How good/bad are these headphones for informal home DAW work?

Denalihighway

Hi lads

Am I wasting my time using these for learning the ropes in Cubase?http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/home_en.nsf/root/professional_headphones-headsets_headphones_500094

I started in Cubase couple o months back and really only need them for informal home stuff. I'll try my hand at mixing eventually but I won't be releasing anything I mix. My long term goals are to be able to record at a decent standard, leaving mixing and mastering to the pros.

Are these headphones alright for the time being or are they completely unsuitable even for while I'm still learning the ropes of engineering,editing and that malarkey? Should I invest in something more suitable?

Not going to bother with monitors for now at least, as I won't have the space to make them worthwhile. I have a few sets of speakers around to A/B out of curiosity but it would be the headphones mainly obviously.

thanks

studiorat

In my experience, not great to be honest we've a couple of them here. Grand for chipping away at home, but I wouldn't rush out and buy them.

These are nice : http://www.gradolabs.com/product_pages/sr80.htm

And these are nice : http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar99/articles/sessentials.htm

Both very comfortable and sound great. Grado's if anything break quite easily.

splitrmx

AKG 702s. Bit expensive but amazing.

Denalihighway

thanks lads

sure i'll pluck away while i'm learning the basics so. Ive noted the recommendations for when i'm ready to upgrade

eoin5

Those eH250s do colour the sound a bit. I find the cheapo philips ones better clarity wise, still use them with the electric drums for comfort.

drumdrum

Audio-Technica ath-m50s are great!

I use them all the time. They sound great, have an honest response from them and are comfortable for long sessions.

You can get better and therefore FAR more expensive headphones than these, but when your in that range (€300+) then IMO you are better off looking for proper monitors. Have a very good pair like these for reference / late night work (such as midi work/ panning etc) and spend the cash not on a pair of €500 headphones, but on monitors!

They say that you should ideally be using monitors for your mixes, but if thats not an option due to neighbors / noise levels / etc, then I recommend the ath-m50s.

Denalihighway

drumdrum wrote: »

Audio-Technica ath-m50s are great!

I use them all the time. They sound great, have an honest response from them and are comfortable for long sessions.

You can get better and therefore FAR more expensive headphones than these, but when your in that range (€300+) then IMO you are better off looking for proper monitors. Have a very good pair like these for reference / late night work (such as midi work/ panning etc) and spend the cash not on a pair of €500 headphones, but on monitors!

They say that you should ideally be using monitors for your mixes, but if thats not an option due to neighbors / noise levels / etc, then I recommend the ath-m50s.

cheers for that. i'll look into em. too many reasons why i don't want to invest monitors right now (will do in the future once i feel i'm ready)

- noise levels like u mentioned
- my room isn't/won't be good enough in the short-term at least to make em worthwhile
- any 'mixing' i do will be only really be to get my ears wet, i can't see myself doing any mixing on my releases for a good while, if ever realistically but hopefully one day. I know the value of paying someone who knows what they're doing for mixing. Its more editing and levels i'm interested in.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

ath-m50's are the closest ive heard monitors to date on headphones.

you could mix on them pretty well as long as you take into account the issues
that occur in head phone mixing.

great head phones to be honest .

i57dwun4yb1pt8

note they do take a month or so to burn in , played every day .

they sound wayy better then .

Denalihighway

sorry to rehash this thread..one last question

i'm going to buy a pair of the ath-m50s...just wondering though, in the room I record in there is little opportunity to isolate the guitar amps. so i can hear the amp a fair bit in the phones over the monitor mix.

the headphones i was used aren't closed, so i know that aspect will be better with these headphones and also to be honest, its not a huge issue so i wouldn't bother taking drastic action regarding isolating the amp or using an attenuator etc. but in a perfect world i'd like to reduce it.

my question is, i'm assuming these headphones are not better or worse than other similar products regarding keeping out external noise? if there were others you knew of, of the same quality but were better at keeping out noise i'd love to hear about them

investing in a headphone amp would be a no-brainer i assume too. gonna get that ASAP. saw this on Thomann

thanks

drumdrum

I was in a similar situation a while back also. I know the problem...you're trying to get the best mic position/sound on your cab but in order to test it you need to play something which to get a good sound is too loud to ge a fair reference for the current mic position...argh! Its annoying I know!

The only way around this that I know of is to record a chorus or something with the current mic position on one track, then move the mic, record the same chorus on a different track and A/B. Repeat this until you get a tone you like. It takes a fair bit longer sure but I guess when you're musician and engineer theres gonna be some trade off!


As for isolation with the headphones, well the ATH-50s are decent, but not miracle workers. They are better than most I find but you will still get a fair bit of bleed in them from the outside. When I track guitars I wear them mainly only for click/drum track. I get the guitar sound before hands and then press record. They are good, but not in ear monitor (IEM) good, which IMO give the best outside sound attenuation for recording and live gigs. (I use IEMs for drumming and they are great especially for recording.)

Lastly, I'm not so sure how much good a headphone amp will do you. Most modern interface cards have a headphone amp (or two in some cases) built into the interface itself. Headphone amps like the one you linked to are IMHO, only really good for increasing the number of headphone outputs which is handy if you are tracking a full band with different headphone mixes. If you're a one man band then I don't see it as a necessary investment.
Just my €0.02 though.....