How often do you play only with headphones?

[dalpozlead]

I`m struggling to fit my home studio in my new apartment, I`ll have a small space and (this is the worst part): one of my studio wall is the same as other apartment`s room (I`m seeking for some isolating drywall to help minimizing the noise for the neighbors).

That kept me thinking that I`ll probably will have to listen and play music using the headphones more often

This is a bummer, let`s see how much isolation I`ll get.

 

[High Diving Act]

I used to hate playing thru headphones but.. most of my inspiration comes later at night or when everyone's in bed... my studio is in the basement but.. the noise travels thru the ductwork. It's growing on me out of necessity.... only thing that really sucks is that headphones don't help much when I'm trying to track vocals. Usually have to wait till the house is empty.. which is rare these days.

[Pale]

Too often. Since my son was born 1.5 year ago I have difficulties finding time to play. I cannot play while he is awake, since he wants to play either with me or with my keyboards and usually he gets his way. If he is sleeping I must use headphones. The only time I can play without headphones is when I am at gigs, band rehearsals and when my wife takes the kid out.

 

My home playing is now 90% headphones. Before my kid I was at 5% headphone time. I hate playing through headphones, it just isn't the same.

[Morizzle]

The only time I play my keys through amplification is on the gig. I'm satisfied with my headphones and I've grown used to using them.

[bgregg]

Most of my playing is through headphones--my wife has health issues and is home most of the time, and the sound of practicing (as opposed to PLAYING) music drives her nuts. I have no problem with that, and I'm very comfortable with the 'phones. When she's out, I'll go to the piano or open up the Leslie, and usually I'll reward myself at the end of practicing by audibly playing over a tune or two.

[marino]

Too often.

+1

 

 

[Michael Wright]

Not often. If I can help it anyway.

[dama]

I like playing through headphones, especially when using my thumbdrive to play along with songs I'm trying to learn. I can hear more.

 

I only a have a practice amp, so I only play with that half the time, since I like the stereo effects through headphones. Hearing the piano sounds in stereo is inspiring.

 

The down side is that I tend to play too loud with the headphones on. The volume and high notes creep up on me at times without realizing it. Not good for ear preservation. I've got to be more aware of that.

[Phloid]

With sleeping young children and neighbors on the other side of apartment walls do any of you find that noise from the keyboard mechanism is noticed while playing through headphones? Imagine tapping or drumming your fingers on a table in the same position as the piano.

[David Loving]

I'll practice in the house with headphones, but the keys' noise [CP33} bothers my wife when she's in the room.

[High Diving Act]

With sleeping young children and neighbors on the other side of apartment walls do any of you find that noise from the keyboard mechanism is noticed while playing through headphones? Imagine tapping or drumming your fingers on a table in the same position as the piano.

 

Yup... The klanking of the keys gets on the families nerves at times... luckily I am downstairs so not as bad. I am a leg stomper too when I'm into it.. again the rug on cement floor is better for me than a wood subfloor.

[Marzzz]

I bought this beautiful pair of ADAM S2A monitors with a subwoofer back when dB was working for them, and I have used them maybe a total of a dozen times over the years because my wife took a job where she works at home.

 

I guess I don't mind playing thru headphones (like I have a choice?) but the biggest downside is being able to hear background noise, especially from analog synths, as well as other idiosyncrasies that would have been lost in room ambience.

[Theo Verelst]

Since the HiFi days a lot of hype has come up about headphones and monitoring, I at times use good headphones ( AKG K271mkII for studio monitoring ) with a high quality signal path, preferably high sample rate (192 kHz 24 bit), very good pre-amp and headphone amp (self built years ago with OPA627 opamps), and then still it is hard to make the experience gratifying enough.

 

It depends on the instrument, but most headphone outputs distort, and it is hard to do anything at all about the (theoretical) sample errors (almost all digital equipment has this) combined with this distortion, which keeps banging people around the virtual head. Certain synth/workstations (I know from examples) also create sheared and speaker+wall-prepared tones, which also a a brutal attack on easy and accurate listening with headphones, and this all is different from the picture most (near field) monitors project in the project studio space.

 

It can help to get a good (pay attention to distortion specs) headphone pre-amp, possibly with an extra anti-aliasing filter, instead of instrument outputs, that can hekp make a much better experience. It can help to (preferably analog, to get not everything you hear from the same DA converter) mix in a bit of "ambient" reverberation (for intance from Lexicon, they're cheap nowadays and excellent at this, but it does require some deep reverb editing), so that the headphones give you another "clue" about the music/synth/keyboard/mix stuff you're listening to, and even you could try to get some binoral reverb added to your phones.

 

For advanced use, with good instruments, use a good analog mixer wiht a few sound soures, and if you know how: a few reverb+other effects, to give a space simulation, including binoral (head transfer function related, see google if you want/need) components, and maybe even add a slight speaker simulation or something else with such impression and dimension, with lots of accurate hall/room reverb simulation. in this way I sometimes actually enjoy playing on the headphones I have. In short you need the space and reverberation clues to feel comfortable listening with headphones.

