ear pain while mixing with new monitors?

[Mmichaelis]

Greetings,

I'm new to mixing/mastering, and I got my first pair of decent monitors to help on this journey. They are Kali LP-6s. I've had them about two months and I've noticed that I'm starting to have ear pain/discomfort while I'm mixing. Due to the constraints of my room, I have them about 4 feet away from my head, but I keep them at really low levels. I had wondered if since this is my first time mixing, if maybe my ears were not accustomed to hearing the new wide range of frequencies I was hearing (since I hadn't had mixing monitors before)? 4 feet may seem close but again, I would say the volume is at 15%, just loud enough so I can hear it. Attached is a picture of my setup.

Obviously, the thought of having my hearing be injured is a very scary thought. I want to be smart about this. I have an appointment with an ENT doctor this week, and I'm going to have my hearing tested.

Have any of you had issues with ear discomfort while mixing? or while getting used to new monitors? I thought about trying out a different pair of monitors, like maybe some smaller ones (since the Kali's are 6" speakers - maybe a 6" speaker 4 feet away is too much for the ears even at low levels?). Maybe its the front porting of the Kali's that is causing the issue? My next attempt might be a Yamaha HS5s.

Thanks so much for any feedback you have!

Matt Michaelis

[cassmcentee]

There are different kinds of pain...
If I push the subs in a mix for too long my ears start to "Flutter"
When the flutter starts to happen I know that I'm pushing too much air through the sub woofer in the low Hz's
Down where I can barely hear it (20hz - 40hz)
The flutter hurts if I don't catch it quickly
Takes me about 12hrs to recover?

What pain are you having?

[RobertElse]

Matt - I would definitely pay attention to that warning sign from your most precious ears and do something about it, especially if you're getting it despite listening at low levels. Bummer that it is happening on monitors you probably researched and spent significant money on.

Do you have ringing in your ears after listening (tinnitus) and/or is it pain like an ear ache, or something else? Use a dB meter (many available on smartphones) and keep it well under 80dB which is the recommended max. My monitors are about 4 feet away as well, so that's not necessarily the problem, although I spend a lot of time on headphones. I think the high end of the frequency band would be more suspect as the cause, rather than the lows but I don't really know. Can you return those monitors and try different ones? You definitely want to change something!

There is a free monitor analysis app from KRK called "KRK Audio Tools" that will let you see where the strong levels are in the frequency band from your monitors - you might try that, or some similar tools out there - and compare the results to your previous monitors.

See also Room EQ Wizard, which gives you lots of info and plots regarding what's coming out of your monitors. Good for comparing various monitors.

Hope you find a solution soon!
Robert

[RobertElse]

You could also try lowering the monitors vertically, to see if a different placement of the woofer and tweeter relative to the level of your ears makes a difference. Or spread them farther apart if you can. Hope you can get away from the pain... definitely something to be scared of!
Best of luck,
Robert

[cosmicdolphin]

Personally I've never heard of anyone suffering from ear pain due to a particular monitoring system. It just doesn't make any sense unless you were abusing them and your ears which it doesn't sound like.

My monitors are just out of arms reach so probably closer than 4ft. I did notice from the pic that you may have yours in a strangely high up position ? Most monitors are designed to have the tweeter at ear level.

Tinnitus and varying degrees of hearing loss are the usual symptoms that many musicians get from spending too long listening to music too loud.. Most ear pain is caused by some sort of infection.

Go see your ENT - and remember the best mixing tool on the planet is the kettle. Take regular breaks.

Mark

[GBall]

Not a doctor (Okay I've been watching Brooklyn 99 on Amazon)

Maybe what you are experiencing is something specifically physical to you or the equipment. So Doctor good.

But discomfort / listening fatigue happens to everyone - you can read whole chapters about it in something like "Zen and the Art of Mixing"; the games it can play with your perception, and advice from some of those professionals mixers on how to deal with it. It contains better advice and options than I can give. You do have to work up to working in longer sessions, and you need to recognize some of the specific symptoms that affect your work quality even if its not painful. (yet) Eric calls it a MindF#ck, where for example minute changes of half a DB on a fader so start to sound amazing and important, when in truth nobody in their right state finds a change that small to be so significant. Things like that. My $0.02 worth...

[gitanosoy]

Hi,
I personally think your ears hurting is from another cause and it just happened to start as you got your monitors up and running..I have been mixing through the same monitors for 25 years and no pain, actually the headphones cause more pain than speakers over a long period of time...this is a first for me too that I hear of this.

Hopefully your ears will feel better and it's not something serious.