hi everyone welcome to pokepad uk with andrew scheps hello it is his punkerpad
and today we're going to talk about mixing in headphones i have a question for you andrew
do you mix in headphones i do oh all right thanks for coming
i read everywhere that you just can't mix on headphones i have it on high authority
that no it turns out if you don't read that then you don't know that and you can just
do it ah that's what it is yeah all right so if it's on the internet it's true but if you don't
see it it's not on the internet ah so do explain why would you make some headphones
well why would you not mix on headphones i started mixing on headphones when i started mixing stuff
in the box and i was traveling which were two things that happened because of each other
i'd be in a hotel room i do not have a pair of speakers with me i work on very large non-powered
speakers carry those around with a power amp would be ridiculous so all i have with me is headphones
i started working on things because i could always thinking when i get back to the studio
i will listen on speakers that's when i will sort out the low end get whatever needs to be
fixed fixed because obviously you can't mix on headphones but at least i can get some work done
pretty quickly i realized that i was listening on speakers to these mixes i'd done on headphones
the only stuff that there was to change would be the exact same stuff you would notice with any
sort of perspective on the mix it wasn't oh now i have to sort out the low end now i have to do
the vocal level for whatever reason i was able to mix on these headphones i use
sony mdr 7506s they're cheap they sell them on amazon they last with heavy use a couple of
years before they start to get a little bit tired get a new pair they sound exactly the same i've
been buying them now for over 20 years i've never noticed them sounding different i am just really
used to them they're a bit the same as my speakers the speakers are actually incredibly flat but that
makes them sound very bright because there's no mid-range push these headphones very bright
but they're not flat but that's okay my ears have acclimatized to them or my brain is acclimatized
to the way things sound so i can absolutely work using these headphones any other headphones i
can just listen i can't work i don't feel like i know what to do next then thinking about it
when you mix on speakers you've got to set them up somewhere so you now have to take the room into
account yep you have no choice you're at the mercy of the acoustic environment the speakers are in
you can if the room is dead enough just listen loud and get close to the speakers and sort of
not hear the room but you have to be in a really dead room that can take the level
for that to happen otherwise you're at the mercy of the room
when you put on a pair of headphones you are wearing the studio on your head which is 100
reproducible there i've never been in a room that has affected the way my headphones sounded
you could be in an environment that could affect it like if you're trying to work on a plane
yes the noise levels are ridiculous that's not gonna work they're gonna be things you
cannot hear they're being masked but if you're in a relatively quiet room you put on the headphones
you're in exactly the same acoustic space i do not use any correction software on them and i
absolutely don't use any of the spatialization software i'm not trying to make my headphones
sound like speakers some people swear by having a headphone amp that has some crossfeeding in it
put a little bit of the left on the right to get rid of these sort of uncomfortable things
about hard panning in headphones i default to having some stereo widening on my mixbus so i am
crossfeeding through that anyway i don't feel that that's an issue and so many people listen to mixes
on headphones that i feel like you're almost doing the song a disservice by having something that
is physically uncomfortable to listen to on headphones everybody with earbuds or airpods
or bluetooth things or whatever is listening in that exact same way and if you've made the
mix uncomfortable to listen to that's made it uncomfortable for them when i'm mixing records
that are 12 songs or whatever i will invariably spend one chunk of one day listening to the entire
record on the speakers the rest of the record is done in headphones i find it easier to focus
to hear details whereas with the speakers i get distracted by things it's a weird thing
and this has come sort of over the course of many years that it's migrated into this it used to be
that i had headphones at home but i couldn't have my speakers set up at home because we were living
in half of a house we were sharing with somebody so my speakers were set up somewhere else i had to
travel and go listen to them and they weren't in the most ideal environment it worked it was fine
that is when i started doing the bulk of the work in the headphones and then checking on speakers
there was a song i got a call from an artist i'd mixed a record for uh he'd written a song
they were performing it live while they were on tour they were going to track it
during one of the shows and he wanted to put it out four days later because he was going
to be performing on a late night show in la and he wanted to debut the song in that way
on that show and have it available the next day i was in a hotel when i switched to the speakers
usually what happens is i hear things like wow the whole mix just sounds a little bit
wet like there's too much reverb too much room going on too much ambience or there'll be just
some sort of overall subtle thing but it's not oh my god i can't hear the low end can't wait to get
on my speakers and check that out that's not it it's really more of a change in perspective than
it is something i can't hear on the headphones so there are probably i don't know 20 things in
