Why mix with "flat" monitors or headphones? Is Sonarworks EQ for headphones help for mixing?

[kanoharuayu]

Hello, I'm very confused. Why do people recommend flat Monitors or Headphones to MIX with? I tried to ask on reddit on a few audio subreddits, but they deleted them, I don't know why...

Such as Sonarworks EQ, it makes your headphones flat sound signature, so you can mix better or something?

But how does it help? How are you suppose to mix with FLAT sound signature? If you mix with FLAT, and make it sound awesome for flat headphones, won't normal headphones make it sound overly bright or something?

Everybody listens to music on headphones now a days and no headphone has a flat sound signature, most of them follow something like "harmen target response" type of sound...

Harmen Target Response curve is an "average curve" where they selected expert listeners and average, and played them various different EQ curves on a really advanced headphone capable of handling the EQ adjustments. almost all the listeners agreed on the same curve. is meant to simulate a "good set of speakers, in a good room" in your set of full sized heaphones.

most consumers of audio are using earbuds and headphones, I doubt very many use speaker systems anymore. so why are we even still using speakers are the sole judgement for what our final mixes sound like? Wouldn't make sense, in pupular genre to use a standard curve that most people like, and MIX exclusively for that curve to make it sound the best it can? So for full sized open headphones, following the harmens curve would make your mix sound amazing on most sets of headphones wouldn't it? Since it's a standard curve of all headphones AKA a general curve of what all headphones follow. Most of them follow a wavy length, not a flat line like Sonarworks EQ provides.


What do you guys think? For MIXING / Mastering on headphones, for headphones, should sound engineers be following sometihng like "harmen target response" now a days and use a that as a "reference" that since it supposedly will sounds good on most headphones, rather than relying on old methods such as using "flat speakers to mix" thus making the sound just "OKAY" on headphones, rather than "AMAZINGLY MIXED" for headphones? I think the whole flat monitors things was for making the sound sound good for speakers everywhere, but headphones are different...


I don't really know what I'm talking about, and want somebody to show me, why having a flat sound signature in headphones is better, and should be used to mix with.

I'm using the Sonarworks EQ plugin right now, and it's making all my music sound kind of like "flatter" not as "open" as it was before, and I'm wondering why do I want this? Shouldn't these songs sound BETTER with flat headphones since they were mixed with FLAT monitors? But for some reason they don't. lol

[BertKoor]

most consumers of audio are using earbuds and headphones, I doubt very many use speaker systems anymore.

My guess is that this might be the case everywhere you look on the streets, but inside it's different. Whenever I play music at home or in the car, it's never on headphones but always on speakers. So this assumption of yours seems wrong to begin with.

Creating mixes that translate well on both headphones and speakers requires you listen to it on both (and on many varieties if possible) and seek a compromise that works everywhere. The experience in the field is that monitoring speakers work out best for this.

Further suggested reading: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=why+not+mix+with+headphones

NB: the company is called Harman (previously Harman-Kardon, now a subsidiary of Samsung)

[himalaya]

I'd never mix solely on headphones. Period.
You can learn the sound of your headphones and be able to create good mixes, maybe, but regardless of your familiarity with the headphones, I'd always use speakers (good ones, in an acoustically treated room) and use headphones as second reference, only as a means to hear an alternative sound, and/or to focus on specific areas, which maybe my set of headphones is good at revealing.

I'm using the Sonarworks EQ plugin right now, and it's making all my music sound kind of like "flatter" not as "open" as it was before, and I'm wondering why do I want this? Shouldn't these songs sound BETTER with flat headphones since they were mixed with FLAT monitors? But for some reason they don't. lol

There are no magic solutions to making a good mix. At the end of the day a good mix is created by your mixing skills. It's an art to a large extent. Of course, you can learn rules and apply them, but how you apply them depends on the level of your skill and experience. Simply whacking a plugin somewhere in the mix chain may not necessarily make it better.

[kanoharuayu]

Hey, thanks for the reply!

