Is there anyone here mixing with headphones and getting placements?

[bassmothership]

https://www.thomann.de/de/audient_id4.htm

What made you choose this specific brand instead of others?

CosmicDolphin.

I chose it because I needed to replace a way more expensive Focusrite, but for just over £100 it has excellent low latency drivers, one well rated mic pre, direct monitoring with a dedicated knob, a front panel DI , both sizes of headphone jack on the front, phantom power, and thing called scroll control which turns the large volume knob into a controller for anything that normally used a mouse wheel and is surprisingly handy with things like Fabfilter Pro-Q2 or 3 for sweeping around eq bands.

Focusrite pre amps sound bad right? if compared to any Audient or Apollo?

[bassmothership]

A futon makes for a fantastic bass trap; the heavier the cotton batting, the better. Mine is directly behind the mix position, in the sweet spot, so clients can hear pretty much the same mix as I. A mattress works well too. Neither are as dense, compact and convenient as corning or rockwool, but they'll do in a pinch. You may need to get creative about mounting.

That said, I think Matt VanDer Boegh used nothing but headphones, his first three years with Taxi, and he has placements, sho 'nuff.

Yes, and that's probably what I'm going for.

[bassmothership]

Using $100 US headphones with solid commercial references should get you a long way. Longer if you can monitor low volume on your monitors for cross reference.

If panning is an issue and you have the funds getting a dedicated headphone amp like the SPL with the crossed https://spl.audio/professional-fidelity ... x/?lang=en can help you. There are less expensive ones than this though - this one is criminally expensive.

Room treatment is great but not as needed if you mix at low volume. If you mix loud then you activate the room and every peak and valley in your room response comes into play in a massive way.

Mark (Cosmic Dolphin) uses a lot of Auralex. His mixes sound great and balanced.

I use only OC703 4" panels. I have placements so its been working. I also don't mix loud beyond getting eq and compression on my parts. I mix as low as possible on my monitors to get levels balanced - so low that I can hear myself breath over the volume coming out. I also cross reference on headphones.

I am using Ozone advanced / Neutron and that helps get things in the proper relationship. There are other plugins which can help you in that way too.

What I do not do anymore (and I honestly consider it a waste of time) is cross reference on headphones or speakers that I either don't own or don't listen to all day. That includes white wire iPhone earbuds.

That also includes my car - my Subaru has a cutting high end which exacerbates sibilance on vocals. If I only listened to mixes in the car I would go absolutely crazy trying to get rid of the sibilance that I was hearing.

If you want another way to listen, put on your mix at a healthy volume and go to another room in your apartment or house (assuming you have that). This will give you a true acoustic mono listening experience. I also find its awesome for a cross reference for levels. I often put on a mix and go upstairs to make coffee. If I can hear everything well balanced and I am grooving and can also hear it cutting through over the espresso machine then I know I am done.

I cross reference on the speakers and headphones I use all the time with well know commercial mixes. They will give you a set parameters which you can respect.

It's nice you mention about listening in the car. I've been freaking out trying to make it sound good there. Once I realized I wasn't mixing at home anymore, I was mixing in my car.

I should try that, listening loud from my kitchen!

As for headphones, after long research I decide to get an Audeze LCD-X and a Topping A90. Since Focusrite 18i20 DAC seems to be pretty good, I'll take the outs and feed the HP amp. Audeze gives 1 month to try so let's see how this goes!

I'm also finally getting the "new" Auratone 5C and a Crown D-75.

From that, practice a lot and let's see how my mixes will sound.

[bassmothership]

That said, I think Matt VanDer Boegh used nothing but headphones, his first three years with Taxi, and he has placements, sho 'nuff.

Andrew Scheps seems to like mixing on headphones

[lesmac]

From your req plot one can see how your room modes are multiples of one another.

I would first of all re shoot your room with REQ wizard at lower volume levels until you get a reasonably smooth graph to give you a threshold level for monitoring at the moment. This is the point before which your room modes come in to play too much. Next, using a decibel meter set your monitor level accordingly.

Bass traps are good to have. They can be wrapped in geo cloth to inhibit fibre transmission. It depends on how much effort you want to put in.

The path of least resistance is to monitor at a low level with at least some attempt to tame early reflections and to use headphones with maybe some software correction.

[cosmicdolphin]

Thank you so much for sharing your room pics. Could I also see your sonarworks plot without correction if that's not a hassle for you.

Sure

https://ibb.co/mGwVyY8

It's the first time I've heard of Limp Mass Barrier, same as MLV right? I'll look around to see if I can find it.

Same material but I think the emphasis is on having it hang limply , if it's not decoupled from other surfaces it can't do it's job

So you got a thick sheet of MLV, cut them in pieces and crafted those panels?
How thick is the sheet you purchased? Would you pls share the SOS link?

