Thinking of switching to headphones as my main mixing device. Opinions, recommendations?

[Christian Schüler]

That aspect may argue in favor of good quality in-ear monitors with custom-mold earpieces?

That would be the opposite problem, as you describe, the quality of the seal is going to affect the bass response. The lower the frequency, the more time there is for pressure differences to equilibrate through a leak. This means, if you have a room, and open a window, you would register an increase in low-cut of the reverberation decay profile, since low frequencies can equilibrate through the window, while high frequencies cannot. (Case in point: the weather barometric pressure can be seen as an ultra-low frequency sound wave with a period of days; this is always going to be equilibrated between indoor and outdoor unless you have a perfect seal)

So it all depends on how repeatable you can insert the ear plugs, and from what I have experienced the quality is very sensitive to positioning; the in-ears that I have had need to be constantly readjusted to even have the left-right panorama balanced.

[JCJR]

So it all depends on how repeatable you can insert the ear plugs, and from what I have experienced the quality is very sensitive to positioning; the in-ears that I have had need to be constantly readjusted to even have the left-right panorama balanced.

Thanks Christian. I agree that "one size fits all" earpieces seem to need frequent adjustment. However the ER4 three flange rubber tips easily make great bass seal on my ears.

ER4 are the only "high quality" in-ear monitors I've used. Had bad luck with consumer earbuds. For awhile earbuds were included wiith every ipod, soundcard, PC, laptop, cellphone, etc.

Dunno if my ear is too big or too small. The only way I could keep earbuds from falling out was to hold them in with my fingers. Release the fingers and out fall the earbuds.

I had three custom molds but maybe the molds are different nowadays. Had two sets of molds for the ETY ER15 musicians plugs I wore many years when playing music for a living. Each lasted maybe 5 years before losing good seal. Also had the audiologist make a set of deep solid rubber earplugs for "max ear protection" with loud power tools.

Audiologist squirts expanding liquid plastic foam into the ear. After the plastic sets the castings are sent to a lab which reproduces the molds in medical grade dense rubber.

The original deep molds go down to the eardrum. I suppose the lab could cut the rubber earpieces for deeper or shallower fit. For hearing protection the earpieces were cut to fit quite deep. I assume that IEM molds would fit rather deep but dunno. At least for etymotics IEMs. If they specify deep molds for hearing protection I'd guess the same for ETY IEMs.

The custom earpieces have strange shape with a vaguely obscene appearance. The ear canal has enough twists and turns that at least with my ears a deep mold IS NOT gonna move from its proper position. There is only one comfortable placement. The plugs "pop in" to the proper position. They fit tight enough to be very unlikely to change position or accidentally fall out. However because the earpieces perfectly fit the ear shape they are long-term comfortable.

Seal is also important for hearing protection plugs. My ER15 with 12 or 15 dB flat attenuation-- After a few years when the seal got even slightly loose, attenuation went to zero. Minimal difference with or without the plugs if the earpieces leak even a little bit.

Seal is also noticeable with disposable foam earplugs. Unless the seal is excellent, foam plugs heavily attenuate everything except low bass and seem to make bass even louder. Earplugs need excellent seal to properly attenuate bass. The foam plugs when fit well are OK for loud machinery or firearms but high frequencies are attenuated too much for playing loud music. One would almost certainly adjust instrument and vocal tones painfully bright and hurt the audience ears.

[Hermetech Mastering]

Don't do it

[morelia]

For what my humble opinion is worth I'd recommend the Audio Technica ATH M50x. I have used Beyer DT770 Pro closed for many years now but I preferred the sound of the ATs. I tried Shure, AKG, Sony, Beyer and AT around the AU$500 mark. I found the bass seriously lacking in everything except the Beywer and AT models. As I said the AT were my pick but the ear piece was just too tight for my ears. The Beyers were way more comfortable. I can wear them for hours when even a pair of sunglasses on for too long gives me a headache. I think I'll get the ATs next time just because I liked the sound so much. Although that was back when they were ATH-M50 so will have to compare again. Closed back all the way. I don't know what the point of headphones is if you can hear surrounding noises.

[JCJR]

Today I dug out the original ER4p nice little case that shipped with the ER4p maybe 17 years ago. It contained 6 out of the 10 original foam replacement earpieces, two pair of replacement flanged rubber tips, and two pair of replacement filters (which keep gunk from getting in the drivers).

All the tips were in little baggies and did not appear degraded by oxidation. The replacement filters were in a small sealed plastic tube offering not much opportunity for oxidation. Everything looked in good shape. Sometimes foam turns into goo after a few years but even the foam tips look OK. But I don't like using the foam tips. They don't fit my ears very good.

I replaced the old ER4 rubber tips and filters. The filters are tiny little thangs, little metal barrels 1 or 2 mm diameter and length. The metal barrels contain a tiny plug of something, maybe fiber or maybe foam. Too tiny to figure it out without a microscope.

The old filters had never got much earwax on them and appeared clean. I don't ever recall having had to clean the exterior of the filters. Compared to fresh filters, the old filter filler materal was a slightly darker green but not a big difference. The old ones also looked slightly shrunken front-to-back in the little metal barrels though the diameter of the filler material still filled the entire cross-section of the enclosing metal barrels.

So anyway the fresh rubber tips seal about as good as the old rubber tips. The new tips just appear less discolored from age. I think the improvement in sound is completely attributable to having replaced the filters.

With new filters the ER4p sound exactly as I recall them from many moons ago. Very "flat sounding" in bass, mids and highs. The factory freq response plot shows a few dB dip in the high mids, to compensate for the ear's in-ear response, but it sounds quite flat. Without that few dB of high-mid cut they would sound obnoxiously bright.

With new filters the ER4p is also drastically louder than with the old filters. For instance on the lenovo laptop headphone jack playback, I was listening with the windows sound level close to 100. With the new filters, windows sound level above 50 or 60 tends to be uncomfortably loud.

So it seems the ER4 has aged very gracefully indeed over near two decades except the filters apparently oxidized enough to mess up the sound.

With the fresh filters, if I was gonna try to mix with the ER4, I would probably set up default playback to boost low bass a few dB to taste, at the driver level after the DAW master output. With the "tight flat response", bass level is what one would expect on a flat speaker system, but that is not quite as loud as I enjoy bass when listening at modest sound levels. So if I didn't at least boost the headphone drive bass a few dB, it would probably result in excessively bass-heavy mixes.

[patchnerd]

I definitely agree with comments about learning your particular headphones against a set of quality speakers, every product has a slightly different character and response curve. Try to get a hold of the frequency response curve for your chosen headphones if you can and it might give you a better idea of what types of sounds are likely to be exaggerated/deemphasized.

[rod_zero]

Lately I have been discovering that mixing is headphones is very useful and in many ways easier that on monitors. For monitors to work properly you need to treat the room and have them in the best position possible which for a bedroom guy is not always possible.

[pdxindy]

I have some Focal monitors, but I mostly use the headphones. Very convenient, don't annoy housemates, can be used in a variety of locations and give a consistent (enough) result.

Using the AKG K712 which sound excellent, solid low-end and super comfortable.