Tweaking mixes for headphones.....

[The Wests]

I was just wondering how many of you do this????

I try to get a decent balance of what sounds good on headphones and monitors…. So finish a mix on the speakers, then flip to headphones to see if there are any problem frequencies sticking out and to test the panning properly…

I have found recently that big mixes that sound wicked on monitors often have too much mid in the headphones, usually on deep snares, you know the ones with a bottom at 250, body at 950 and crack at 2…

Has anyone encountered the bloated bottom problem when tweaking for phones as well? As in you cut at 125 ish for clarity on the phones then boost the subs (as in raise the volume not the frequencies) leaving a flabby sub heavy mix that doesn’t crack through speakers and seems like it is bathing in a little bath of bass?

How do you compromise???? Just a few musing really…. I def compromise until it sounds good on both, but what do you trust more? Your phones (which take acoustics out of the question) or your monitors???

Are you mixing for speakers or headphones? I think that is very pertinent question….

Dabrye is a good case in point here in my opinion, drums sound PHAT and FULL on headphones but F’ing weak over speakers, leading me to believe he tweaks for headphones and favours the headphone mix over the speaker mix….

Does anyone go as far as making different mixes for each listening medium?

Does anyone even think like this at all????!!!!????

safe

[Electric_Head]

I hear you dude.
I work with headphones a lot and always have to go to numerous systems to be happy.
My headphones have a touch too much bottom end so when I listen on a monitor setup, I find all my highs to be too low and the bass to be too dominant.
Once I`ve worked on the track and eq'ed to suite the monitors, I find my headphone sound has too much high.
It`s a serious balancing act.
Because of this, I am actually purchasing new headphones with a flatter response.

[jrisreal]

i dont have monitors, i have PC speakers and a PC sub. I do my producing with the speakers and then plop on my Sennheisers to tweak the mixing right

[Rubik]

I listen to music in headphones so I tend to produce in headphones (also because my girlfriend sits next to me on the couch watching girl stuff on tv while i'm doing beats on the laptop).

Usually pretty early in a tune I put it though my stereo and check it out but... My stereo is horrible. Presets for pop and rock etc and no actual adjustable eq. So if anything pops out badly I check it through something else, if it's not bass related I even check in on my laptop speakers (which actually aren't too bad for laptop speakers) and adjust before checking on headphones again.

I'm working with fl and am new to maximus but i'm finding that helps a lot with these kinds of problems (mixdowns sounding different on different setups)

I guess I would favour my headphones but that's mainly because they're the better than anything else I have lol

[hudson]

It's nice to reference on headphones every hour or so, I do it a lot since I love a song even more if it's mixed with headphone listeners in mind (me ).I've never gone start to finish on only headphones though, that wouldn't end well I don't think.