EQ treatments on Headphone — > Interaction on your Head — > Results to a flat frequency response to your ear
Any of the above headphone treatments (whether flat or with EQ treatments to sound flat) would not provide accurate audio mixing environment.
Let’s have an example. Supposing you are using a headphone treated to sound flat in your ear (so it’s the one with pre-EQ adjustments). And supposing the fact that the source audio (guitars for example) has very low mid-range frequencies that needs up some boost.
Since the headphone is already treated with high mid-frequency boost by design (see frequency response chart of the headphone above); it would appear that there are no mid-frequency issues because of the boost. You will not be able to detect this problem and as a result, your mix won’t sound great.
Let’s illustrate another method. Supposing you are using a flat frequency response headphone. But this headphone would sound awful to your ears because of the sound waves interaction with your head. Again, what you are monitoring is still not actually the truth.
B.) Nearfield studio monitors
Below is a schematic explaining why a nearfield monitors would be appropriate for any accurate audio mixing activity.
True nearfield monitors flat Frequency response — > Properly treated room acoustic response — > What you hear is actually the true frequency response of the audio being monitored. — > You can make accurate audio mixing decisions.
If the room is property treated (to minimize standing waves, etc.); you are actually monitoring the true frequency response of the audio. This can be easily implemented with proper room acoustic treatment.
Therefore; headphones cannot substitute real studio monitors even it’s designed to provide a “flat frequency response” such as shown below:
3. Also mixing using headphones increases the risk of hearing loss due to the closeness of audio source to your auditory system. Learn some tips here on how to take care of your ear during audio mixing/mastering.
Recommendations and when to use headphones
-If audio mixing is your hobby which might become your future career, I suggest buying near field monitors.(photo below)
It’s a bit expensive (though some are affordable) but it’s worth the price. You can read my recommendations in this post. It will help you to mix like a pro. Headphones are only used after thorough mixing or mastering; to confirm the results of the mix down and mastering process. Issues with panning, ambiance, reverb and stereo width are more transparent with headphones. It is also used to check for small noise within your recording as they can be very sensitive.
Content last updated on October 22, 2012
4 Responses
Bluebeep,
Thanks for the feedback. I do mix sometimes at night using my nearfield monitors (no heaphones). I monitor at average to below average volume enough for me to hear the entire mix elements. I turn off the subwoofer and I leave it in the morning when everyone is awake.
Surprisingly I find my mixing settings to be accurate; monitoring at below average volume. This is due to the fact that the standing wave reflections or other imperfections in my room acoustic environment are drastically minimized by monitoring a low volumes. Low volumes = lower reflections = more accurate monitoring.
I find the levels friendly to my ears too. After a couple hours mixing at night, I do check my mix in headphones to make sure everything is consistent. I could turn the volume slightly louder with headphones and check whether the balance of track volumes are maintained with or without headphones. Just to confirm.
Awesome read!
I’ve been reading about mixing with headphones a lot lately because, well my I tend to work at night and don’t want to get a shoe thrown at me.
There seem to be a couple of more reasons for not mixing with headphones in an article I read. One of them includes ‘stereo imaging’. But it seems with a bit of experience you can sort of learn your headphones and how they sound are able to make up for the difference. Here’s the article. Hope this also helps: http://www.rhythmic.ca/music-tutorials/mixing/articles/how-to-mix-with-headphones.html
To set the EQ settings, you would need a parametric equalizer.
Hi, i think some of my comments can’t process but thank you for helping R.E ‘mixing in which DAW’ + ‘info about rendering’, am getting confident in FL but i will give focus AA too. (Am actually writing notes from your interlinked tutorials & am happy that the parts that have electronics/physics terminology am a bit familiar with). I decided to do a lot of research then go for then practical with a retrospect. What I could not imagine is that, e.g if in FL : instr 1 I cut -3dB, @ 3000Hz, pan 75% L, instr 2 say apply a high pass @ 450Hz; then export tracks to AA will I be able to say: instr 1 boost to 0dB @3000Hz + pan 30% L (from FL’s -3dB &75%) , instr 2 high pass @350Hz in AA (from FL’s 450Hz cut off freq.)?