 

Of course there are hyped phones, which will bore pretty soon, like with speakers it's good to have as neutral as possible phones. And in some cases, the phones expose difficult audio waves on purposes, or hide them, like phones muffling mid frequencies, or (like the 271s) they will make clear your most sensitive hearing frequencies are filled with ringing sampling products, which if you don't know how that works can give you a hard time getting your phones to sound "normal", and shoul dlead to testing things out, not putting more volume on the cans! Good phones with decent instruments should sound well enough AT about The same volume as you perceive your monitors. Of course getting them to sound almost the same, except for the (considerable)) studio/room reverberation is hard, I can, but that is hard, and probably expensive. You can, and should, however cheaply be aware of not using resonance or special "high volume effects" from your phones, because that's usually bad news and not good for your practicing or mix...

 

Of course in many cases, your headphones are going to sound different than your monitors. It could pay to try to resolve this, by making both sound more or less the same, except for the sub-low (which is usually too hard for monitors), One would say that in this time with plugins for everything and models and impulse reverbs, this should be possible...

 

T.

[Steve Nathan]

Get ya a pair of these

MDR-7520

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/z/L3kAAOxy9ERSTAPZ/$(KGrHqFHJBMFJGDg4MESBST!PZg+Bw~~_32.JPG

[JeffLearman]

Lots. I'm grateful for the option!

 

I have wireless headphones, which helps a lot; it's nice not to be tethered (especially when playing electric guitar: having two tethers really sucks.)

 

I had a pair of Sony FM wireless that I really liked for comfort. No, the sound from wireless is never the best; it's a compromise, but a reasonable one. They finally died after 15 years of pretty steady use. I replaced them with Sennheisers and wish I'd spent more on the much lighter and more comfortable Sony's.

 

I couldn't compare the two, but in either case I got used to the sound, so the sound was good enough from either kind.

[KeyMoe]

Most of the time......

[jcazzy]

I mainly use headphones when I'm at home because I don't have the proper amplification equipment to run my keyboards through. With all that I've got going on, the rehearsal studio is 25 miles away so it's not an easy trek for me to practice with the amps unless the band is practicing. I have used headphones on every new instrument I have bought over the past few years and I really appreciate the fact that I'm hearing what is coming out of the board and it helps me tweak the board before I get it hooked up to my rig. Most of the time I tweak the live amp settings to match (as close as I can) what I hear through the phones. Not always easy in a live setting. Also, my hearing is impaired a bit due to all the loud music I was subjected to in the early days. That's one thing I think the headphones help with.

[Pale]

With sleeping young children and neighbors on the other side of apartment walls do any of you find that noise from the keyboard mechanism is noticed while playing through headphones? Imagine tapping or drumming your fingers on a table in the same position as the piano.

 

Neighbours never complained even while I had no kids and never used headphones, so I guess they don't hear anything, or aren't bothered by anything. My kid doesn't hear key thumping (or isn't bothered) , but my wife does. It is clearly audible but I guess she is used to it by now.

My rhodes was the worst, that thing really rattles.

 

I don't know about you, but while playing through headphones reveals details and nuances I somehow cannot connect with the instrument like I can while playing out loud. It's like something is missing. It's not the loudness, I can certainly crank up the volume on the headphones. It may be the natural room reverberation or something.

[RABid]

95% of the time that I play keyboards or V-Drums. 5% of the time that I play guitar or bass. 0% of the time for trumpet. It started while I lived in apartments. I invested in a good set of headphones and got used to it pretty quickly. That is not entirely true. I got used to playing keys through headphones while experimenting with sound design on a MiniMoog years and years ago. Now I have a hard time playing through speakers without noticing the lower sound quality and effects of speaker placement. The man cave that holds most of my music instruments has horrible acoustics. Plus, a $500 set of headphones sounds much better than $500 speakers.

[LX88]

500 bucks for a pair of headphones ???..... I can only wish.

 

Actually, I have a cheap thrill that I use for organ clones.

 

Coby HV442. That's right - C-O-B-Y-. COBY.

 

A couple years ago , I was able to get these at $1.99 a pair( on line), but now they have become more scarce and are going for around $4.99. They are open ear Walkman type phones, but among the best if not THE best ( of that type of design) as far as I am concerned.

 

I absolutely love them for organ. The reason why is that they mimic the roll off characteristic of a good organ speaker.

 

Actually my favorite organ speaker is not a leslie. It is a Hammond PR 40 tone cabinet. The Coby phones sound something like that. Pretty rich bass ( They handle pedal tones at a pretty good volume) but are never shrill.

 

They actually work pretty good for digital piano too. Once again I tend to like a speaker system for digital piano that does not use high frequency drivers. The Yamaha Nocturne I have at home has no tweeter in sight, but does use a subwoofer.

 

So the Coby phones make the Nocturne sound relatively close to the way it sounds acoustically.