the last five years that have been mixed solely on headphones because i couldn't get to my speakers
once we're in the revision process unless someone says like man this thing just sounds
murky i don't need to go to the speakers so sometimes i do because it's fun because they're
awesome and they're great sounding speakers but it's also really easy to just walk in there not
even turn the power amp on put the headphones on spend five minutes do changes send it off like
why would i do that on speakers an argument could be made is actually more rational to mix
on headphones because your target audience which is everybody let me address that just separately
because that assumes that i am mixing four people listening on headphones and the not making people
physically uncomfortable on headphones i think that is relevant that is a mixing four headphones
but i am never trying to do that i'm always trying to do the best mix i can possibly do headphone
speakers whatever now i'm not an audiophile mixer i don't consider myself an audiophile mixer
if you turn this mix up on really good speakers it better just be [ __ ] awesome yeah it can't be
well you know you should listen to it on headphones what we're talking about here
is translation and so working on headphones affecting the quality of the translation of your
mixes or not basically what happens is i travel i have to recall or do things on headphones and so
the way i do it is i have my my focal spirit pros which they no longer make and then i have a little
bose speaker and the reason why i bring the bose speaker is because i found that when i listen on
headphones and i listen to it on speakers after i had to mix the vocals there is definitely a
different perception of the vocal level between the two things sometimes when i go listen on the
speakers i'll think like oh vocal seems loud what will happen is it'll seem wet or it'll seem dry
exactly it's not that it seems one of the other but like the last sort of part of the process
if i'm mixing a record i mix all of the songs at the same time i don't mix a song send it now
concentrate on the second song i mix 12 songs at the same time and i work on all of them just
one right after another and then i reverse the order and then i go random like whatever it is
so i have these very short bursts of listening and i think with that and also i can't remember
what i've done on the mix so it's all very much like i'm not like oh let me open this up and see
if what i did on the vocal yesterday is still good it's i don't even know if i've worked on the
vocal yet i just open up the thing and i hit play and sometimes i haven't worked on the vocal but
the level it just happened to be at and the effects work and sometimes i've worked on it a lot
and the next time i open it up i think the vocal sounds like [ __ ] and i start over on
the vocal not knowing that i'm starting over like it doesn't that part of it's irrelevant
i'm abstracting myself from the process and i really am just listening but i think that part
of the way i work by using so much parallel compression that's shared between the vocal and
other instruments it's much harder for me to have the wrong vocal level because it pushes
the other instruments around when it's too loud it really separates it separates like crazy
bring it down a tiny bit now it's enveloped i see but you can still hear it bring it down a tiny bit
more and now it's just sunk below the mix so if you mix in a more open style like you certainly do
you have a lot more space for things and what that means is the level where you can understand
the vocal like that window is from here to here in your mixes for me it's really only from there to
there anyway it's that because as soon as you get above here it just sounds ridiculous crazy loud my
new process is i have my speakers my ascent lines i love them the room is fantastic everything is
great i have an apollo on the desktop and i have my headphones plugged into apollo i listen on
headphones to check the bottom instead of spending it cuts my time down it's kind of like a shortcut
i know the bottom of those headphones is flawless i place the bottom of the track on those when it's
time to do that whether it's at the beginning or at the end of the middle whatever i just do that
once i have the core of the song and the music makes sense and i start to get into details like
is this bottom hitting right and i'll put the headphones on for like 30 minutes 40 minutes
and i'll just get all that wet out and then i remove the headphones and i see how it looks on
the on the speakers and it's usually great except for reverb levels i often find that it's too wet
when i get back on the on the speakers and i have to bring the river down my process recently which
is fun that i show up here and you're mixing our headphones my process printly is like instead of
mixing 100 on speakers and check on headphones the morning after the headphones have become a part
of my picking process because of the traveling and i checked on my little speaker manual both
speaker for that vocal problem have been some of the better received mixes recently like least
amount of revisions and the most amount of like widespread acceptance by everyone i was like huh
so i integrated that in my process especially for stuff that hits hard at the bottom like
urban pop stuff with lots of leader weights it's really hard to have a room where you can mix it
away really quickly yeah and be 100 sure but on headphones it's going to feel right you feel the
low end easily on any decent pair of headphones on speakers because of the the mix in the middle
and the masks and whatever the room is doing there's always going to be a song that's going
to be in a key where you don't hear the root as well there's nothing you can do about it for those
kinds of records there's always a problem in one key somewhere on the racket the only way around
