual models of headphones and their driver location. They also can't simulate the physical effects of speakers. Though, many mixing engineers endorse mixing at low volumes, so this shouldn't be a big concern. Finally, it's almost impossible to make closed-back headphones that don't negatively impact the low-end frequency response. Sadly, one of the biggest reasons for mixing with headphones is to eliminate external noise, which sonically superior open-back headphones can't help with. Supposedly Neumann has announced some new closed-back cans that are as good as open-back, but I don't think they're out yet, so who knows.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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Huh, I had no idea these plugins existed...my room is way too live and odd shaped, so for my hobby needs I just work on a couple different pairs of phones. I bring rough mixes to other places, and reference, but this might be very useful to me.
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The Goodhertz folks, who make Vulf Compressor, offer one of these plugins as well. I haven't had a chance to try any yet, but I've learned I just can't trust my tiny box of a mixing room with speakers where low-end is concerned.

 

I'd also learned that headphone mixing is blasphemy, but I heard an interview recently with Alan Evans (of Soulive and Iron Wax Studios) that he started mixing on headphones for convenience, and waited for his mastering engineer and other collaborators to notice a difference in his mixes and call him out. It never happened, so he kept using the headphones.

Samuel B. Lupowitz

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One of the other realities is that the vast majority of listeners now listen on headphones. Some engineers are now starting to use headphones as their primary monitoring because of that. The concern is that live speakers can often reveal problems that headphones are immune to, particularly stereo phasing. Headphones also tend to make the mix sound bigger and more live than it does on speakers, because you have a 180degree difference between L/R channels, instead of 60-90degrees with nearfields. This often makes any reverb sound bigger too, and as a result, you're likely to turn down the reverb channels. One of the first things you will notice when you apply a headphone monitoring plugin is your mix will suddenly sound a lot more narrow and "smaller", the reverb will seem to disappear. Good, that means you'll likely tweak it up as a result, which will be more compatible with room speakers. Just be careful you continue to listen with the headphone amp off to make sure it still works with headphones.

 

ALSO, and I can't stress this enough: ALWAYS test your mixes in mono. This is the ultimate test to reveal any stereo phasing problems. Consider that many "kids" these days listen to music on tiny bluetooth speakers and smartphones, which though being advertised as "stereo", are basically mono point sources. So you're going to have a significant audience realistically listening to your material in mono. Use stereo to enhance an otherwise good mono mix, but don't rely on it for clarity. One of the big mixing taboos is when having two competing instruments, pan them left/right to get them away from each other. This may be fine in a stereo mix, but the moment it's folded down to a point source, those problems come back. If you're faced with competing tracks, fold it down to mono monitoring, and get to work with EQ, volume automation, or out-right chopping to nip the problem in the bud.

 

Finally, consider throwing an ugly low-end rolloff on the master output. Make sure your mix works well on crappy speakers that have no low-end. Once again, it's not gonna be "beautiful", but you're checking to make sure it is still listenable and the important parts (vocals, melody, etc) are recognizable. Back in the 70s-80s, there was a "legendary" speaker called the "Auratone", and it sounded like crap. And that's what was great about it, it was a tinny piercing PoS that had no low end, but was otherwise perfectly flat in the upper register. Pretty much every hit album was meticulously tested on it: if your mix sounded listenable on an Auratone, it would be great on any other speaker. There are a number of newer speakers that have replaced it, I used to have a Fostex that was basically the same specs, and used that for mixing/mastering tests.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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Autatones are back, by his grandson I think.

 

Avantone makes a copy that some reviews liked better for reasons I don't remember.

 

As far as Auratones simple sounding like crap, Mike Senior in Mixing Secrets disputes that thusly.

 

If you want to reap the greatest benefits of the Auratone in your mixing environment, then you need to monitor in mono from one small, unported, single-driver speaker. A lot of people still harbor the misguided view that the Auratones primary feature was that it sounded horrible (hence its common Horrortone nickname); in other words that it simply allowed you to anticipate the effects of worst-case scenario playback. However, this myth doesnt really stand up to much scrutiny when you consider that the Auratones portless cabinet is unusual in small speakers these days, and that it also delivers unusually low distortion. Clearly, a single Auratone wont impress any of your clients with its pathetic honky sound, but its nonetheless a brilliant specialist tool that ruthlessly spotlights midrange balance and mono-compatibility issues in your mix. As with your main nearfield system, you just need to learn to use an Auratone for what it excels at while relying on your other monitoring equipment to make up for its weaknesses.

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Lol, obviously I'm being overdramatic. It does exactly what it's supposed to, and that means revealing the mids to a T. Though, as you admit, you're not going to want to listen to it in your living room! I never got the impression that people used the "Horrortone" moniker out of anything other than awkward respect. It clearly wasn't created by accident, and it serves it's purpose wonderfully!

 

Now, one actual misconception novices will have is the idea that it's okay (and even good practice) to monitor on an actually substandard system "because that's what your audience will be using". The difference is that all poor systems are bad in completely different ways, they're uneven. You can make a perfect mix on a $25 Altec Lansing 2.1 computer stereo, and it will likely sound like crap on a $25 Amazon Echo. Professional gear is good because it's consistent.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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