Should I purchase headphones for general recording and mixing?
(actually the kids are ok with ears on or off.)
What brand/price point is a good place to start?
Sincerely;
rsher
.
kids don't like singing with headphones on
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 63 posts since 23 Oct, 2005 from Hailey Idaho
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- KVRAF
- 6741 posts since 25 Mar, 2002 from sheffield, england
I believe you are planning to buy monitors, yes? If so mix mainly on those, as headphone mixes rarely translate to speakers well.
The main requirements for recording are closed-back designs to cut down spill onto the mic (though open-backed cans are still better than none!) and a comfortable design that can be worn for long periods. This is very personal as everyone's head is a different size & shape! It helps if you like the way they sound of course, but "accuracy" isn't really important as you can set a balance specifically for the headphones while over-dubbing.
A cool trick I use to record choirs sometimes is to record with monitors in the same room as the mic: obviously you will get lots of spill, but if you take care not to move the mic or speakers and then record again (either another take for double-tracking, or just the sound of the speakers in the room) then invert the polarity of one of those takes and mix them together at the same level.. a suprising amount of the spill will cancel out
<edit> for this trick to work you need to make sure that the backing is exactly the same everytime you press play: if you have MIDI parts triggering a soft synth there is a good chance they won't be, as the patch may well use free-running oscilators or LFO's which will be at different points in their phase. Best way to make sure this isn't a problem is to render or freeze all such parts, along with anything thats running through modulation effects such as chorus or phasing. I will often select all tracks and hit freeze before recording overdubs, as this will avoid all such problems while also reducing your CPU overhead and reducing the chance of glitching while recording.
The main requirements for recording are closed-back designs to cut down spill onto the mic (though open-backed cans are still better than none!) and a comfortable design that can be worn for long periods. This is very personal as everyone's head is a different size & shape! It helps if you like the way they sound of course, but "accuracy" isn't really important as you can set a balance specifically for the headphones while over-dubbing.
A cool trick I use to record choirs sometimes is to record with monitors in the same room as the mic: obviously you will get lots of spill, but if you take care not to move the mic or speakers and then record again (either another take for double-tracking, or just the sound of the speakers in the room) then invert the polarity of one of those takes and mix them together at the same level.. a suprising amount of the spill will cancel out
<edit> for this trick to work you need to make sure that the backing is exactly the same everytime you press play: if you have MIDI parts triggering a soft synth there is a good chance they won't be, as the patch may well use free-running oscilators or LFO's which will be at different points in their phase. Best way to make sure this isn't a problem is to render or freeze all such parts, along with anything thats running through modulation effects such as chorus or phasing. I will often select all tracks and hit freeze before recording overdubs, as this will avoid all such problems while also reducing your CPU overhead and reducing the chance of glitching while recording.
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- KVRist
- 103 posts since 21 May, 2005 from Error, no such location please try again
What's your budget?
Working environment (don't want to annoy others, alone or in a noisy atmosphere, on the road, in a studio)?
What's your planned application (home tinkering, audiophile, professional)?
Need more information please
Working environment (don't want to annoy others, alone or in a noisy atmosphere, on the road, in a studio)?
What's your planned application (home tinkering, audiophile, professional)?
Need more information please
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- KVRAF
- 1591 posts since 15 Aug, 2003 from Indianapolis
Wow! This is brilliant. Such an obvious solution, I can't believe I've never heard of it before.IIRs wrote:A cool trick I use to record choirs sometimes is to record with monitors in the same room as the mic: obviously you will get lots of spill, but if you take care not to move the mic or speakers and then record again (either another take for double-tracking, or just the sound of the speakers in the room) then invert the polarity of one of those takes and mix them together at the same level.. a suprising amount of the spill will cancel out
Well done!
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- KVRAF
- 6741 posts since 25 Mar, 2002 from sheffield, england
Well I didn't invent it! But it does work suprisingly well so long as you have a reasonably quiet recording environment. 
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- KVRist
- 207 posts since 27 Mar, 2005 from Spain
If you want to record vocalists and they want speakers, the neatest way is to use a mic with a figure of eight response and stick a speaker on the dead side. Oldest trick in the world.
Graeme
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 63 posts since 23 Oct, 2005 from Hailey Idaho
Hay all :
thank you for these posts.There really appreciated.
I'll be growing into them and
will post progress.
rsher
.
thank you for these posts.There really appreciated.
I'll be growing into them and
will post progress.
rsher
.
