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Headphones for mixing live music to DAW.
Greetings Audio Pro’s!
We are attempting to record ensembles of 6 to 8 musicians, instruments plus vocals .. live in various locations and usually with audience mic as well.
It’s very difficult to isolate the mix in our inadequate headphones.
Please suggest best headphones for this barebones recording situation (sitting in the same room/space as the performance… often tooooo close to the source.)
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
Hal
PS… recording with Focusrite Scarlet. Two lead vocals/instruments on front two preamp inputs and the remaining two line inputs get a two-channel mix from a mixer. DAW is Audition on a MacbookPro, El Capitan OS. -
5 Replies
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Hi Hal. I have been using Sony MDR-7506 for years. They are very neutral, so what you hear is what you get. If you need more isolation, there is the MDR-7510 model. Good luck.
Bob
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[Hal Beery] “Please suggest best headphones for this barebones recording situation (sitting in the same room/space as the performance… often tooooo close to the source.)”
To be frank, there aren’t any. Your problem isn’t the headphones, it’s you being in the sound space. No headphone is going to cure that for you.
The problem is that you can’t attenuate more than mid -30s dB with your head in the sound field. The reason for this is that there’s more than one path to a persons eardrums. The main path other then the ear canals themselves are through the sinuses. Which, if you like breathing, are difficult to isolate.
About the best you can do from a headphone perspective is something like the Remote Audio HN-7506, which is a set of Sony MDR-7506 Drivers in a somewhat better closed back isolation case. But I’m telling you up front that these will in no way solve your problem. They will at best improve your situation only marginally.
You’d be better off getting creative. Run some long XLRs and take over a bathroom. Anything with a door. Someone’s office. The lobby (which has it’s own problems, but different ones). Loading dock. Anywhere else but in the room with the musicians.
If you won’t do that, then think about not live mixing. Just get the individual mics down with reasonable levels and mix it in post.
‘Cause there ain’t no magic headphones that will solve this problem. If there were, everyone would have a pair and you wouldn’t need to ask the question in the first place.
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Hello Hal and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.
“We are attempting to record ensembles of 6 to 8 musicians, instruments plus vocals .. live in various locations and usually with audience mic as well. ”
Why? For what use?
Regards,
Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum LeaderWant better production audio?: Ty Ford\’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford\’s Blog -
While my reply has nothing to do with isolation it does address the “neutrality” of the 7506. The Sony 7506 while very popular are about as far from neutral as you can get. They have a boosted low end and a very peaked top end. I gave up Sony 7506 HP’s about 15 years ago when I discovered the Ultrasone HFI-580 or 680 and so has everyone else I have recommended them to.
\”I push the RECORD button and hope for the best\”
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I would suggest that you read reviews and look at frequency response charts for all of the headphones you may be considering.
You might find this site interesting for reviews. https://en.goldenears.net
Bob
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