Want Advice/Opinions: Next Set of Monitors

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by Robert Lane

BTW: It's interesting that a few of the responders to this post are "over the pond", specifically in the UK.

What most Amercians are totally unaware of, is that much of our best audio tech and even professional recording artists actually came from and/or originated from British companies.

Think about it:

- Naim
- Cambridge
- the Fairlight console (now part of DaVinci Resolve's software package)
- Wharfdale
- Audio Lab
- NAD
- Aston mics
- Tannoy
- Graham Audio...
- Judas Priest
- Elton John
- Led Zepplin
- Freddie Mercury... and the list goes on seemingly endless.

Lest we forget, where would the world of professional production be without the BBC??! That organziation's influence is legendary, not to mention a worldwide standard that every audio and camera manufacturer hopes to be blessed by. Forget about what Netflix likes, if the BBC says, "you're good..." then you're golden.

Personally I've always been blown away by the pre-WWII radio broadcasting capabilities of the BBC, shortwave, long-wave, Omega navigation... the world literally got all it's news from the BBC until the US and France started their own over-the-seas long-range broadcasts during the big war.

Again... disgressing away from the topic. So sue me. hahaha

A very interesting bunch of posts, guys. Some fascinating viewpoints. Keep it going!

Being 80% retired now, only doing the gigs that appeal to me. And since closing my city studio down, I'm now working from home. Not wanting to spend a fortune on a video edit suite / studio build at home, along with the space considerations that are involved, I now do most of my audio mixes on a variety of different cans. Everyone was saying, "But you cannot really get a good mix on headphones!" Well to my surprise once I got over this, you can't mix on headphones, mental block I found I could. And with reasonable results. Enough to satisfy my clients.

A couple of years ago, I mentioned to a major studio engineer how I was doing more of my mixes on cans, and he said, "That doesn't surprise me. If it's good enough for guys like Andrew Scheps to mix on cans, it's probably good enough for many others to learn the discipline."

He recently mentioned to me that the AES is having their "2025 International Conference on Headphone Technology" in Dipoli, Finland this year. Specifically on headphones, as the AES's latest research indicated that anywhere up to 82% of the worlds' music, podcast, gaming, exercise listening and audiobook listeners are now listening on Bluetooth buds, earphones and various other headphones types, closed, open etc. Also, stating that some 300 million pairs of headphones are expected to be sold this year, 2024. Totally and massively dwarfing the worldwide home speaker market.

Not being a total recording audiophile, I didn't know who Andrew Scheps was. The engineer I was talking to suggested I watch this YT video. I also looked Scheps' background up. Needless to say, I found what he had to say regarding mixing on headphones vs speakers to be very interesting. I like this discussion so far. I'd be interested to hear if anyone here has their own comments and thoughts about mixing for this massive no speaker, diverse headphone listening market?

Chris Young

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/in...adphone-market

https://www.mcdman.com/scheps

Andrew Scheps & Fab Dupont discuss mixing with headphones - YouTube

[Robert Lane]

I didn't watch the video, but here's some advice based on my own years of experience...

At some point we've all had to use headphones for one reason or another, but to use them exclusively vs traditional monitors can be a dicey proposition.

There's been several times that I spent the majority of a mix on a set of what I considered "great" 'phones, only to revisit the mix a day later on my seasoned monitors and find tons of problems that didn't sound natural - or appealing.

Can it be done? Certainly but these are the considerations you need to keep in mind:

- Headphones can be for more fatiguing earlier on than a good set of monitors, mainly because you're literally putting the active element just mm's away from your eardrums. Especially with high-frequencies you can literally overdrive ear quickly depending on the volume level and how harsh the 'phone elements translate the audio signals.

- It takes a seriously trained set of ears to recognize how 'phones color the sound - because of their ultra-close proximity to the eardrum. Rarely have I been able to do a final mix on 'phones and be happy with that mix on other devices during review.

- Just like monitors, having a high-quality set of 'phones is essential to make an entire mix with. Both because a premium set of driver elements will be able to transmit the sound without over-stressing the eardrum and, be consistent and reliable over the years. That means the typical set of 'phones that's under $700 won't cut it, you'd need to spend around $2K to be in that ballpark.

