Oh yeah...this thread is getting interesting now! Riredale - everyone touches red's nerves at one point or another, PipelineAudio says go for some green tea prior to coming into this forum...there's some truth there!

So Red...while I agree with 100% that you should mix with speakers over headphones whenever possible, as I stated earlier - I'm forced to do a lot of mixing through phones b/c they aren't in the budget just yet. Also - good to keep in mind that I'm not recording multiple different sounding clients in a studio, it's just me with the same stuff every time. Over time I think I've learned where things need to be set to get a good sounding mix.

So here's the meat everyone - please judge/grade my work mixed through headphones. This is my latest track, first draft master(usually I listen to it on different systems and cars for a week or two before finalizing the mix). It was recorded at my house using one mic - an AT3035, a Carvin SM162 mixer and my PC. Guitar, bass and vocals are live. This piece from writing it to mastering so far has consumed 7.5 hours of my time, not too much by my measure.

So please everyone grade my headphone mixing. You guys make it sound like mixing in phones is like a death sentence(!) and well, I don't think my stuff sounds that bad! Oh well...you be the judge.

*Sacrificial Lamb.

>>>>everyone touches red's nerves at one point or another<<<<

This is entirely untrue and unfair. His advice is accurate by all conventions. This is a blatant attack.

He has given accurate advice and has been rebutted with excuses trying to oppose logic.

He has not been hostile in the least. If one chooses to ignore the FREE advice given then don't take a defensive stand and attack the messenger, sheesh.

MJ

Ouch man...THAT was harsh! I didn't attack Red, Red knows I've had enough of that. No one in here will sing Rednroll's praises any louder than me dude so step off. That's uncalled for. I didn't atack him and I didn't say he was hostile. You're over-reacting. The user I was talking to said he was a newbie here and he felt bad thinking he upset Red...I was just letting him know he probably didn't really piss anyone off or step on toes like he was afraid of.

Sorry to have upset you so bad dude...relax.

"please judge/grade my work mixed through headphones."

Looking at this mix spectrally easily reveals some problems due to mixing through the headphones. If you look at the low end, there is a major hole/dip from 100Hz and below. There is an over compensation peak boost at 150Hz. The highend air of the cymbals is lacking. At 18Khz there is a -17 dB almost brickwall, Low pass filter. In other words at frequencies from 18Khz-22Khz the level is down 17 dB from the rest of the mix. The mid-range is judgementally a little too much. Aside from the spectral frequency problems, this mix is overcompressed. You can hear instruments ducking from the compression. There is no dynamics due to this over compression. The crash cymbals and snare hits are suffering from this over compression, like they've had the transients clipped off of them. Most of this can be contributed to the headphones, because the headphones can't accurately reproduce the frequencies from 100Hz and below. Therefore, to make up for this you ended up boasting too much in the 150-250Hz area to compensate for the lack of low end. The headphones also can't accurately reproduce the extreme high frequencies, so you never even noticed that 18Khz and above was missing and it's lacking all the air from the cymbals and vocals. You probably could have noticed the over compression a lot more because you would have then noticed that the high frequency transients where getting the life sucked out of them. Other than that, yeah it sounds great. :-)

Other than that....! Cool, that's actually what I was looking for. So given my current situation, what should I do? My cash is tapped out so new monitors are not an option for a few months. I master in Wavelab, and there are several analysis tools that I don't take advantage of. Do you think that utilizing something like an FFT Spectrum Analyzer would help out those problems?

WOW! My goodness...I'm looking at that track through a 60 band spectrum meter and you're so right. Hmmm....any advice on where to start with fixing that? I don't want to retrack but it would be easy enough to go back and spend some time with EQs. That's really amazing seeing all of those holes!

"Finally, I would question the thought that headphones can't deliver decent bass."

