Earbud Monitors - Mixing on the road??

Muzick

Muzick

Experienced
Good evening everyone,

I've been traveling at my job as of late and wanted to do some mixing on the road for my band. Since I won't have real monitors is there a decent replacement for some in ear bud form?

...or is this just a waste of my time, since I've heard mixing in 'cans' gives you skewed results?

I'm looking at the $200-300 range if that will allow me to mix decently while on the road.

Thanks for any suggestions / input!
 
That's a hard call. I mix in cans even though it is generally frowned upon. Honestly this is what you can do. You mix in some decent cans like beyerdynamic dt 770/880/990, akg 702, sennheiser 650/600 and after you do a mix, burn it into a cd or mp3 or cassette (lol) and have your stereo with no bass or treble boost or cut. Adjust accordingly.
 
There are some higher-quality ear transducers that work better than the lower-quality ones. You can certainly mix on anything, but I'd want to hear the results on a reference system (!) before declaring it "final." :)
 
^ yea that. I also do the bulk of mixing on headphones, but I do all the final mixes and fine tuning on a reference system. Needs to also be done loud, which is another reason headphones might not be ideal - don't want hearing damage now....
 
Good to know. I'm in agreement about mixing through cans and wanting to hear the 'final' cut on a loud speaker reference system.

In any case, I just came across these bad boys: Sennheiser HD 800.

They rank in at 'the best headphones anyone audiophile has ever listened to', but at $1,500 bucks!?

Anyone here have a pair of these? Apparently they offer unmatched performance in the headphone arena.

'Don
 
jon said:
^ yea that. I also do the bulk of mixing on headphones, but I do all the final mixes and fine tuning on a reference system. Needs to also be done loud, which is another reason headphones might not be ideal - don't want hearing damage now....
Click to expand...

I beg to differ with mixing at high volumes. I'm no professional engineer, but I own every major mixing, recording, and mastering book I know of. All major mix engineers highly recommend mixing at low volumes (for the most part) with the occasional moment of cranking it to see how it holds up. This is due to the way the ear works. The ear doesn't detect small changes in volume at high SPL's. Once I took this advice my mixes held MUCH better at all volumes.

One mixing engineer said he mixes at such a low volume that if people were conversing softly behind him he'd have to ask them to leave.

I also have been mixing in headphones as of late. I have a 16 year old pair of Sony's (don't know the model number), but they sound pretty good. I do what Sam does. I check it in my car after playing a professionally mixed song of similar frequency content. Then I adjust accordingly. I've had what I think are pretty good results. I've also got TONS of compliments on my mix here at the forum in the recording section.


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Oh yea, totally agreed there. I mix at moderate volumes, and I've read that part about mixing at 'soft conversation' too. What I meant was in the FINAL mix/fine tuning - do it loud thru a set of reference speakers. There's a lot of things that will happen at loud volumes that you won't have picked up earlier - learnt that the hard way many times lol
So what I do now is when I think I have the mix down, I'll play it a thru 2 different reference systems LOUD and see what needs to be fixed. If it's anything major, I go back to the cans usually. If it's something minor I might just bring across my laptop and interface and try to fix it there on the spot. Hope that clarifies things a little, I should have been more explicit, my bad lol

Not a professional engineer myself for the record tho, but I have enough experience to know my way around and be dangerous in the studio :lol
 
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