No the broadband absorber panels have rockwool insulation inside, two slabs on top of each other and then an air gap. Covered in breathable fabric and then II faced the front of them with leftover Auralex tiles

I based the design on this article https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... -tony-rigg

As for rockwool, I can find it in Japan, but I'd rather never use that. As far as I know, the respiratory risks aren't worth it to be taken, imo gov safety standards should never be trusted. and besides... Imagine an earthquake and all the rockwool panels in my room broken and the cover fabric torn exposing and spreading all the fibers on my body and my whole apartment.

Ahh ..ok..yes just have to use your own discretion then , it's what most people use. Maybe read the SOS article. I think GIK sell bags the right size to drop the slabs into as well but I made frames so I could double stack. Thankfully earthquakes are not something we need to worry about in England.

So my situation would require long hours of studying acoustic books, searching for non-harmful materials available which can significantly improve my bass range, if there's any, lots of hours experimenting and trying, etc... So for now, I wont sweat that and just jump straight to headphone mixing and grab some placements here!

No worries, your quickest / safest win then IMHO then would be to cover the hard flooring and get Sonarworks and maybe a room kit from Auralex or similar if the budget allowed.

[bassmothership]

Thank you so much for sharing your room pics. Could I also see your sonarworks plot without correction if that's not a hassle for you.

Sure

https://ibb.co/mGwVyY8

It's the first time I've heard of Limp Mass Barrier, same as MLV right? I'll look around to see if I can find it.

Same material but I think the emphasis is on having it hang limply , if it's not decoupled from other surfaces it can't do it's job

So you got a thick sheet of MLV, cut them in pieces and crafted those panels?
How thick is the sheet you purchased? Would you pls share the SOS link?

No the broadband absorber panels have rockwool insulation inside, two slabs on top of each other and then an air gap. Covered in breathable fabric and then II faced the front of them with leftover Auralex tiles

I based the design on this article https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... -tony-rigg

As for rockwool, I can find it in Japan, but I'd rather never use that. As far as I know, the respiratory risks aren't worth it to be taken, imo gov safety standards should never be trusted. and besides... Imagine an earthquake and all the rockwool panels in my room broken and the cover fabric torn exposing and spreading all the fibers on my body and my whole apartment.

Ahh ..ok..yes just have to use your own discretion then , it's what most people use. Maybe read the SOS article. I think GIK sell bags the right size to drop the slabs into as well but I made frames so I could double stack. Thankfully earthquakes are not something we need to worry about in England.

So my situation would require long hours of studying acoustic books, searching for non-harmful materials available which can significantly improve my bass range, if there's any, lots of hours experimenting and trying, etc... So for now, I wont sweat that and just jump straight to headphone mixing and grab some placements here!

No worries, your quickest / safest win then IMHO then would be to cover the hard flooring and get Sonarworks and maybe a room kit from Auralex or similar if the budget allowed.

I''ll have a look at the SOS article, see what can be done here.

Thanks a lot!

[bassmothership]

From your req plot one can see how your room modes are multiples of one another.

I would first of all re shoot your room with REQ wizard at lower volume levels until you get a reasonably smooth graph to give you a threshold level for monitoring at the moment. This is the point before which your room modes come in to play too much. Next, using a decibel meter set your monitor level accordingly.

Bass traps are good to have. They can be wrapped in geo cloth to inhibit fibre transmission. It depends on how much effort you want to put in.

The path of least resistance is to monitor at a low level with at least some attempt to tame early reflections and to use headphones with maybe some software correction.

Great ideas my friend.
It didn't occur to me to measure with REW at low volume.

Thank you very much.

[lesmac]

It didn't occur to me to measure with REW at low volume.

I have done a similar thing just by playing weighted pink noise through my monitors and using a spectrum analyser on my phone positioned where my head would be. One can ascertain the dB level before room modes come into play and thus set the maximum level to monitor at and know you are not being fooled by room modes. It's down and dirty but it works up to a point.

Theoretically you should be able to put an EQ on the master bus and set it to read flat at say 15dB higher and you should be hearing the truth at THAT particular volume. Of course that EQ curve would not be appropriate at 10dB higher or lower.
If you didn't want to fork out for the Sonarworks correction plugin the manual approach I outlined above could be the best way to achieve a higher monitoring level as long as you stick to fixed points of reference and be prepared to take the EQ in and out - rather tedious.
It's nice to be able to switch between different monitors at different levels to keep things fresh as well as for different tasks.

You definitely need to treat early reflection points [mirror point between each monitor and your corresponding ear].

Consumer products will be effective for these mid to higher frequencies.

From the previous posts it's obvious that people enjoying success reference to other tracks a lot and are mindful of volume levels in relation to whether or not their rooms are playing some part. It's a fluid situation. Just like sound.