headphone mix (as a released mix)

[Sathyan Sundaram]

Its my experience that many pop releases/Clear Channel radio don't
sound good (IMO) through headphones. Mixes appear to be centered or
just to the left in a blob plus symmetrical blobs right on each ear.
The imaging sounds wrong (or unnatural) and somewhat fatiguing.
Headphone.com and Binaural.com describe the problem. I have a few CDs
from Binaural which are much more pleasant to listen to on headphones.

When listening with speakers the left ear hears material (with varying
delay) from all speakers but with headphones only from the left driver

On a CD I'm putting together (its a "vanity release" so marketibility
can be ignored), I would like to include alternative
headphone-optimized mixes of some of the tracks (the main mixes use a
largish stereo sound stage with club-like imaging). Do you have any
suggestions for optimizing a mix for headphones? (I assume the
monitoring while mixing should be done with headphones.)

I use Cool Edit Pro.

thanks,
Sathyan

[Scott Dorsey]

Sathyan Sundaram <sundaram.15@osu.edu> wrote:
>Its my experience that many pop releases/Clear Channel radio don't
>sound good (IMO) through headphones. Mixes appear to be centered or
>just to the left in a blob plus symmetrical blobs right on each ear.
>The imaging sounds wrong (or unnatural) and somewhat fatiguing.

That's the case for most recordings.

>Headphone.com and Binaural.com describe the problem. I have a few CDs
>from Binaural which are much more pleasant to listen to on headphones.

I bwet those recordings don't sound very good through speakers, though.

>When listening with speakers the left ear hears material (with varying
>delay) from all speakers but with headphones only from the left driver
>
>On a CD I'm putting together (its a "vanity release" so marketibility
>can be ignored), I would like to include alternative
>headphone-optimized mixes of some of the tracks (the main mixes use a
>largish stereo sound stage with club-like imaging). Do you have any
>suggestions for optimizing a mix for headphones? (I assume the
>monitoring while mixing should be done with headphones.)

Yes, you'd want to mix with headphones being used as monitors. That
would probably do most of what you need... but you'll find yourself
using a lot more reverbs and room mikes, so it wouldn't hurt to track
some additional room mikes along with what you normally do.

You might consider using something like the Headroom shuffler in your
signal path, even.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."