Phones for LOUD studio/stage/monitoring work

[Chester]

Hi there. I'm looking to part with up to £50 for a decent pair of headphones that can blot out the racket the rest of my band makes when I'm trying to get a half decent mix recorded. I'd also like to be able to use the same pair afterwards for mastering work back at the home studio. Can anyone make a recommendation for something that might be up to the task?

I know my budget's not fantastic so I don't mind making compromises. It's mainly for practice and demo work so they don't have to be fantastic in any one area.

[Chester]

OK, looks like no-one else here uses headphones in a rock band then!


The two phones I'm looking at are:

Audio Technica ATH-PRO5 V

and

Sennheiser HD 280 PRO

Anyone here used these? What would be your preference?

[NicolasB]

You'll get better acoustic isolation by using in-ear 'phones - the sort that are designed to fit into your ear canal with an airtight seal all round them. Something from Shure or Etymotic is probably a good bet.

[Chester]

Thanks for that. I have a lot of problems selecting ear protection for practices and gigs and found something that kinda just fits inside the ear surface. It's enough to take out some sound overall and up to 20db of 'harmful' frequencies. They do work. I use them when I'm riding my Z1000 which helps a lot to keep wind noise out.

So in a nutshell, I think I'm going to find it too uncomfortable to wear inner-earphones, but appreciate what you're saying.

[YellowSphere]

Mastering on headphones is the biggest no no ever. If you master on headphones, nine out of ten times, it will sound awful.

Do you have to put the mix down when you're recording, or are you just tracking it for later mixing? If it's the latter then I strongly recommend something like the Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 3 Studio. I bought a pair of these recently, mainly for on the go listening, but they've proved useful a couple of times when recording, just to get a quick listen to what I'm doing without too much overspill. UE is a big manufacturer of custom in-ear monitors for musician and engineer use. Incidentally, I should mention that before I bought these I was very wary of earphones, when I used them before I found they either didn't stay in, were uncomfortable, or both, but I just couldn't put up with either the rubbish isolation of compact open backed phones or the gargantuan size of a decent pair of closed ones.

If it's the former then things are going to be more difficult. The best set of easy to grab headphones for general sound engineer use are the Senn HD-25, but they're quite expensive. Everything around the £50 with the right sort of attenuation is likely to be "too hi-fi" soundwise for even basic mixing.

[Chester]

Mmm, point taken. Unfortunately the band is practicing in a small studio with no control room, because it's only a practice studio. In the future I'm looking to get a multi-track firewire mixer to plug into my Mac but don't currently have the funds, so this on the back burner.

They don't have to be great, they just need to work. When I'm at home, I tend to use monitors as well as headphones to get a reasonable sound so the rest of the band can get a good appreciation of the sessions. From there, it would be nice to be able to produce reasonable quality demos, but we'll still go into a professional studio for recording for distribution.

Thanks for the info.

[StevieDvd]

The Sennheiser HD25 would seem to fit the purpose but not the budget, but you can get the cheaper HD25sp which are almost as good.

[Broosta]

Maybe think about Equation Audio RP21 (http://www.equationaudio.com/Professional/rp21.htm)
I've not heard them myself but they have a good rep, are intended for what you need and they can be had for less than £50.

[mikes1]

Try Westone um1's or if you can stretch the budget a little more then um2's are what I use.

Buy them in the US and the deal is even more attractive

[YellowSphere]

Originally Posted by Chester

Mmm, point taken. Unfortunately the band is practicing in a small studio with no control room, because it's only a practice studio. In the future I'm looking to get a multi-track firewire mixer to plug into my Mac but don't currently have the funds, so this on the back burner.

They don't have to be great, they just need to work. When I'm at home, I tend to use monitors as well as headphones to get a reasonable sound so the rest of the band can get a good appreciation of the sessions. From there, it would be nice to be able to produce reasonable quality demos, but we'll still go into a professional studio for recording for distribution.

Thanks for the info.

Those mixers, unless it's the Mackie Onyx with the firewire expansion card, tend to sound absolutely horrid. You'd be far better off with something like a MotU 828 (I imagine that now mk3 is out you can get mk2 stupidly cheap second hand) and any reasonable mixer with direct outputs or groups.

[Daneel]

Originally Posted by YellowSphere

Mastering on headphones is the biggest no no ever. If you master on headphones, nine out of ten times, it will sound awful.

Can you elaborate on why this is the case? I didn't really follow. What's too hi-fi? Generally I consider "hi-fi" to mean accurate (or at least, more so than non-"hifi") from an FR perspective.

[YellowSphere]

By too hi-fi I meant not flat, actually, which is the case with most, if not all, headphones. Not the best wording though, I agree. Headphones do not give an accurate enough representation of the music for decent mixing and mastering.

[tredders]

Originally Posted by mikes1

Try Westone um1's or if you can stretch the budget a little more then um2's are what I use.

Buy them in the US and the deal is even more attractive

+1 for the Westones. I now use UM2's, but was always very happy with the UM1's, which I used when playing live.

Mark.