Music Mixed on Studio Headphones? Good and BAD!
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- čas přidán 15. 07. 2023
- We look at mixing with a variety of headphones to see if it really makes a difference. Which gives you a better mix?
Sennheiser HD 600
Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro
Audeze LCD-X
Audeze MM-500
Listen to the different mixes yourself. Here are the tracks: forum.headphones.com/t/mixing...
Final mix from Tangier Sound: open.spotify.com/track/2cLN9U...
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1:37 Mix 1
2:00 Mix 2
3:32 Mix 3
4:57 Mix 4
5:34 Mix 5
6:04 Guesses
11:18 What the Artist Intended
Cable eating video when?
It would be great if Golden could blind test the cables he eats in the next video and see if they at least taste different.
This was a great idea and a fun experiment. More than anything it proves to me yet again why every top level mix engineer (and the producer) hires a top level mastering engineer with a calibrated monitoring system in a purpose built room to finish the balance of every song they release. Great video!
Yoooooo, appreciate the feature. It was a pleasure working on this for the channel ✌️
Hey guys, I am a composer and producer, specializing in orchestral music and sample library production. Headphones are a big part of my workflow for mixing, I use a variety of hifiman and Neumann, headphones, along with a Grace, Design and prism sound converters. Happy to jump in and have a discussion with you at some point.
Love this for a bit of fun, great idea. Certainly brings up the undeniable factor which you guys touch on when No.5 gets revealed - what if you just don't like the guy's mix? Mixing is itself an art without a objective goal so this doesn't say all that much about your abilities guessing imo.
Cable taste review when?
I like that your comment is completely related to your pfp lmao
As someone with a lot of years of mixing, mastering and listening experience, you have to first choose a mixing/mastering artist combo you like. Also, you need to give him headphones he is not familiar with, so he’s not automatically adapting the translation.
KILLER video idea. Hope you guys do more! With different music genres. And I think a slightly more in-depth discussion between the guys and the one who handled the mixing would be pretty interesting as well. 😄
Alright this was a really fun video to watch, this is the kind of interesting and inventive video that you guys should do more of. And it showed off the camaraderie really well between you all. More like this please.
Watching audiophiles struggle is very entertaining😆
There are so many variables, I can only imagine where to begin, and I'm am engineer. FR is certainly one thing - brighter cans = darker mixes and so on - but everything from comfort to detail to dynamics has a huge effect. Holy cow how differently you use compression on different cans... How about Resolve's famous "trailing ends of tones"? Try making a proper electronic kick without that being good.
And for as good as HD600s are, I could never get good mixes on them, and always struggled while actually doing the mix. Good sound or even technical flatness only go so far and can even be detrimental, depending on your ear and brain.
Right now I get best results with a combo of LCD-X and Focal Radiance (plus, and always, actual monitors). For me, while mixing I feel I just get what I hear from the LCD X. It feels like a dry, sober, detailed view, infinite extension and headroom. I tend to have to check sub bass elsewhere since the planar lack of punch, compared to the Focals anyway, makes it a little tough. And yea, Radiance is excellent for dynamics, overall bass mixing, and just straight up "does it sound fun yet?"
Haven't had a chance to mix with MM500s yet but thoroughly enjoyed hearing them. Might need to check that out again.
Couldn't have said it better myself. My experiences doing this and in my experience with mixing is exactly what you described. Never had good luck with HD600/or the HD mid-range open ears as a whole.
While the HD600 are good in theory (and definitely for listening) they weren't the best in terms of final product.
That's why I mix with desktop monitors and test with multiple mediums for the final product.
real fun and fascinating video this one!
well, I guess Andrea's said it all at the end, he was trying to make all the mixes sound similar though using different HPs.
so that's probably why it's a great idea to listen to a mix on many varying sources and 'compromise'...
Exactly the process I go through when mixing. I would never use one method and settle. Comparison between listening mediums (and monitors) and compromise in the end is necessary.
The part that makes me smile is the interview, when he says that HD600 were the best. Even though he's not an audiophile and nobody told him what to like and what to dislike, he gravitated towards the most neutral sound. They were the best at it 25 years ago, they're still the reference today. Great sound doesn't get old.
It's hillarious I liked #1 the best through my HD600s. The vocals just have that crispyness to the tone, yet it's not accentuated or muted like on the other ones.
Superb concept for a video
this was a very interesting vidoe, thanks team
guys, when are you going to review the Neumann NDH 30? it would be great to have your take on what seems to be a reference headphone for studio mixing and mastering
Superb!!
I wish you a speedy recovery
Really good video!
This video is awesome!!! I listened to this on my EQ'd HE6se and I somehow liked the number 5 the best and guessed it was mixed on HD600. And I was surprisingly right. I was also right on the DT990 pro since it's just too obvious. I was wrong on the other three since I'm not very familiar with LCD sounds plus they sounds more similar to me.