Well, yeah here's where he might have touched a nerve. He asked for advice and I gave helpful accurate advice and then he questions it. Ok, that's fine, I don't believe everything I hear too, but if you're going to question the advice then have a little more information behind the reason you're questioning it. He also goes on to outline a difference between "speakers" and "phones" when headphones are composed of are speakers. Don't quite get that reasoning, but ok question my advice.

"BSEE"
This actually made me chuckle a bit, like this had an influence on my advice of who I was talking too. If you have a BSEE then you should be well aware of frequency and wavelength. Low frequencies have a very long wavelength. For a speaker to produce a long wavelength there are 2 physical requirments that must be met. 1. There must be a large amount of surface area of the speakers cone. or 2. The speaker must have a high amount of excursion (ie the distance the voice coil can travel). So looking at these 2 physical requirements you can easily see that a headphone does not have either due to their physical size, therefore can not accurately reproduce low frequencies. So, without having this basic understanding of the fundamentals of how a speaker produces sound, how can you question anything?

Hope this helps clear up any doubts,
Rednroll
also a "BSEE"
11 years of recording studio experience
5 years Recording School Instructor
5 years Applications engineer of audio system components (ie speakers/transducers, amplifiers, DSP's, system architectures).

"That's really amazing seeing all of those holes!"

And I only spent about 30 seconds listening to it, over my Alesis Monitor One studio monitors. I didn't want to go too much further on the critique because, I thought you might start to take offense. Some EQ will help, but the better thing to do is go back to the mix and reduce all the compression, unless you did that in mastering and hopefully you have an unmastered version that isn't so compressed. You really sucked the life out of that song, with the compression. It's screaming at me for dynamics. So until you can get some of those dynamics back so the intruments can naturally breath a little, adding EQ won't help that much.

Yeah - my mix is all intact. I'll go back and get that compression outa there. I save the premasters too and I ran up the peak master to hot on that one I think also, overcompressing the entire mix.

So I just opened that premaster and I'm running it through a Waves Q10 while I watch the analyser...amazing. It sounds 10 fold better.

You're the King. Muchas gracias.

First thing I do want to point out is that the 18Khz cutoff is probably due to the 160Kbs .MP3 compression you used, so this shouldn't be lacking so much if you have it in .WAV format.

As far as making do with what you got. You are on the right track. Prior to mixing you need to listen to commercially released CD's that have a similar type of music through the headphones and really learn how things sound through the headphones. Listen to the vocal tone, the cymbals and highats, the kick drum and bass guitar. Recognize where they may be lacking in spectral quality. Pay attention to the dynamics, or lack of in some cases. You need to do this before every mix you do, and then when you almost have your mix done, put those reference CD tracks in again and see how your mix sounds compared to those. If they're drastically different you need to do some adjusting. The other thing is to run a spectral anaylizer when doing your mix, and also compare that to the commercial released reference CD's spectral curve. Although you might not be able to accurately hear the high and low frequencies in the headphones you can see where they are in comparison to the reference CD, and make adjustments visually. Now you'll still have imaging problems like Cold mentioned due to the headphones, but this is probably the closest you'll be able to get with using the headphones.

RIght on...just looking some alesis monitors -) Are the powered ones good or separate power?

I usually do a lot of A/B 'ing with commercial mixes of the same type of music...didn't with that one. Probably cause I lost my FreeFilter plugin. I used to use that in my mastering process to sample the actual eq curve of commercial releases.

Dude I think I've just been getting lazy. Pathetic. Thanks again for taking time to go through all of that. Do you ever sleep?

Red,
sorry mate but have you ever dealt with audio from the typical video camera shot by the average videographer?

I do quite a lot, it typically doesn't sound too bad through a set of cheap speakers but sounds like c**p through a set of decent cans. I'd never suggest anyone monitors a mulitrack mix through the worlds best headphones BUT if you're a typical video guy then you need to start listening to your audio through a good set of headphones.
Suddenly you'll start hearing all manner of horrid things that shouldn't be there, motor noise, background noise, resonances, echo, hum and buzz just to name a few.
I ALWAYS start by lisetning with a good pair of headphones, one track at a time. Once I've gotten rid of the garbage as best I can, THEN I start judgung the mix on a pair of speakers.