 

When I was at NAMM last year, a rep at Roland gave me a "special" pair of phones that Roland designed specifically for their digital pianos. It rolled off high frequencies to a noticeable degree. It made the Roland Supernaturals sound less shrill. I kind of reminded me of what the Cobys do.

 

I would love to check out the 500 dollar Sonys however. I use phones for practice all the time. My "better" phones are Sony

MDR 7506 but I definitely prefer the Cobys for organ.

 

 

[Tonysounds]

All the time. I don't like taking time away form the wife as she goes to bed early, so we hang out after work. After she falls asleep, I"ll go down into my studio and practice. 90% of the time, I'm on headphones (AKG 250).

[mate stubb]

Not so often. I too usually can only practice at night, and my keys are in the basement under our bedroom. But my wife sleeps with 2 fans on, and the racket is so loud that I can still play thru speakers as long as I keep it under control.

[Joe P]

For a long time I only wanted to practice with my keys and a recording coming from different sources (amp & stereo).

 

But between the furnace kicking on and my kids going ape shit in the room right above me, headphones are a must for productivity and peace in the home. I run my keys and iPod though a mixer and take the headphone feed off that. My wife finds me rocking out to the key-clacking amusing.

 

Also, I have learned to resist the urge to make changes to my set-ups based on what I hear in the headphones. The phones have different frequency responses so I only make those changes when I can hear how it will sound live.

 

Regards,

Joe

[Sparky2]

Since going to in-ear montoring, I don't hate practicing through headphones as much. I can be happy using the ears for about 3-4 hours without tiring of them. If I'm going to be at it for extended periods or if I need to hear what's going on at home, these work for me: Grado SR80i . And they only cost $100 US.

 

Mark

[SpaceNorman]

I end up using headphones for my personal practice time pretty regularly. I usually just grab my IEM earbuds and a headphone extention cable (i.e., 1/4" Male connect to 1/4" female connector)and monitor via the Headphone Out on my litte SM10 Line mixer. I get an OK sound this way ... and use it whenever I need to be concerned for others.

 

However, I struggle with "headphone sound" in general. I simply can't hear pitch/tone as listened to via cans as well as I can hear it when it's played through my stage monitors (a pair of Yamaha DSR112 powered speakers). Even at very low volumes - an actual speaker just seems so much more discernible than the sound as heard via headphones.

[Synthoid]

I used to use headphones 90% of the time, but it was damaging my hearing. I tend to turn the volume up too much, which I did rather often back in the 80's (with headphones) when listening to Yes, Genesis, ELP, etc. And then there was that excessively loud Moody Blues concert back in 1999. Anyway...

 

Now I play through a small sound system at a lower volume. Much safer for my poor ears.

 

[I-missRichardTee]

I end up using headphones for my personal practice time pretty regularly. I usually just grab my IEM earbuds and a headphone extention cable (i.e., 1/4" Male connect to 1/4" female connector)and monitor via the Headphone Out on my litte SM10 Line mixer. I get an OK sound this way ... and use it whenever I need to be concerned for others.

 

However, I struggle with "headphone sound" in general. I simply can't hear pitch/tone as listened to via cans as well as I can hear it when it's played through my stage monitors (a pair of Yamaha DSR112 powered speakers). Even at very low volumes - an actual speaker just seems so much more discernible than the sound as heard via headphones.

 

I am right away wondering why.. I am not faulting your experience, rather, I am thinking there is an acoustically based reason for this issue with pitch and tone. The pitch aspect, on a hunch, seems to make sense, that you have more difficulty with pitch discernment. The timbre aspect ( tone ) seems like it would be better in phones. You have raised an interesting point, that someone here versed in psychoacoustics may chime in on.

[I-missRichardTee]

Get ya a pair of these

MDR-7520

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/z/L3kAAOxy9ERSTAPZ/$(KGrHqFHJBMFJGDg4MESBST!PZg+Bw~~_32.JPG

 

My previous post is asking why pitch discernment is more difficult with cans.. would a higher end set of cans, relieve this issue with pitch and timbre?

[Leh173]

Yeah I play with headphones a lot at home due to the same family reasons others have mentioned, to stay quiet while the little one is asleep. I have a pair of sony MDR-V900HD's picked up from B&H in NYC. Not bad. I had an open back pair of sennheisers bought in London before that which were good.

[DanL]

I practice with headphones pretty often. Like Tony, my wife goes to bed early and I'll retire to the basement to play. The sound goes right up the ductwork so I use the phones. I have a pair of ableplanet linx noise cancelling ones, and an older pair of radio shack ones that sound pretty good, with nice big ear muffs so they are comfortable. Nothing super high end but all I'm really doing is learning songs with them.

 

Santa is bringing me some IEM's this year, Shure SE425-CL. I'm going to get them going for live use and then use my K10 as an additional monitor for the rest of the band, running off the sound board as another vocal mix that they can dial keys into.