(13-05-2014, 08:23 AM)Olli H Wrote: The question about headphone-listening is quite interesting and important. I haven't seen any statistics of people's listening habbits, but I'm quite sure nowadays music is much more consumed through headphones.
The proliferation of portable music players is probably in large part responsible for the shift towards headphone listening among the music listening public. I myself tend to listen to music more often on my iPhone than my stereo at home.
(13-05-2014, 08:23 AM)Olli H Wrote: Personally I listen quite much with headphones, but I prefer to mix with speakers if it it's possible.
I actually use a combination of both. I do my first rough mix of a song using headphones then switch to speakers to fine tune the balancing. Actually, that's just a general rule; I often jump back and forth between speakers and headphones throughout the process. It is important to me, though, to get the mix working well on both since I'm looking both to please other people to whom I might show my work and myself who listens mostly on my iPhone as I said earlier. Mixing with both in mind helps me remember that in the "real world" mixes should be compatible with both as much as possible.
(13-05-2014, 08:23 AM)Olli H Wrote: But panning decisions are totally different for me in those two listening modes.
Actually, I tend to make my panning decisions with the headphones. That probably seems odd on the surface but there's a method to my madness. I use my headphones for panning choices for two reasons. First, I've learned what effect panning decisions make on both headphones and speakers and find I can judge panning position better on headphones because the unnaturally wide stereo image brings them into strongest relief. Second, listening on headphones allows me to make sure I haven't created a hard pan that's uncomfortable to listen to on headphones, which as I said is an important consideration for compatibility with both listening modes.
(13-05-2014, 08:23 AM)Olli H Wrote: Maybe for the same reason I have never dared to use real LCR-mixing decisions. But many top mixers use it, and they certainly know much more than a sunday driver like me. But on the other hand, there's also many top mixers that don't use it.
I suspect that those top mixers who don't use it are not using it for the same reason I'm not; it's useful to know how the mix sounds in the same configuration as the average listener with headphones will hear it.
13-05-2014, 11:42 AM (This post was last modified: 13-05-2014, 11:43 AM by Pedaling Prince.)
(13-05-2014, 10:58 AM)Olli H Wrote: "Listening to music on headphones is essentially different than listening to speakers. When you listen to speakers, both ears receive the output of both speakers but in different proportions. Your right ear will hear more of the right speaker, and the left ear more of the left. And because the left ear is slightly farther away from the right speaker, it hears the right signal a fraction of a second later than the right ear. This time difference between the ears is one of the main cues that your brain uses to figure out the left-to-right position of sounds.
When you listen to headphones each ear will only receive one channel. The sound isn't mixed, and there are no time differences. In short: the listening experience lacks any similarity to natural hearing. Any regular headphones user will be familiar with the problems this causes: the stereo image is lost due to extreme separation of the left and right channels and has no discernible phantom center (the non-existent 'center speaker' that vocals often appear to come from when listening to speakers). Sound sources are impossible to locate and, because of the unnatural stereo image, ear fatigue sets in even after short listening sessions."
When you're not used to headphone listening this can be very true; the first time you hear music through headphones can actually be a rather disorienting experience. I remember the first time I listened to music through headphones. I was maybe five or six years old at the time, and I found that when I got up and moved (and I tend to move when listening to music ) it felt like the whole room was spinning. I found out much later, as an adult, that this happens because it's unnatural for the left-right orientation of sound to follow the movements of the head the way it does when you're wearing 'phones. Fortunately, our bodies' senses are almost endlessly adaptable and, over time, you get used to this effect. Nowadays I can march down the street with my iPhone in my ears and move any direction I wish without feeling unusual in any way.