I looked up a bit more about this "Harman" Curve, and mixing, and stuff. Basically I didn't really know what I was talking about before. But my first post is basically throwing two things out there

Why mix on speakers, when everybody's using headphones?


and then talking about the harman curve.


I didn't think of car speakers D'oh! You're probably right there are a lot more people listening inside their cars than on headphones...

but now back to the Harman Curve for headphones. I actually looked it up more. and People say it's a Curve that "Replicates speakers in an ideal acoustic enviorment" essentially it replicates "Flat Speakers" so EQing your headphones to this curve, rather than flat, makes Mixes by famous engineers sound just like you're listening to the "flat speakers" they mixed on, and much better than the unattural "flat curve" that plugin provides I talked about.

I looked up some posts on gearslutz and other forums confirming this. I would have never known this and had been using the "Flat" EQ Curve to mix music on my headphones, cause I live in a tiny space and cant afford speakers. But now that I know about this curve, which replicates "flat monitors in an ideal acoustic envirorment" I think my mixes might turn out much better.


Here's some links:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-mos ... ls.796791/

And because Haman Target Response Curve is already a standard based on ideal "perceived" neutral/accurate response for headphones, it also includes Fletcher-Munson curve as part of the target response. This means there's no other standard needed--all are already contained in the Harman Target Response Curve. This also means there's no need to generate the pre-EQed sweep from my speakers as you suggested. To put into other words, the perfect neutral/accurate response from my speaker system with room/speaker correction applied, is pretty much what the Harman Target Response Curve is. So logically, all you need to worry about it to tweak the headphone from its default frequency response to the Harman Target Response Curve, and then use the test tones to double-check/perfect the EQ curve so you know for sure it sounds as smooth and accurate as possible.

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... stcount=18

So I decided to try it out and so far it sounds better on my collection of reference titles mastered by Bob Ludwig, Bernie Grundman, Doug Sax etc. Perhaps this "headphone hosue curve" works well cause I have a small room. It might be just a tad upper-mid shy though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/com ... ood_judge/

To sum it up: The Harman Target is exactly what you want in a mixing headphone, because the Harman Target was developed to sound "like good speakers in a good room" - which is the exact situation that a mixing engineer is in when making mixing decisions.

I could write for days about the Harman Target but I tried to keep it short - please ask if you have any questions.

I feel like I've been misled with all these "we flatten your headphone plugins" but none of them said they make em sound like mixing speakers so lo

There are no magic solutions to making a good mix. At the end of the day a good mix is created by your mixing skills. It's an art to a large extent. Of course, you can learn rules and apply them, but how you apply them depends on the level of your skill and experience. Simply whacking a plugin somewhere in the mix chain may not necessarily make it better.

I was talking about my collection of music! Sorry for being confusing, not my own produced music. Like it made CLA mixed songs sound dull and boring when applying this flat EQ curve, as compared to my normal headphones EQ curve, so I started wondering if it's accuratly right. I never heard perfect monitors before tho.

[himalaya]

Hello, I'm very confused. Why do people recommend flat Monitors or Headphones to MIX with?

As to the above question, I have a longer rambling post.

You can do a simple experiment.

Mix a track on headphones which are 'hyped', that is, they have a very pronounced bass and top end, mostly what we would call consumer 'Hi-Fi headphones'. And test them on other playback systems.

What will happen is that you will be making mix decisions according to these frequency 'bumps'. So, if the headphone has a strong top end boost (and it's never a uniform boost across all top frequencies, but rather several peaks at specific frequency spots) you will make mix decisions according to these frequency peaks and by doing so to put it simply, you may create a mix that sounds great on this particular set of headphones but is too dark on others (or has other problems, like certain instruments will be masked or inaudible)! That is because if the top end is too pronounced, you will most likely compensate for that by reducing the actual top end frequency response of your mix.

