Is it a terrible idea to mix on "normal" headphones?

The Lounge Other Gear
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I’m currently a bit stuck. I mix (directly on the DT - no DAW just yet) with my Beyerdynamic 990 Pros. I get things sounding great, then listen back in the car, or on my everyday headphones, and things sound terrible.

I have received/read some great advice on this forum on use of filters (in particular) to give my tracks every chance of sounding good everywhere, but I’m still finding that there’s a world of difference between what the Beyers tell me and what things then sound like on every other device/set of phones.

Now, I know that’s sort of the point of mixing headphones, to give a “flat” response. But the layman in me thinks, why am I not just mixing on headphones I actually listen to music on? Is this a terrible idea, and if so what am I missing?

(PS I know it’s best to mix on speakers but that’s not (yet) an option for me.)

Thank you

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As long as you know how your headphones colour the sound, there’s nothing wrong with any cans really. The bigger issue is mixing on the DT itself.
Sonarworks or an alternative and a DAW is going to make mixing significantly easier than rawdogging it on the DT.

You can mix on anything given that you know how that “anything” affects the sound.

Also, using other cans or speakers as a reference point is important too.

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It’s generally much trickier to mix on headphones in general, no matter how good they are. It can be done, it IS done frequently, but it’s always good to be able to check your mix in as many places as possible.

I do things a bit backwards because I’m generally not recording in my studio funny enough. I compose and record on headphones, and do my initial mixing that way too. I use AKG 701s, and while they’re pretty accurate and flat after a good break-in time, I still don’t get quite the results I want while mixing. It’s not because I can’t hear everything either, it’s just that something is lost in the translation between the headphones and speakers with air-space. I think maybe a good headphone amp can help here, but would still be at a disadvantage to ALSO having some monitors.

Once I get a mix that sounds good on headphones, and if it’s a track that I plan to pursue and put some additional effort into, THEN I take it into the studio, check the mix and make adjustments on monitors.

Then, if I REALLY care after that, I’ll check it in the living room, in my car, my wife’s car, etc. and make further adjustments to get a good balance on all of the above. I also try on just the phone, on my Macbook speakers, and crappy stock earbuds.

Granted most of what I work on I don’t really care THAT much about as it’s all for fun, but sometimes I end up liking something enough to go through that extra effort.

You generally want to mix with a flat response, but then by all means check it on something that you would LISTEN to music on. The more the better. Maybe even go as far as encoding and compressing it to formats that other people might listen to it on. The more ways you can hear your work the better.

All of that said, yes, you CAN just do it all on headphones, and get good results, but you REALLY need to know the characteristics, limitations, etc. of your headphones, so that you can compensate for that a bit. That’s almost more to think about than just checking your work on more setups/systems/monitors though. At least more mental work.

Also, your ears can get fatigued much more quickly on headphones even at lower volumes, so that plays a part too. You start adjusting things due to your fatigued state, when they were probably right in the first place.

Volume is one more thing and not just fatigue related. Check your mix at super low volumes (to where you can just make things out, at mid volumes, and high volumes. If you can hear everything in your mix and it balances out pretty well at low volumes, then you’re on the right track.

Anyway, just a few thoughts on this as someone that mixes on headphones a lot even though I have other means. I just don’t have a lot of time to spend in my studio alone since my family wants me around funny enough :smiley: So I tend to write things on the couch, on the deck, in bed, etc.

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If you’re making music for recording, I gotta say, getting that audio into a DAW and polishing it up there is the way to go. You’ve got way more tools at your disposal for that kind of thing, no question. BUT, if you’re going for that straight-outta-the-machine sound (maybe for live stuff or if you’re just avoiding the ol’ computer), well, that’s a different ballgame! The mixing techniques you use are still the name of the game, though. Pro tip: find yourself some decent speakers, hook ’em up, and make those small adjustments. And hey, the more speakers or headphones you can test it on, the better! Try those other headphones that you’re already used to. Heck, bring the Digitakt into your car for a test run! :joy: Good luck!

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I watched a recent interview with Danny Carey, and he talks a lot about this sort of thing. Not headphones specifically, but doing the obligatory car listenting, checking things in the home studio vs. the studio, getting additional monitors that other people he works with has so he can hear what they hear, etc. It’s pretty much the same thing most people end up doing anyway, but it’s nice to know that even bands like Tool with all their mix engineers, etc. still do all the same things we (assuming you aren’t in a megaband :smiley: ) do to try and get our mixes right.