In my opinion, the above considerations are valid but the effects described may be a little exaggerated compared to the average listener's experience. The "fatigue" mentioned might be true of some people but, by and large, I think most of us are pretty used to listening to music over headphones and earbuds thanks to the Walkman revolution of the 1980s all the way up to the iPod revolution of today. While the two listening modes clearly sound very different, I personally am equally comfortable listening either way. In fact, there are times when I prefer the sound of headphones as it feels like they're putting the sound right in my head, which is particularly useful if I'm using music to inspire a scene for a screenplay I'm writing; I find headphones much more "immersive" and therefore conducive to completely losing yourself in the moment, which in turn can help a great deal in reaching the emotional core of a character of a scene being written.
my "monitors" have such an uneven frequency response that I do all of my fine EQ/compression work in phones... my room acoustics are also much worse than average, so headphones are really the only option for finesse until I can improve my circumstances. I use the monitors mainly for coarse mixing, getting the rough balance, and for stereo imaging.
An important contribution to this discussion is the limitation of headphone stereo imaging in reference to frequency masking. Many of today's mixes are so dense that stereo panning is an essential EQ tool... you'll never be able to sort out all of the frequency masking issues with EQ alone when there are 12 heavily overdriven electric guitars fighting for the same frequency area without seriously compromising the quality of sound, so we use panning to accommodate... but when the side channel is radically separated as it is with phones, with all of the timing and "bleed" issues Olli highlighted (great explanations from both Olli and John, by the way) you can actually mix yourself into a corner. When the two channels have a real acoustic space in which to combine, there will obviously be a greater probability of frequency masking, so headphone mixing can trick you into thinking your panning and EQ work has satisfactorily separated the instruments... but when you pop the CD in the car, which is the absolute worse case scenario with this side channel masking problem, you wind up with a thick mess. I fell victim to this maybe 15 times before I figured out what was happening :/. Apologies if I'm stating the obvious... just felt like a useful contribution.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
Here's a quote from their site about the difference of headphones and spekers:
"Listening to music on headphones is essentially different than listening to speakers. When you listen to speakers, both ears receive the output of both speakers but in different proportions. Your right ear will hear more of the right speaker, and the left ear more of the left. And because the left ear is slightly farther away from the right speaker, it hears the right signal a fraction of a second later than the right ear. This time difference between the ears is one of the main cues that your brain uses to figure out the left-to-right position of sounds.
When you listen to headphones each ear will only receive one channel. The sound isn't mixed, and there are no time differences. In short: the listening experience lacks any similarity to natural hearing. Any regular headphones user will be familiar with the problems this causes: the stereo image is lost due to extreme separation of the left and right channels and has no discernible phantom center (the non-existent 'center speaker' that vocals often appear to come from when listening to speakers). Sound sources are impossible to locate and, because of the unnatural stereo image, ear fatigue sets in even after short listening sessions."
Apart from the already mentioned shaker (sounds nice but a bit loud to my taste), your last mix sounds really great !
Interesting discussion about headphones vs monitors.
In addition to the plugin Alan talked about, there's another virtual monitoring plugin called 'TB Isone' by Toneboosters. I use it from time to time, only when I have to mix on headphones because of environment constraints, not when just checking panning and effects. You can tailor your own speaker/room combinations, but it's got some nice presets for different listening devices/environments. Though not a substitute for real monitors, it does the job when you have to use headphones or want to check how your mix sounds on an alarm-clock radio
I use my headphones for panning choices for two reasons. First, I've learned what effect panning decisions make on both headphones and speakers and find I can judge panning position better on headphones because the unnaturally wide stereo image brings them into strongest relief. Second, listening on headphones allows me to make sure I haven't created a hard pan that's uncomfortable to listen to on headphones, which as I said is an important consideration for compatibility with both listening modes.
) it felt like the whole room was spinning. I found out much later, as an adult, that this happens because it's unnatural for the left-right orientation of sound to follow the movements of the head the way it does when you're wearing 'phones. Fortunately, our bodies' senses are almost endlessly adaptable and, over time, you get used to this effect. Nowadays I can march down the street with my iPhone in my ears and move any direction I wish without feeling unusual in any way. 