The same goes for the bass range. Here, you can do even more damage, since by default, most headphones will pump too much bass as it is. Most headphones go really low in their frequency response, and what you hear on your headphones may sound amazing, but really wrong on speakers ( I can provide a real life example of how bad it can go). So, if your set of headphones has strong boost in the bass register, which is very likely with most consumer headphones, you could inadvertently create lots of problems by going with what you hear, with what the 'fake' bass is telling you. The result may be all sorts of issues, like, you may cut too much bass from the actual mix, and the mix will not translate to other headphones and speakers well, the bass will simply be lacking. Or You may be tempted instead to boost even more and create a total mess. Or, you may boost a specific section in the bass register which you feel needs boosting, but because you are listening on headphones which aren't telling you the truth, you could inadvertently muddy the bass instruments and create imbalance, maybe between the bass guitar and the bass kick....all sorts of issues.

So the idea is to have a common point of reference with a frequency response that is as unobtrusive to the frequency spectrum as possible, hence, that is why you see all this talk about 'flat' frequency response.

The aim is to have a playback device (headphones or speakers) that do not colour your mix with some inherent design aspects, which translate to a skewed frequency response. And the hope is that, once you are able to mix on systems which are as 'flat' as possible, the actual mix will translate to all manner of less than ideal playback systems. That is the 'hope' and aim, but there is much more to it, since even if you had a totally flat headphone or speaker, you then need to know how to mix on this system in order to get the desired effect. A flat monitor will not give you a perfect mix all by itself. This is crucial to understand. You can still create a bad mix on the best speakers. The key here is, the actual skill of mixing audio. It's an art to a large extent, and even though you can learn some rules of mixing, at the end of the day, you need to be able to apply these rules to the playback system of your choice, and to your own ears!

The topic gets even more complex, when you understand that a lot of professional mix engineers will use speakers (if we now move away from headphones and chat about speakers for a moment) that are not flat! They may use a second pair of monitors, in addition to the main set, that in fact sound rubbish ( as reference speakers). So, these mix engineers will use monitors that are not flat but they will use them as a reference. What gives? The idea is to have another playback system which will present the mix in a different light, via a different frequency response. There a several reasons to want to use such 'inferior' playback systems:
1. To reveal specific frequency sections, which just come out to the front when played back through such 'inferior' monitor. The Yamaha NS10 is one example of this approach. Google it.
2. To hear how the mix translates on a speaker more closely related to what a consumer may use.

For the above reasons, you will find mix engineers, double checking their mixes on tiny bluetooth speakers, on ghetto blasters of yore, played inside a car (this is one of the favourites !), played on various Hi-Fi speakers or purpose build pro monitors (eg.: Auratones). Etc...One great technique is to play the mix and go out of the studio, just stand outside by the door, and listen. The mix will sound different in this position, but it may reveal problem areas which you failed to notice when sitting in the sweetspot, inside the studio.


So to summarise:

How are you suppose to mix with FLAT sound signature? If you mix with FLAT, and make it sound awesome for flat headphones, won't normal headphones make it sound overly bright or something?

No. What you write will happen if you mix on non-flat playback systems (I'm saying playback systems, since you really ought not to mix on headphones!).

Think of this in this way, maybe:

The mix engineer tries to make the mix sound nice and sweet. To make the mix sound perfect across all playback systems.
The consumer headphones and speakers alter this 'perfect' mix in various ways, mostly by adding more 'sweetness (more bass and top end). But, because the original mix was perfect, the 'sweetness' does not get in the way too much.

But then, you mixed your track on one of those consumer speakers, that already starts off with too much sweetness, and you are adding even more. What will happen in the end, is that when you play your track on a different speakers in a different location, you will get sick from sugar overdose!

Or conversely, because the super hyped consumer headphones already add too much sweetness to your mix, you make some decisions to take it away and by doing so, make your mix sound....sour.