I'm in no way knocking what you're saying about mixing multitrack music but that's a very different game to audio for video. You start (or at least try to) with the cleanest possible source, you expect your audience is mostly going to hear your work on half decent speakers. But the average TV has nothing like that, heck even the average entire 5.1 domestic sound system costs less than my headphones.

Maybe I can put the headphone thing to rest seeing as how I started it, well I think I did.
I'd never suggest using headphones for MIXING, just yesterday I was mixing a VO and already mixed music, checked it first with the cans and then listened through my very cheap speakers. Mix is TOTALLY different, music is now almost inaudible, probably sounds 12 dB lower against the voice than it does through the cans. Also you CANNOT judge spatial relationships through headphones.

So why did I even mention them? Because they're the best way I've found for listening for defects in a single track, I'm not talking the finer nuances here, I'm talking the sort of crud that invariably gets into stuff recorded in less than ideal situations with on-camera mics. For that in my opinion they're vastly better than any speakers I could realistically use in my workspace and I can turn the volume WAY up without having the family going nuts.

I know didly squat about mixing music anyway, if I ever need music mixed I'll give it to an expert and I'll have it recorded in a studio.

As to the other comments about headphones versus speakers and bass response, well the experts could well be right but it has nothing to do with the size of the cones. A loudspeaker works into free air with a very low coupling efficiency, that'e why they need to be big, they do a lot of work at very low efficiency. Head[hones are much more tightly coupled, the volume of air inside the headphones is minute compared to the space in a room, the tiny cones can easily compress the air space and achieve much tighter coupling.

Either way though what you do miss in headphones is the total body experience of the sound, not all that we hear goes through our ears, and as I said before there's no way to judge spatial relationships with headphones. So yes I whole heartedly agree with what Red was saying, their pretty well dead useless for judging a mix, that doesn't mean they're useless things to have in the kit and not all of us have the luxury of a monitoring studio.

Just to clear up a few other things:

The quality of your video card will make no difference to your video, period. There's no way you can judge video through a PCs monitor, that's an even bigger mistake than trying to do do a music mix through headphones.

I think the original question was about judging the placement of sounds in a 5.1 space. Somehow the word "mix" got into the discussion. That word invokes a much different meaning to someone working in a studio than to someone just trying to add surround effects. If that is what the original question was then I still don't think a better soundcard is going to make much difference. Even better speakers wouldn't be mission critical stuff. Getting a proper space to judge the relationship would be though, getting proper speaker placement would also be a big factor as well. And then think about how your audience is going to be listening to it. I've been in one home where they proudly showed off their new home theatre system, but ah well you see ALL the speakers were on the bookfhelf beside the TV.

That's not to say if you're trying to MIX audio you don't need the best kit money can buy. If you're trying to record the stuff then even more so and I'd add there's no point having good gear if you don't have the right space for it. My recording gear has now got at least 40 dB S/N ratio better than the only space I have for recording in. Is that good enough, well just, barely. Short of ripping out walls though there's not much I can do about it at the moment.

And the final irony, after I take reasonable care with my audio it gets played out through 1" speakers, yip those really high quality ones built into LCD monitors and they're in 400 locations (shudder).

"sorry mate but have you ever dealt with audio from the typical video camera shot by the average videographer?"

Yes, three years of audio post production doing radio/Tv advertising.

"well the experts could well be right but it has nothing to do with the size of the cones. A loudspeaker works into free air with a very low coupling efficiency, that'e why they need to be big, they do a lot of work at very low efficiency."

and how's that different from what I said?

