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I haven't shopped for Headphones in 8 years - some advice please

For a number of wrong assumption, i ended up buying the Audio Tecnica ATH-R70x. I am super-happy having them, i alternate between good old Genelec 1031 and them depending on the time of the day and the mood of my neighbors.
The wrong assumptions had nothing to do with music performance :->.
 
If you want absolutely perfect reproduction - Stax electrostatic headphones. They are wire with gain. These are open back, and reproduce acoustic instruments more accurately than anything I've tried (dynamics, planers, horns, etc). There is the 4070 studio cans which aren't produced anymore, I have a few pairs, that are closed.

For general studio use and cheaper I've found the Beyer DT's comfortable and sound good, but they are closed. Sound pretty good for closed headphones.
 
Okay so I bought Beyer 880 pros 250ohms...Downloaded the sonarworks software. I've been testing out the system-wide version with the correct loaded profile and I cannot perceive the difference? In fact if I couldn't see the meters moving I'd swear it wasn't working at all. Should I try it inside my DAW? Am I doing something wrong?
 
Okay so I bought Beyer 880 pros 250ohms...Downloaded the sonarworks software. I've been testing out the system-wide version with the correct loaded profile and I cannot perceive the difference? In fact if I couldn't see the meters moving I'd swear it wasn't working at all. Should I try it inside my DAW? Am I doing something wrong?

You need to test the reference 4 headphone edition. It has presets for each type of headphone. It should be included in the trail version, but if you check this page you can see the $99 headphone edition at the bottom.
https://www.sonarworks.com/reference
 
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I am sure I did what I was suppose to do

So since your using systemwide, you are listening out your computer headphone output, and NOT out of an audio interface, right? Systemwide is for your system, not an interface. Reference 4 studio is for speakers hooked up to an interface, and Reference 4 headphones is for headphones plugged into an interface. If you are listening through a usb or firewire interface, you won’t hear the systemwide adjustments AFAIK. Then again, this is how it was on reference 3 and I have not updated, so perhaps it’s all changed?
 
So since your using systemwide, you are listening out your computer headphone output, and NOT out of an audio interface, right? Systemwide is for your system, not an interface. Reference 4 studio is for speakers hooked up to an interface, and Reference 4 headphones is for headphones plugged into an interface. If you are listening through a usb or firewire interface, you won’t hear the systemwide adjustments AFAIK. Then again, this is how it was on reference 3 and I have not updated, so perhaps it’s all changed?
Ahk that may be the issue. Let me check again - would make sense since I could hear absolutely no difference
 
So this is enabled right? Sounds much flatter. Is that to say that the flat sound is more representative of the actual sound?
 

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So this is enabled right? Sounds much flatter. Is that to say that the flat sound is more representative of the actual sound?

Yes, the red line is indicating that you want a flat sound (even though the headphones do not have a flat sound naturally) so it is adding the curve (indicated by the profile you chose above) to flatten the signal. Below you can choose other target curves if your intention is not to get flat sound. But with most mixing you want to get as flat a sound as possible, so you are hearing the mix and not the headphones. Many headphones (like my AT50's ) have a bass boost that has to be flattened to get an accurate representation of the bass in the mix. Otherwise you might mix with less bass, thinking it's more (because of the headphones). The profiles work well for me and it has curves for most popular brands of headphones. :)
 
Yes, the red line is indicating that you want a flat sound (even though the headphones do not have a flat sound naturally) so it is adding the curve (indicated by the profile you chose above) to flatten the signal. Below you can choose other target curves if your intention is not to get flat sound. But with most mixing you want to get as flat a sound as possible, so you are hearing the mix and not the headphones. Many headphones (like my AT50's ) have a bass boost that has to be flattened to get an accurate representation of the bass in the mix. Otherwise you might mix with less bass, thinking it's more (because of the headphones). The profiles work well for me and it has curves for most popular brands of headphones. :)
The difference is huge - I can't see how I can do without the program especially considering I need to mix with them (for the most part)

Thanks for your help :D!
 
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