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Given my gear, how should I EQ?

elfman

Member
I use Spitfire everything. My external speakers are cheap and my headphones are Sennheiser HD 598 SE. I was using an amp with them for almost 2 years but it's been giving me problems, so I stopped using it. Now everything sounds more bassy and less defined, similar to how it sounds coming out of my externals. Is composing through headphones+amp like composing on ecstasy? Does it give an inaccurate picture of how it will sound on any given system? How should I EQ given that I'm running my headphones straight into the computer?
 
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Quality is at play with several different parts of the signal chain.
  1. If you had an external headphone amp, then it could likely have been much higher quality than what your audio output of your DAW is capable of producing.
  2. If your headphone amp was hooked up to an external sound device like something from Apogee, RME, or UAD and you are now no longer using that option, your D/A converters are also a variable. Built in D/A converters on a PC/Mac are not nearly as good as a nice audio device (such as from Apogee, RME, or UAD). HOWEVER, some lesser quality audio devices could have inferior D/A converters compared to a direct out of the computer.
  3. If your headphones have a higher OHM rating, you will certainly need a nice preamp to drive the sound. Otherwise, it may sound mushy. This is the case with HD650s which are 300 ohm headphones. I don't think this will apply to your set of cans though.
  4. Headphone quality is another factor...
  5. Overall, your variables are as follows: Digital Audio from your computer must be converted to an analog audio signal. This is the D/A converter. The analog signal is then amplified to the headphones. If you are coupling a headphone amp between an external audio device and your headphones, this is also an additional variable in how you are sending the signal. If your headphones have a higher ohm rating, then you will need more power - and clean amplification - to get a great sound. Of course, the quality of the headphones will be the last variable in the chain.
Regardless, you should probably not try to EQ your headphones manually. You could use something like Sonarworks to get a flat representation of your headphones through whatever device you are using. Either way, your goal is to mix with as much fidelity as possible. If you have great ears, lesser quality components compound the problem of trying to get a great mix. If you don't have great ears, chances are you aren't going to get a high quality mix anyway... that's just the reality of that situation. If you are just tracking, the quality shouldn't concern you as much since your mix engineer will take care of the final mix.

I'm fairly certain most engineers either toggle Sonarworks on/off when mixing with headphones, or potentially use it all of the time without toggling it off. It is a great plugin to have when confined to headphones. Also, so is Waves NX. Hope this helps! :thumbsup:
 
So the bottom bottom line is: produce with as much fidelity as I can possibly get, no matter how it might sound on any other given system? I guess the main problem that I've encountered is that my preamp seems to clean up a lot of the background ambience in Spitfire's samples. It's probably not Spitfire's fault, but rather the cheap D/A converters in PCs and Macs. The reason why it's a problem is because I'll write some music, and it will sound the way I want it through my setup, then I'll go to someone's place and show them the music on their system and it suddenly sounds much more wet. Maybe getting used to it sounding different in different setups is just part of the beast.
 
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Thanks for the informative post. :geek:

So the bottom bottom line is: produce with as much fidelity as I can possibly get, no matter how it might sound on any other given system? I guess the main problem that I've encountered is that my preamp seems to clean up a lot of the background ambience in Spitfire's samples. It's probably not Spitfire's fault, but rather the cheap D/A converters in PCs and Macs. The reason why it's a problem is because I'll write some music, and it will sound the way I want it through my setup, then I'll go to someone's place and show them the music on their system and it suddenly sounds much more wet. Maybe getting used to it sounding different in different setups is just part of the beast.
Oh that part of it can be attributed to mixing on headphones vs speakers. While it is possible to mix on headphones, it is a much more rigorous and intensive effort to create a mix that translates well across other setups. Often with headphones, it is very easy to add way more reverb than you need. That’s just part of learning how to mix on headphones. However, even if you were mixing on speakers, you would still need to test your mixes on varieties of systems.

Bottom bottom line is to ensure you have the highest components and fidelity in your monitoring chain so that you can hear the smallest nuances of detail. This will help you make really small adjustments that might be missed on lesser quality systems but could cause a mix to not translate well to other speakers. With speakers, the goal is to have a flat monitoring system that will produce a sound that you know translates well across other consumer speakers. With headphones, you have a few additional challenges which can partially be solved by sonarworks and waves nx, but still may require using other headphones and speakers to compare the mix quality.
 
Not sure this is helpful but I do a lot of work Sennheiser HD650's...I'll use my Adams monitors to make sure that my headphone mix is not off base but usually it is correct and I can hear imaging better with phones. I use mine into an Apollo so that's a bit of difference.
 
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