[kanoharuayu]

The topic gets even more complex, when you understand that a lot of professional mix engineers will use speakers (if we now move away from headphones and chat about speakers for a moment) that are not flat! They may use a second pair of monitors, in addition to the main set, that in fact sound rubbish ( as reference speakers). So, these mix engineers will use monitors that are not flat but they will use them as a reference. What gives? The idea is to have another playback system which will present the mix in a different light, via a different frequency response. There a several reasons to want to use such 'inferior' playback systems:
1. To reveal specific frequency sections, which just come out to the front when played back through such 'inferior' monitor. The Yamaha NS10 is one example of this approach. Google it.
2. To hear how the mix translates on a speaker more closely related to what a consumer may use.

Wow, this makes sense but I didn't know that. Argh this gets so confusing lol

But then, you mixed your track on one of those consumer speakers, that already starts off with too much sweetness, and you are adding even more. What will happen in the end, is that when you play your track on a different speakers in a different location, you will get sick from sugar overdose!

Or conversely, because the super hyped consumer headphones already add too much sweetness to your mix, you make some decisions to take it away and by doing so, make your mix sound....sour.

This makes a lot of sense! So most audio product makers know that songs are going to be mixed flat, and they don't usually overboost the curves of their headphons? I.E. they try to make it sound good on most material but with their special flavor?

Thanks for your post, it helped me understand a bit. I know I shouldn't use headphones but apartment spaces suck and I don't want to bother the neighbors... so I'm trying to figure out how to get "flat" in headphones, and now I'm confused if I should use the "flat" curve or this "harman target" curve... to mainly mix on... (atleast till I can get a rental house to get speaker set up for) The Flat EQ sounds unattural on pro's songs who did the mix in studios, but supposedly the harman EQ makes it sound like it was meant to be heard? So I'm confused which to use nows lols

[himalaya]

This makes a lot of sense! So most audio product makers know that songs are going to be mixed flat, and they don't usually overboost the curves of their headphons? I.E. they try to make it sound good on most material but with their special flavor?

The songs are not mixed to be 'flat'.
The songs are mixed to sound right, to sound great across as many playback systems as possible (this is a big trick to be able to pull off!).

Here's an example of how it translates in the more purist Hi-Hi audio circles: There are Hi-Fi amplifiers which comes with no tone controls whatsoever (no bass or high boost dials)! The idea is that there is nothing in the signal chain that would colour the original sound, as prepared by the mix engineers and the master engineers. The purist Hi-Fi approach is to allow the original music be played back as it was intended by the artists/producers/mix engineers.

Whereas your in-ear buds and consumer headphones, come with 'hyped' frequency response, in order to 'sweeten' the mix, for various reasons:
1. The frequency response can not be flat as it is dictated by the actual enclosure and design of the headphone. The frequency response may be factory tweaked to accommodate any issues in the headphone itself, the resonances in the enclosure for example and the actual materials used to make the enclosure, if it's the on-ear type headphone, or by making sure that your ears are not killed by the frequency onslaught as provided by the direct sound fed straight into your ear canal by your in-ear buds.

2. They have hyped frequency response also because you will be listening in various environments, often not suitable for listening to begin with, ie: underground train, or airplane (too much ambient noise!).

[himalaya]

Thanks for your post, it helped me understand a bit. I know I shouldn't use headphones but apartment spaces suck and I don't want to bother the neighbors... so I'm trying to figure out how to get "flat" in headphones, and now I'm confused if I should use the "flat" curve or this "harman target" curve... to mainly mix on... (atleast till I can get a rental house to get speaker set up for) The Flat EQ sounds unattural on pro's songs who did the mix in studios, but supposedly the harman EQ makes it sound like it was meant to be heard? So I'm confused which to use nows lols

I totally understand this predicament, which every home producer faces at one point in their lives. There are resources online which suggest best practices for mixing on the headphones. However, I'd quickly mention here that you need to learn the sound of your headphones as they are, without any corrective plugins attached. Of course, it pays to have a good, reputable pair of headphones to begin with, so make sure that is the case! Then, listen to a lot of well produced music on them. Listen to a lot of acoustic stuff, even if you don't like acoustic music. Listen to tracks with lots of vocals, since vocals are a great sound that can be used as a reference. This is because we know the sound of the human voice, and the idea is, that you will be able to hear any weirdness on the voice if the headphones are subpar.

