Thank you for the links. I agree with some of what you said. I hope the philosophy dept. thing was a joke. I can't tell, because as far as I know I was talking about the auditory illusions that headphones cause (are the sounds really coming from inside your head? Or is it an illusion?) - and nothing philosophical. It would be a shame if you missed my point because of prejudice against a word like "illusion".jkotz wrote:<edit> Okay, so I took to long to post this. I'm leaving it up anyway </>
First off, it seems like some people are equating accuracy with translatability or portability. Accuracy is a fairly objective and quantifiable measure, whereas translatability (portability) is a really subjective measure (Just look at the two guys arguing about NS-10s). Certainly the two are related, but that doesn't mean you can't have headphones that are highly accurate but don't translate well to other systems, or monitors that translate well to all kinds of systems but which are inaccurate and unsuited for detail work. That's why you should check your mixes on a variety of setups.
As far as the idea that headphones CAN'T be accurate is concerned, I suggest some research before making such claims:
-http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er4-hwmra.aspx
-http://headwize.com/tech/elemnts_tech.htm
-http://headwize.com/tech/headrm1_tech.htm
-http://www.headwize.com/articles/judging_art.htm
as well as ER's library of peer-reviewed journal publications at -http://www.etymotic.com/aer/libart-category.aspx
Ultimately it's all just a matter of whether or not you can achieve a certain result with the tools you choose. For me, I can get good mixes of my material working on 'phones for 60-70 percent of the process. It also happens that I like headphones for regular listening as well. Is everyone else going to? Of course not. People on here seem to forget that despite all the technical stuff involved, what we do is still art. If it wasn't, we wouldn't need humans to do it (man wouldn't that make Sony/BMG and all the rest happy).
Oh, and if you want to discuss the illusory nature of perception, I'd try the philosophy dept. at the nearest Uni.
I also prefer headphones for regular listening most of the time, because, like I said, they seem to smooth out the imperfections in mixes, and I like to listen to a lot of indie music - not always the most scrupulously produced, and sometimes mixed by amateurs (such as myself).
I also think it's possible to do a lot of useful work with headphones. Specifically, though, I don't think it's possible to tell the difference between (for instance) synth patches which all sound good on headphones but only one of which sounds good on both headphones and speakers. The same is true of EQ. Add in the frequency response problems that many 'phones have, and you're making your job much harder.
About the whole "art" issue. The headphones argument is purely technical, unless you consider sound reproduction to be your art. The art of MUSIC, however, I really don't need synths, plugins, mixers, recorders, computers, speakers, headphones, or anything else to take part in. So this conversation isn't really a matter of art. IT's a matter of technology. If I want to communicate what I hear in my head to my listeners as transparently as possible, I'd better learn how to mix properly. Since I'm somewhat interested in making such an attempt, it makes sense to get the fine points of mixing "ironed out" so to speak. - whether or not the crap I hear in my head is worth listening to is another question altogether, and one much more closely related to something I'd be willing to call "art".
Finally, since I'm not an audio engineer, I'm not very well acquainted with the mathematical quantity of playback "accuracy" . . .IF this is defined in terms like frequency response biases or response attack for sharp transients, then I agree that headphones can be highly "accurate", however it would be silly for you to argue that headphones can tell you anything about room-level stereo interactions, and it seems from my contention that "portability" is really what I'm after here, not necessarily "accuracy".
Now, I'm not sure whether "portability" is really subjective as you say. I'm not an engineer so I don't want to get into fine semantic distinctions, but it's my impression that portability would have to do the amount of information retained (not distorted or lost) across platform changes. If you can't turn the volume on your monitors up high enough to hear the rest of the parts because you've got a killer resonance problem at 500hz (only an example), you've distorted information about your music that would be obvious if you listened in headphones.But if I can mix in an environment where such phase/stereo resonance problems would be apparent, I can fix them with little to no audible effect on the headphone's sound. In my eyes, my stereo mixed music would be quantifiably more "portable" than your headphone mix because I can only listen to yours on headphones, but I can listen to mine on both headphones and speakers. The same paradigm can be used when defining portability from monitor to monitor, considering issues like bass response.
In short, I'd much rather have a couple of different sets of monitors (or one set that can emulate the frequency responses of many different types of speakers) than a set of headphones and a set of monitors - at least for straight mixing applications. Now when it comes to composing on the go, field recording, listening to mp3s of your favorite band, and the like, of course I'm going to wear headphones. And it's conceivable that those kinds of things could make up 60-70% of your music life. But that other 30% is mixing and eqing.
