TIP: how to get a better (closed) headphone experience

SOAWM

Inspired
Hello Fractalians,

Not everyone has the possibility to play loud at home (including me) and playing with headphones often lacks the 'amp in the room'-feel. Yesterday I was playing with my AKG 271 and I wasn't that happy with the sound. It was to direct to my ears and didn't give a roomy feel. After messing around with settings, I came to a very simple, yet effective solution.

When you're playing with closed headphones try to go to the cab block and ramp up the room level to 100. If necessary also use the low and hi cut in the cab block the filter out the mud.

For me this gave a whole new playing experience! Perfect for jamming and working out riffs. My X cab is dry for going direct and my Y cab is the one I mentioned above for playing with headphones.

I can't stop playing now.

Hope it has the same effect for some of you!

Cheers!
 
Thanks! I'll try that... I've also experienced that with headphones the sound looses "air", but I didn't know if it was because my monitors color the tone and the headphones actually give me the correct tone, or the other way around...?
 
Thanks for the tip! I often have to play with cans on, and this really helps ease the flat tone and brain-fatigued feeling you get from spending too much time with phones.
 
I've also experienced that with headphones the sound looses "air", but I didn't know if it was because my monitors color the tone and the headphones actually give me the correct tone, or the other way around...?
It's mainly because there's no acoustic feedback from speaker to guitar. Without some room volume for your guitar to respond to, you lose a significant amount of tone and feel.
 
The room level setting in the cab block is really helpful for getting good tones from headphones. I prefer it vs. using a combination of far field and near field IR's.

I also think that using the enhancer (make sure your output is STEREO) makes a world of difference when using headphones.

I've recently discovered that I prefer using open-ear headphones over closed ear. They sound more natural to me and I like being able to hear the sound of me physically picking the strings. My settings on the Axe still remain the same regardless of whether I'm using open-ear or closed-ear phones (room level, enhancer, and stereo output a MUST!)
 
When I first plugged into the headphone jack after getting the Axe II I had a sinking "oh no, this is not good" feeling because at home I play almost entirely through headphones. After a quick search of the forum I found the room level and enhancer trick and it immediately changed my experience to one of bliss. The heaphone issue combined with my lack of patience, need for instant gratification, and unwillingness to spend as much time as necessary learning prevented me from gelling with the Ultra even though I knew the tones were there. I'd heard them online. No problem bonding with the new unit at all. Now I can't stop playing as well. My wife commented the other day that I was obsessed. I replied "No dear, just inspired". And I am. Alright, maybe a little obsessed too.
 
Yeah, I don't go up to 100 on the room level, but I've been doing this trick for quite a while. Not sure how it translates to using an FRFR system or anything, but as a headphone player about 99% of the time it's my go-to parameter. I try to tell people that it just makes the headphones disappear.
 
How to get a better headphone experience?

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Thanks for this tip. I just spent 3 hours with headphones on and it was a much more pleasant experience with this adjustment.
 
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