Then, when you mix, you must have a couple of high quality reference tracks. So as you mix your track, you keep soloing to the reference track(s) in your DAW in order to hear if you have deviated from the 'goal' of making the mix balanced. This alone will elevate your mix more than anything.

So:
1. Make sure you have high grade pro audio headphones to begin with.
2. Learn their sound.
3. When you mix, have a couple of reference tracks of the same genre as you are mixing, and refer to them throughout the mix session.
4. Job done! And you win without complicating the process needlessly!

[Nightpolymath]

This

The songs are not mixed to be 'flat'.
The songs are mixed to sound right, to sound great across as many playback systems as possible (this is a big trick to be able to pull off!).

Try mixing a song while making sure it plays back really well on: 1) a car stereo; 2) cheap, tinny kitchen speakers; 3) plain vanilla iPod earbuds; and 4) high end stereo speakers. It is very much harder than it looks.

[sjm]

Ask yourself the question: what would be the advantage of mixing on a system that boosts the highs but doesn't recreate the lows (or vice versa), for example?

That will only cause you to boost the lows and cut the highs in your mix. Then on any other system with a different frequency response, it'll sound like utter trash. Just listen to something mixed on Beats headphones to see how it ruins any mix if you use highly coloured equipment.

The aim isn't to get it to sound good on your headphones, as others have said; it's to get it to sound good on ANY system, with ANY additional colouring.

[Burillo]

i always wonder about the thought process of people saying "well, people listen this on crap headphones anyway, so why bother". yes, they do, but they don't listen to it on the same crap headphones - they're using different kinds of crap headphones, crap speakers and crap PA's. and in order for your production to sound uniformly crap on all of the crappy systems people are going to listen your crap production on, you need a flat frequency response.

[derekkk]

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Sonarworks take account of their own version of an "Harman curve", from Gearslutz (https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpost.php?p=12363274&postcount=74):

In short - Harman (or rather Olive-Welti, because Harman seems to be oblivious about their findings) curve was developed by comparing headphone output tonality to a perceived response in a flat measuring speaker system in a treated room. In their case - their reference room.

Independently from Harman guys we did approximately the same. We measured a pair of headphones, calibrated them to "instrument-flat" and then hand tuned so they match the sound of a calibrated speaker system in a well treated room. Unsurprisingly our target curve isn't too different from Olive-Welti.

So - a pair of custom calibrated cans from us will sound just like a flat-measuring system in a treated room. Sans tactile impact and imaging, of course. If you have a Sonarworks calibrated studio, both your headphones and speakers will have the same tonal response and thus - will translate from one to other.

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... stcount=74 (https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpost.php?p=12363274&postcount=74)

[Samplecraze]

TBH, I use Sonarworks more for the speaker modes than for any response compensation.

I can only add to the great advice given by some on why we hanker after FFR monitors. In fact, we strive to get the room's acoustics as flat as possible with no hyped modes, so why not with one of the most important if not the most important facet of any studio....the listening chain?

[Wavetone]

Do whatever you consider best, I would even go and mix on ear buds if it makes more fun. If you're making music as a hobby or don't have access to professional studio, you should experiment in making music or mix on whatever you want. There's no rules in creativity. Peace

[sleepcircle]

i always wonder about the thought process of people saying "well, people listen this on crap headphones anyway, so why bother". yes, they do, but they don't listen to it on the same crap headphones - they're using different kinds of crap headphones, crap speakers and crap PA's. and in order for your production to sound uniformly crap on all of the crappy systems people are going to listen your crap production on, you need a flat frequency response.

yes precisely

it's the same reason artists color calibrate their monitors. so even if the colours get screwed up by everyone else's over-bright, over-saturated, yellow-or-blue-skewed monitors, at least they get skewed away from a accurate and neutral starting point, instead of an already-incorrect image.