Hey Red, again going mildly off topic, before cosmo runs out and buys a pair of monitor ones, are you running a sub? I have a set of monitor ones that I retired a couple of years ago, personally found that without a sub the very bottom was nonexistent. The other issue I had was the size of the sweet spot, they were decent on axis but not so good any degree off. I ended up with a set of event 20/20's. I still run a sub, but not as hard, and clients outside the mix position have a better shot at hearing what I'm up to. Still not great, but better. Cosmo, before you run out and buy speakers; treat your room, do some research, demo the 4 or 5 most likely candidates IN YOUR ROOM, budget for a sub.
Every room, person and budget creates a unique solution. It's all about ballance. By the way most of my monitoring is done at -40 to -60 db spl.
Steve S.

Thanks Cold, great advice as usual from you guys. I'm still reeling over the spectrum analysis!

You say "treat the room" and try out monitors "in the room". These things catch my interest. Maybe you guys have a link to some site that tells how you can use some everyday materials to help with this? IE, not a bunch more cash(hobbyist, remember). And how exactly do you get to try out all of these monitors at your place? Buy them and return them? I'm not getting that part.

The sub question was in my head too...getting good bass response from such little speakers confuses me for all the same reasons we've been talking about. I have a few subs - not the best but they would suffice I think to add a little bottom. You guys have any opinion on powering the monitors? Would I be better off buying a powered monitor or using my current Sony receiver to power them?

Actually, The monitor one's I purchased as my main reference monitors. I only choose these at the time because the studio I was working in at that time was also using monitor one's . The monitor one's became a similar replacement for the defacto Yamaha NS-10's. So when doing work in that studio and my own, it made sense to have the same monitors. In addition to these I have 2 other sets of monitors connected. The one set I designed myself is a 3-way system which has a pair of 15's in them for the low-end extension monitoring. I have these monitors connected to a seperate Mackie 1400 Watt amp, so that monitor acts not only for my low-end reference but my crank it up and blow the client out of the studio when the job is complete. I've actually watched flies that where hanging near the lights fall to their death when I cracked it up and played music with some low frequency content. The Monitor One's are powered by a 300 Watt Hafler amp. My third set is a cheap pair of self powered computer speakers. I agree though that you can't get a good low-end bass extension on the monitor one's, especially if you get the Alesis amp with them, but they do have a pretty good performance none the less, especially at their price point.

"You guys have any opinion on powering the monitors? Would I be better off buying a powered monitor or using my current Sony receiver to power them?"

Powered monitors are nice, because what they can do is match the amplifier with the speakers. In other words, if the speakers may lack in performance in certain frequencies or imaging, then the amplifier can be designed to compensate for this. That's the benefit. I actually don't prefer self powered monitors, just because they usually don't give me the power I want. It's not like I do most of my work at high spl levels, it's just that if I want it, I know it's there. It's like having a sports car with a V12. Sure you're not going to be driving at 175 miles/hr all the time, but if you want to you can get it there. The key with getting any non powered monitors though, is that you need a good amp to go along with it. I recommend most anything by Hafler, Crown, or Mackie.

Yeah, I agree with you on that...I like a lot of headroom with amplifier power. I like Hafler...I've had two of theirs before...groovy.

As much as I hate to say it cosmo.... Red's right.....lol :)

I listened to your mix and although it sounds good, it sounds like you mixed it with headphones. Above & beyond the fact that the lo freq is incorrect, It is very centered and imaged incorrectly because what you are hearing is dimensionally incorrect.

But let me add that it is really great work.

& BTW .... I gave the Layla to a friend of mine here in nashville.... so you lost out on the free card deal...

here in...Nashville!!! Uhhh - me too. Free card - whoa....big miss there!!! Thanks for the kind words on my work. You'll notice I too agree with Red on this 100%. I've actually just done a quick mix at lunch to see if I'm headed in the right direction. I'll start a new thread though...this one is getting too long.

So what's up with Nash-vegas? How long you been here? I actually live in Franklin but I'm downtown all the time...like in about three hours....

Oh god..... I never drive here.... it's a blessing that I work from home!

I'm about half way to NY from where you're at .....lol ;)

Near rivergate..... send me your contact info here and we'll go have lunch....