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I have those headphones, they are good! if your mix doesn’t sound as good on your car speaker I believe it’s absolutely normal.
I’d say that a mastering is required for any track to sound good on lower quality speakers or headphones.
It’s not best to mix on speaker, unless you have a professionaly isolated room, or your mix will only sound good in your room which is not the point.
Headphones and especially the one you have which are open are the best solution.

That being said, it also takes time to ear properly even with good cans. On my last album (entirely mixed with the beyerdynamic 990 pro) I sent my tracks to a friend, who advised me to roll off the low frequencies. I wasn’t able to ear that my mixes where really muddy with too much bass, and it was only after that I realized how big a difference it was with a simple hi pass on the low end.

I would also advise not to mix on the digitakt, but in a daw of your choice. You 'll get more control over your sound.

Good luck!

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I think mixing within one device (say Syntakt, Digitakt II, etc. whatever) CAN work. In fact, I think it can work fine provided it’s the only audio source. If you’re mixing in other devices, that’s where you can start building up a bit of muck. Kind of like getting a good mix is a little bit easier when using all software. It’s that homogenous source that makes it a little bit easier. However, it also makes it a little trickier to make some things stand out or pop as it IS that homogenous source. :smiley:

I agree with the above that a final mix in a DAW is quite helpful, and preferable. I just think that you CAN do a decent mix using a single device with some effort.

Still, it’s nice to do a little limiting, spacial manipulation etc. after the fact, so even if you just do a really quick pass on the DAW it should be beneficial.

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pretty much spot on! listen to a broad and varied selection of reference tracks (aka whatever you enjoy or want to emulate) and then think about what areas of the frequency spectrum do or do not stand out while you mix your own music.

my headphones (Hifiman HE400SE) are very stable from like 40hz all the way to 1khz, but there’s a pretty significant dip between 1khz and 3khz plus a slightly rolled off emphasized high end that I have to account for.

so when I’m mixing my own tracks, if all of my favorite references tend to sound very bright and shiny, I will try to emulate that sound as is relevant for my track and assume that’s the “color” of my headphones

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Mixing on headphones usually doesn’t turn out well. Speakers are the best option.

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All this depends on the goals you have for your music.

If your music is to be shared publicly & released on platforms like Spotify & Bandcamp, mixing matters.

If you want to improve your mixes, it matters. Your current headphones are still a good reference tool.

If all this is just for yourself to listen back to, mixing doesn’t matter.

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You should watch this:

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You should be able to get decent mixes on those headphones.
At an initial/intermediate stage the real limitation is usually in our (lack of) ear training.

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Decent mixes are possible, but the pitfalls imo are the low end and the stereo field. No matter what cans I use, the low end is very often too much when taking the mix to the car/living room. The remedy (rolling off most low frequencies) often makes your mixes sound too thin. So a delicate balance.

Stereo field is difficult because both ears are isolated and are just hearing left/right, there is no bleeding of sound between the two. So I am always very cautious with panning on headphones.

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Lots of great tips here. You can definitely use headphones to get get started with your mix but you will need a DAW and multiple monitors/headphones to get to a semi professional mix.

  • Listen to your tracks on different monitors & headphones (including airpods & laptop speakers). Ideally you can rent a studio with proper speakers & subs.
  • Compare your tracks with reference tracks: Use a plugin like ADPTR AUDIO Metric AB to quickly compare compare your tracks in terms of overall loudness and loudness of the lows, mids & highs.
  • James Orvis also describes a great tip in this video: To use the yellow line in fabfilter as a reference to balance your mix.

Just relying on one pair of headphones will not get you there :wink:

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this is the way

reference is important, you can mix/master on whatever you want/have but listening on several systems will get you the fastest to a point where you get to a translatable result, I usually go between my monitors and the dt990, this gives me the bass/stereo field translation, if it sounds good in both I render to mp3 and listen on airpods, at this point I know that if I hear what I was hearing in the other devices I did good, if not I go back and try figure out what went wrong and fix it.
if you do invest in something like Metric AB it will give you the ability to ballpark your mix against your favorite tracks, you don’t need to pursue it to the db but you can compare the frequency curve, the stereo field and loudness.