- And to really get full use of HQ 'phones you absolutely need a dedicated headphone amp, of which there are several. Do your due-diligence, I don't have enough experience to make suggestions on that. Zzounds I've found has several technical sales people who can help you suss out the right fit for the phones you want to use.

- There's only a handful of pro-monitor makers that also make headphones, but don't assume their quality transfers to their phones. For example, Focal makes ultra-high quality near and midfields, but their headphones... total crap. HEDD alternatively just released (or is about to release) their set of 'phones and they're fantastic. (I was able to demo them recently - really amazing.)

- Don't assume that well-known "professoinal" headphone brands make the type you can actually mix with non-stop. I've loved Sennheisers for years, but I've never heard a pair that didn't give me fatigue way too early for long-term edits. Grado, is another example of fantastic "hi-fi" 'phones that fall really short when it comes to truly critical listening.

There are obvious benefits to using 'phones full-time and if you can afford and train your ears to the environment would put you into a small group of people who can make it an asset.

[Christopher Young]

Thanks for the feedback. Understand your POV. Mine was much the same until I watched this video. It made me reevaluate my approach to mixing. And I don't regret it, some forty plus years later, back from the very early days of the Yammy NS-10s.

Was just interested to hear others opinions.

Chris Young

[Andrew Smith]

That video had some great points, such as mixing with headphones because that's what the bulk of the audience will also be listening with anyway.

Andrew

[Robert Lane]

My challenge to that is the majority of video consumers listen on earpods, not even low-grade headphones these days, so this creates a whole new issue.

This is a discussion/fortune telling session I've had with several other pros in the past 2 years: We put so much energy into making our final output as visually and sonically as gorgeous as possible (at least the vast majority of us do), yet the buik of the audience is going to see and hear this work on cell phones. Not even decent computers with external audio anymore.

That being said, what's the point of all the work? 6K, 422/10 or 12-bit video? Hah! There's no cell phone at any price that can actuallly display all that data and individual pixels with any accurracy whatsoever.

And being listened to from the same device? Nobody's going to be able to appreciate a solid mix if all they've got are earbuds that can barely reproduce half of the audible frequencies humans can hear, the rest is either sub-sonic or just get turned into digital background noise from all the network compression. Video too suffers from big-time compression, no matter who it comes from. There's just no practical way to distribute even just standard HD at bitrates high enough to really showcase anything close to what we're seeing on our edit screens.

So why all the fuss, then?

Times have and are changing, fast. My hunch tells me the hundreds of millions dollars spent on making our content as close to original as possible is soon just going to go away. If all the world does is watch on mobile devices, not even port over to computers with fibre-download speeds... I think this is all just going to be overkill in less than 5 years.

We'll see...

[Allan Black]

I agree Robert but that’s not going to stop the producers, studios and folks with money from continuing to improve the ‘quality’ of their product. It’ll be from the competition point of view, if you don’t do it, your competition will and that’ll attract more business for them, while we all wonder what are they on about. No one can reproduce it except some reviewers with supposed golden ears.

I remember when we finished a rock music mix, we used to race out into the car park to check it on various car cassette players. Mercedes sounded better than Ford and my Datsun 240Z sounded pretty good too …

[Christopher Young]

Sadly, I have to almost totally agree with what you are saying. The direction the listening, viewing audience is going forces us to have to reevaluate just what our mixing and encoding priorities are.

Recently, we, there are a couple of us working on this, have had a fair bit of revision work for certain clients. Revising tracks that were recorded in the '50s and '60s onwards. In some cases upscaling video, SD to HD, using AI upscaling. Also, HD to 4K, again using AI upscaling. With the audio, it's been a pig's breakfast. Everything from '50s mono to faux stereo remixing and stereo remixing from later multitrack sources when available. Then mastering the reworked audio to all the current LUFS requirements for play out on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Facebook et al. The mixes are primarily aimed at the headphone wearing crowd, but we are also making sure that they sound ok on home theater setups.