Great video
1:36 Mix 1
2:00 Mix 2
3:52 Mix 3
4:58 Mix 4
5:34 Mix 5
Great concept!
I'd like to see a similiar video but every headphone will be equalized with a convolution filter to same target curve.
In every professional mixing environment there's acoustic treatment and equalizing of the speakers going on to produce a "flat" sound.
Ran my headphones through Wavelet to iron out the sound signature of my set and gave it some small preference adjustments because Harman(?) isn't quite for me; I found mix 3 so inviting and soothing.
listened to the files myself before watching on my beyerdynamic 770s and surprisingly got everything right except I mixed up 1 and 5 which was kind of funny. MM500 mix was my favorite by far because it sounded so well balanced and lively, I really enjoyed listening to that one.
Before the reveal, I think 4 is the HD600. It just sounds the most balanced on my HD600's.
EDIT: Excuse me, what? #5 was the HD600's?
I'd like to see a mix done on summit-fi headphone system and see the results, we know it sounds better but does it produce better mix?
This is the pinnacle of audiophiles using music to listen to headphones
I'm interested to see the same with iems, especially your u12t
Cool exercise! Did you guys use the same DAC and amp?
We should have more like this is so fun.
I would love a test between the mm-500 and MM-100
Hehe..I guessed that 5 was the HD600. But I'm listening to one of the most wooly, veiled headphones I have. The vocals sounded forward and airy, and yet every instrument was clear and present, as well. It feels to me like the audio mixer was enjoying the best qualities of the HD600 (or should I say exaggerating), rather than trying to compensate for anything that was lacking. I don't have an HD600 to listen with, sadly, so I can't know what it must have sounded like through them.
Yes! The moment they revealed the answer to 5 I thought that the mixer must've liked the headphones so much that he just cranked it up. Then he later confirmed that that was his favorite lol
Going through this I thought I was going to do terribly but I did better than expected. I got 3/5. My guesses were: MM-500, LCD-X, DT-990 Pro, the IEM, HD-600.
My mixing experience - "What does it sound like with this heaphone, and now THIS headphone! What does it sound like in my car?! What does it sound like on my phone, bluetooth speaker, . . on and on.
It would be great to do this again, except this time, ask the audio engineer to eq correct each set of headphones to the harman curve, then do a fresh mix with each set of headphones.
(From what I gather, the Harman curve is a headphone representation of the sound produced by flat response studio monitor speakers being listened to in a treated room.)
That would be very interesting, so we can see which corrected headphones translate best in a mix.
I think it would be easier to guess the mixes if you were listening on flat speakers... at the same time none of these headphones is trully tuned to produce sound the way flat speakers do...
Hanging out in the realm of subjectivity can be fun. 😌✌️
What system do you use for your kefs chrono?
Number 5 was so silky, if I had to be picky then I would dull the treble a bit but I think that’s personal preference, am listening on iPhone speakers too
Nice video about what audio really is about in our ears. It would be perfect a "blind" test with lossy and lossless tracks from streaming services! It would be helpful to find out the maybe snake oil of our music
I did that with Like Clockwork by QOTSA. 16/44 CD rip in Roon vs Spotify with another person swithching between them. Guessed 10/10 in favor of losless. The only possible variable could be slight volume difference but I do not think so since the difference was not so much in dynamics as in transients.
@@jirihorsky9600 I don't mean to offend you but your results have absolutely no value. If you wish to ABX test between lossless and lossy, the only way to do it is to re-encode the lossless file in lossy format, with things like ffmpeg. Years ago I also tried to compare FLAC and lossy youtube audio and guessed 10 times out of 10 times, but I'm 99% sure it was due to volume difference.
Do more please
I’ll probably never get an answer but I would very much like to know why Adam picked the HE560 to do the final test. Through months of following videos and everything, I tend to agree with him most of the time on taste and sound.
Who is Adam?
Shame you didn't use the Neumann NDH-30
The question this leads to is, “Can you listen to a recording to assess headphone performance and be accurate without knowing what headphone was used to mix?”
If you know how the track performs on other headphones, then sure.
But listening to a mix you've never heard before on a headphone you've never listened to before? Definitely not.
@@PiercingSight This is my gripe with some reviewers doing their quick impressions on a new track each time. Like... how do you know you're not just describing the track? Maybe you're familiar with the artist, but there's still a ton of reasons why things could go sideways. You gotta isolate the variables, even if it's less fun for you, come on.
Chrono = the ears?
Mix #1 was the most balanced, followed by #5. On each mix though, I thought that the vocals were EQ'd wrong. Too much 1-3k. This could have messed with assessments.