I’ve set myself a rule: if I listen to my favorite tracks on the speakers/headphones I have and it sounds good - no reason to buy new devices, they are capable of reproducing the sound I love to hear, that means I need to learn to get there and getting new devices won’t fix that

this can be a bit misleading, the yellow line is set based on the slope in the settings, usually it’s either 3 or 4.5 db, each represents pink/brown (I think) noise curves, which give the overall brighter/darker sound, so depending on the genre you might want to consider how you want to set the slope to be your target, I’d say using reference tracks will give way better results then just trying to mix to a noise curve

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…reference listening…

learn ur cans…our ears tend to trick ourselves…and around every 20 minutes they start to adjust themselves again, to a somewhat new where it’s at…

so, every 30 minutes u better plan to have a little break…
and if u want that pair of cans to work as a kind of first reference for mixing, u need to listen to lot’s of other music with them…

and besides that, what u experience is a classic…what u tend to think, this sounds good, simple does not translate that way into the real world…happens to everybody in one way or the other…

everlasting reference are cheap ear buds and car hifi…while still, to make ur stuff sound great on final challenge level, like big open air pa’s and clubsystems remains a long and winded road of gaining experience…and the very first step to get there, is to know, what sounds creamy super fad on ur pair of cans after final judgement, will defenitly sunk in all the mud u can imagine…
low mids will always fool u, if u not get used to enjoy ur cans sounding a little thinner than u want them to sound in first place…

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What you’re experiencing is pretty much expected behaviour at this point - mix translation is a whole thing, the important part is set your expectations low and make notes while listening in the car. Don’t be discouraged when it doesn’t sound right first time, it’s all part of the process, bring your notes back to the studio, work on just those aspects and test again - it’ll come together bit by bit.

I can mix on headphones but I’ve used the same set for 15 years and done a LOT of work on them. You can get some cheap IEMs (I got some KZ ZSN Pro X from China for €15 recently and they’re surprisingly good and much flatter response than I was expecting. This is a quick and quick way to get another perspective - try whatever consumer earbuds you have lying around too, and don’t underestimate the power of your phone speaker.

Keep at it and don’t expect magical breakthroughs, it’s a process and it takes time.

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Wow, tonnes of great advice here, thank you, everyone. Really appreciate it.

I have longer term plans of turning my home office into a makeshift studio, which means speakers and learning how to accoustically treat the room. But that’s a way off yet.

What’s also going on here is a reluctance to get into DAW world. I work at a screen all day so I’m VERY attracted to not also using a screen in my music world. But it feels like that’s a battle I can fight only so far, given the benefits many here (and elsewhere) are discussing re: mixing in a DAW. So part of the issue here is me trying to half-arse the process and not get “serious”.

Given what everyone’s describing, mixing feels more like magic than science to me, but I’m sure that’s just because it’s alien to me and I’m hardly alone in this. It’s just incredible to listen to a track like this, which just sounds so DAMN GOOD (and I’m not even talking about the music or its genre - just the mixing, the wide soundstage, the sheer “oomph” of it) and wonder… how the hell does anyone do that!

I’ll persevere. Thank you again, all.

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Has anyone told you to listen to music on the mixing cans? Cause you should learn those.

Don’t expect magic results though. Mixing takes several years to master and that includes countless hours of listening to music. Not passively though, you have to actively listen to music for years and go back and forth between your mixes and the references …

It takes time. Not everyone is made to be a mix engineer, so consider alternatives as well.

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Some more general points: imo mixing is 90% balancing levels, the last 10% is dynamics, spectral balance (eq), and space (delay & verb). Get those fundamentals down and the rest will fall into place.

Don’t overthink it, and accept that your early mixes will suck - that’s a critical part of getting better.

I’ve been mixing for a good few years and it’s only the last couple of releases that I’ve felt confident about and happy with - but I was pleasantly surprised listening back to some older stuff recently, which I didn’t expect as I battled those tracks and felt like they weren’t good enough, when in fact I’d just listened to them too much.

You’ll learn a lot about sound design along the way too, which is always nice. Have fun, where possible! :joy:

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