that is to put headphones on and so it's it's increased i think the reverb thing is kind of
the same i do sometimes think like wow this is a bit wet when i go on the speakers but part of that
is because it's the first time i'm hearing it in an acoustic environment that has reverb
the room's got reverbs so i invariably will think it's a little wet but really what it
is i do think it's perspective because it'll turn out to not be reverbs it'll turn out that
like there's too much compression within the drum kit making the drums just decay
too long so it's either the distortion i add or some of the parallel compression
i would hear that on laptop speakers as easily as on my good speakers right i think that it's
just a gigantic change in perspective that makes you hear that because otherwise you're listening
for balance and you're too into details whereas that is something that is such a zoomed out view
because if you assess the reverb on the vocal it's like god sounds great
man that guitar is living in this amazing swirly thing and the snare goes on forever and
that's the thing you've got to come back out and just hear the mix and you realize like
well all that [ __ ] adds up to a swimming pool there's a two bases and a bass drum
and an 808 and you're working and you're working and you're listening you're like
you put the headphones on for 30 seconds you're like oh and then you remove the headphones and you
listen to this because like well yeah it's kind of like a magnifier for [ __ ] yeah and that's great
for that in that respect it's wonderful well and here's the other thing and i actually give
this piece of advice whenever i do seminars with students and things like that
here's how you make sure that you're not screwing yourself by mixing on headphones
if let's say every time you go to the speakers the vocals too loud and everything is way too wet
you don't fix it while you're listening to the speakers you've got to go back to where you made
the mistake make sure you can hear it and fix it there because then what you're doing is you're
training yourself to listen for it if you put the headphones back on you're like no way man
vocal sounds like the perfect level and this mix is actually kind of dry you're now [ __ ] you
don't know which is right listen in 12 places and hopefully nine of those will sound the same
and then you know okay yeah all nine of those are places i can mix and the other three are no good
but you've got to make sure you cannot have anything with any listening environment you
use to mix it's like well i can't hear that on this but that's okay it's never no okay you
have to be able to hear everything absolutely it's a brain thing to train yourself to listen
for it because it might not be as horrible in one place as another but if you can't hear it
you can't use that anymore and also headphones have resonances so they are key dependent
that was a big part of listening to when designing these um spirit pros with focal
at one point i was like oh no let's listen to something else i have reference songs that i know
the perspective of the shirt sounded nuts and i was like oh i'm about to really screw these people
over and give them bad advice so i went back and revised my whole thing and now i listened on many
many different things now here is something that i can hear people think people have been mixing on
speakers for making records with speakers for many many years why why hasn't anybody mixed
in our headphones on it why does it have such a bad rap and should i not by even bother buying
speakers and and all that stuff people mixed on speakers because they were mixing in studios yep
and also because there were other people in the room you can't really make a
record in a team don't hand out six pair of headphones you don't do that
so there's a colloquial like a practical thing but you're sitting in a room built for listening yes
and with all due respect most of them kind of suck yeah look whether or not a
control room is any good i mean i see stuff where it's like oh yes and this studio has
eq curves for the mains that are different for different mixers i know so anyway blah blah blah
so yes you're at the mercy of the acoustic environment those speakers is set up in but
up until very recently 90 of the time those are speakers sitting on a console
at a known point with a known listening position you're not in your bedroom putting your mattress
up in the corner to try to get rid of the standing wave i think that that question is just not worth
asking why no one used headphones is probably much more about what you're talking about
like you would be crazy but that's not actually the case because i remember working with people
and they'd plug headphones into the cassette deck that was in the rack behind him
turn the speakers off and work for 20 minutes like i can't get the background vocals right like this
and part of it would be because the faders were all the way down there and
the speakers are over there so they're not between the speakers give me the headphones
but part of it would be that's just another way to check i mean perspective okay so if mixing on
speakers is so [ __ ] good why does everybody have to have at least two pairs and maybe three and why
because that's the professional setup and where is the speaker correction system people think
i'm crazy because i only have one pair of speakers and i never listen to reference mixes but that's
because that's the way my brain works not because it's the way speakers work so whatever works for
you as a process is exactly how you should mix if you need three pairs of speakers or headphones and
two pairs of speakers or six different pairs of headphones whatever great all you're trying to
do at the end of the day is have a mix that will sound good but feel the same no matter where you
listen to it so it doesn't matter what you use to make that happen what he said et voila you