It's very difficult to subtract/ inverse the sound profiles of each headphone. To reverse engineer the mixes. Nearly impossible. This is pretty much what mix engineers do every day.
need one of them free flavor packets they send in the mail to help down that cable
What an irony - the track mixed on the hd600 (most known headphone for mixing) was the worst. Not sure this was the matter of listening abilities, but rather the mixing of the guy. Especially that his favourite 2 pairs for listening and mixing, resulted in the worst outcome in these two fields respectively
Cos it's a shit headphone lol
1:36 2:00 3:52 4:57 5:34
What the hell is ear gain? I hear this term all the time and when I Google it I cannot get a clear answer.
So there is a frequency range between 1000hz and around 8000hz, where our hearing is less sensitive with headphones and iems because of very complicated factors with the impedance of our pinna (this is NOT true for speakers). Look up harmen headphone target graph on google images. Do you see that large bump starting at 1000hz? Thats the pinna or ear gain. Its essential if you want all frequencies on headphones to be at the same volume.
@@enjoshi-godrez8775 so the part of our ear that is outside of our head requires those frequencies to be louder in order for it to sound flat to us ?
@@Kunu_ on a headphone and iems, yes. Its due to the way HRTF impedance works. Its very very complicated. You can search HRTF or head transfer function to learn more if you wish. On speakers, none of this exists. If they are flat then they will sound flat, though we usally dont perceive that as being neutral.
Perfect example of why neutral doesn't really exist in audio. Our reference points aren't neutral to begin with. Unlike video, we've all seen real skin tones, trees, grass etc under natural sun light
Interesting 😀
Wait wait wait.... wouldn't the way he mixed it make it faulty?
Depending on the mixing order......
I think the idea behind this experiment was how mixing on different headphones effect the results and not how the order you hear your headphones effect tuning.
It almost fees like a broken telephone where what you hear at the start and what comes out at the end is completely different.
Wouldn't it have been better to do the same mixes after a week so 4 headphone 1 iem 5 week experiment where he mixes the same raw file every week?
I really enjoy you putting these experiments but there are faults in it and yeah... but good experiment
Sorry but it's not clear 🎉if all this were eq corrected before mixing...no much sense to mix on cans as they are
Yeah maybe find someone with more experience mixing and in different scenarios.
hang on, "music mixed on studio headphones"...then there's IEM? which one? kinda criss cross
CA10
nice, this solidifies the fact that mixing engineers don't know the audiophile meta and are akin to casual listeners... he said his favorite headphone was the HD600 yet the mix sounded horribly and to add insult to injury, he said the beyers are great because of their better detail (which I could see chrono's WTF face when he said that), he's just the one mixing the song and will do whatever sounds good to him; he's not bound by any audiophile beliefs because he's not an audiophile in our sense of the word.
Actually, please allow me to send you my floppy, stiff, rubber stock 109 Pro cable for eating and I'll take the nice braided copper balanced cable as a trade. You know, since you were pretty much just going to throw it away anyway. 😁
So good headphones = bad mix?
its all just very subjective etc, if you have a good headphones and mix with that sound, then someone with crappy headphones will not hear it correctly....but crappy can also just be different, if you mix on headphones the represent bass well, the bass will suck on headphones where teh bass is recessed, and in vice versa it will be bass heavy.
This is why you need headphones that are just very neutral.
@@Decenium that's why you should always mix on speakers!
If anything this puts the idea of hearing music “as the artist intended” to sleep. They all agreed that the version where they heard exactly what the artist intended sounded the worst by far. As a conclusion from this video: sound is such a personal thing as everybody’s hearing and taste is totally different. If you like Beats, buy beats if you like Grados, buy Grados.
These sickos have had enough of "guess which headphone matches this frequency response" that they're now trying to do the reverse of that.
DMS mushy peas 😂
Audiophile never wrong, the mix is bad
conclusion: he's not a good mixer
welp. can't help it
Well, I could say, this video was fun. But nothing more, it doesn't provide valuable information at all.
Just goes to show iems really are decent for mixing.
Well there you go. “As the artist intended” is a meaningless platitude. Find gear you subjectively enjoy and listen to it.
lol, worst headphone gave the worst mix. imagine
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_MDR-V6
I have my dad's old pair from the 90's, great cans. I haven't found good replacement pads yet, everything I've gotten changes the sound profile too much.
@@andreasmayr4025 Have you tried the Dekoni pads? I think they are the Replacement Ear Pads for the Sony MDR-7506 Headphones - Standard Series
@@Dr.Dan_K 🙏 thank you! 100% need to get those. I got more cloth-y ones that don't seem to seal right. Loses a lot of bass. The faux and suede in the Dekoni should seal nicely.
@@andreasmayr4025 I'm always happy to help! I am curious what your thoughts are when you do!
Well, I could say, this video was fun. But nothing more, it doesn't provide valuable information at all.