i will give an example to follow my question
Beyerdynamic DT 860
they have a pretty wide freq responce range of 5-35k which seems like an overkill to me )
DT 440 looks very good also, freq=10-30k hz and i can get them for like $180
both of them are at 32 om
my mates tell me that some people achieved good results monitoring on low-om headphones
measax wrote:
Good Idea to have monitors and headphones. Can't really finish a track in just headphones. At least not the last piece.
yup, ive heard the same!
could you share your experience?
what was missing?(except for stereoimg - this is impossible in headphones i know)
do you think i can kind of hack the problem by having a very good headphones and not so good speakers?
i plan it as a bedroom setup for at least a couple of years
oe wrote:they have a pretty wide freq responce range of 5-35k which seems like an overkill to me )
When I was shopping for studio monitors and had a look at the specs of the adams I'm going to buy I read the go from 34 to 35K, I thought it was an overkill but after having spoken with an audio engineer (not a salesman of the shop) I understood it's not. Why?
Because due to some laws of physics which are too long to explain now, near the limit of the freq range of speakers or headphone there are distorsions, if the limt is by 20k you'll have distorsions around 16 or 17k.
A little sidenote about headphones.
Headphones are definitively not good for doing mixes, since you perceive the audio in a different way because the sound pressure has a short way to your hears. Some people do but it’s not so good. Stereo imaging will be affected too.
Another factor agains headphone, I think the most important but most disregarded, is the hearing damages that headphones can cause because source the sound pressure, unlike with loudspeakers, is very near to the hearing organs.
It’s widely known that long exposure to loud sounds damages the hearing. With headphones this goes quicker! Maybe not everyone knows why, that’s it:
At the end of our ear canal there is the eardrum, and after the eardrum there is this spiral organ called cochlea. In the cochlea are the haircells, which are hair-like cells which vibrates when exposed to a sound pressure.(at the beginning of the cochlea there are the cells for high freqs and at the end the haircells for the lo freqs). Too much vibrations cause an hardening of such cells which at the beginning need more pressure (loudness) to vibrate and after a while they stop functioning, and you are no longer able to hear given frequency. If the cell no longer vibrates it can’t trasmit information to the hearing nerve which then carries the signals in our processing areas of the brain. This is also why the hearing loss first happen in high freq. domanin, lo-pass filter like. Loud bass will cause vibration of hi-freq cells too, so it’s a myth that loud bass will degrade your hearing in low freq domain and vice versa.
I’m working in a company which makes hearing aids, so I have learned quite a few about human hearing and related damages, and I tell you it’s not funny to need hearing aids, and you can’t immagine how difficult becomes social life if you have impaired hearing, immagine yourself asking every third word „could you please repeat?“
Studies have shown that hearing impaired tend to isolate themselves because of the difficutly they have in understanding the world.
So, dudes, take care of your hearing because once is gone is gone, no miracles will make haircells grow again, despite some internet sites advertising some laser pointer-like devices or voodoo trickery there is nothing which can fix a dead haircell. NOTHING.
Get yourself used to make music in studio at low level, wear ear protection at the parties, do not every day to mp3 player of such devices, if not you’ll regret it soon or later.
As a rule, more than 4 hours at 80 db SPL (Sound Pressure Level) really fatigue your ear and in order to prevent damages your ear need a week of rest. Rest = nothing louder than 60 dB for one week. 60 dB is the loudness of a normal conversation.
To really rest during your sleep you shouldn’t be exposed to background noise higher that 50 dB, if not part of our brain remain 100% active to process the signals.
measax wrote:
An engineer that I know (and this dude has done all kinds of work since the 70s) told me to mix in headphones to save my ears if possible. Final mixes on studio monitors and sometimes you gotta take the headphones off but until then I though headphones were bad for you turns out not and i even looked into this. so with the money you save get a nice pair of head phones. They save the ears because the decibal doesn't have to be as loud for you to still hear everything.
while I completely agree with you on 'save your ears' approach, I also agree with measax: I don't really have to up the volume to hear everything well in good headphones. can't come up with the numbers (SPL in headphones) though
mmh, I see the point of this engineer.
But I trust more people who study human hearing since lot of years more than an engineer when it comes to what damages more the ears.
Fact is that with good monitors you don't need much loundess to get good sound. And with good headphone is the same.
) 