Of course this means a variety of master audio outputs as not all the modern social media delivery platforms mandate the same LUFS levels. Most are requiring LUFS at14, but just check the requirements below:

Spotify: -14 LUFS (integrated)
Apple Music: -16 LUFS (integrated)
YouTube: -14 LUFS (integrated)
Tidal: -14 LUFS (integrated)
Amazon Music: -14 LUFS (integrated)
Deezer: -15 LUFS (integrated)

I can't post a sample as it's copyright material. But if anyone wants to see / hear the type of regrade and remixes we are doing, primarily for headphones, they can PM me direct, and I can reply with a download link. This link sent will only be good for 7 days as of today. If you do download, be prepared as it is in the order of 3.3GB.

The download is an H.265 demonstration example we made to demonstrate the results that can obtained. It's from an HD to 4K AI Upscale with temporal and spatial video noise reduction applied along with a new film grain process applied. Plus a color palette regrade. The color palette is transferred from the 2008 theatrical release. The '08 color grade has now been applied to the 1992 Directors Cut release. A clip of which is used in this example.

The audio has been remixed for LUFS 14. Shorts average 11-12, to Shorts Max hitting into the 9s on plosives. Average range just on LUFS 6. Integrated range around LUFS 11.5 - 12. The multichannel audio has been reworked to obtain the best spread of all the audio elements across the stereo sound field when viewing and listening in stereo on headphones on social media platforms in 2024. For the above reason it was all mixed on cans.

Comments gladly accepted!

Chris Young

[Allan Black]

Out of interest Christopher what brand and model of cans are you using? Any headphone amps?
About 2yrs ago proving how popular they are, Audio Technica released their ATH M50x cans in 5 colours.

The new sound shop Mannys in Sydney, to build up their new emailing list, had them on line for $98 a pair. Couldn’t resist it, I bought this red pair to go with my old ones. Then there’s another can of worms, should I break them in by listening to them for hours? Cheers.

[Christopher Young]

Alan, that is a good price for the ATH M50x cans. Not surprised you couldn't resist them.

For the last twenty years or so, I've been using Sony's classic MDR-7506 cans. Had about four sets over that period. I will be adding a set of Sony's new MDR-M1 cans to work alongside the old 7506 until l 'learn' the M1.

The other set I am getting used to and using more and more as I learn them and get used to what they are delivering are Rode's NTH100 cans, along with their AI-1 preamp.

Chris Young

Sony MDR-M1 Professional Headphone Review - A New Closed-Back Studio Standard? - YouTube

I Spent 30 Days with Rode's NEW Headphones (NTH-100) - YouTube

[Andrew Smith]

Chris,

Have you received some DM's about the sample video?

Andrew

[Christopher Young]

Andrew. Nope! Whether I will or not is open to question. 🤔😁❓

Chris Young

[Robert Lane]

Back to the monitors...

I just demoed a brand I'd never heard of before, and these crazy Italians have really hit it out of the park. Not doing either HEDD or Adams, I'm getting a pair of the iLoud Precision MTM's.

Read the info on their website and you'll get an idea of why I was totallly blown away - not to mention they come with software and a mic to tune the system to the room! And not $10K a copy:

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/index.php

Even the lower-line of monitors are really stunning.

IK is a game-changer - for me, anyway.

PS: The first pair of "really good" headphones that changed the audio world for me was the now ancient, KOSS HV/1A. Radio Shack (Tandy) even had a version of these. The bass response felt like sitting in front of my parents Sansui 4-channel hi-fi system. It was like a drug...

[Christopher Young]

Hmm! Yes, new to me also.

Looks like they have a pretty wide and diverse range of all kinds of kit. I shall keep an 👁️&👂 on them. Thanks for the heads-up.

Chris Young

[Paul R Johnson]

iLoud Precision MTM's. Sound on Sound mag (the only one I have trusted for 30+ years) had no cons and all pro's. Do keep us updated when you've had them a while. I'm seriously intrigued what you will think?

[Robert Lane]

...and I can't wait to share with y'all all the info possible but, as life often does something else has cropped up demanding the budget monies. In fact I'm probably going to be stuck with an intermediary setup until maybe after the holidays.

That middle-step is probably going to be the Fluid Audio FX80's V2. I've not seen anyone test those before, so I'll report back on those - until it's time for the "big stuff".