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Mixing  ·  Music Production  ·  Recording, Mixing, Mastering  ·  The Producer

3 Ways To Make Your Headphone Mixes Sound Great Anywhere

September 12, 2020

When I moved to LA

I brought my studio with me from Arizona but the wild cost out here meant I had to move to a smaller place with tragically thin walls. As a producer I also love to make beats when I’m in somewhat noisy places like lively coffee shops and hookah lounges. To continue doing what I needed to in these environments I had to transition to using my monitors less and relying on my headphones. 

Getting the sound I wanted out of the headphones was a challenge but here are some of the things I did to change the trajectory of my headphone mixes and make high quality, translatable mixes using headphones.

1. Make sure your heaphones aren't lying to you😱

Mixing in headphones can sometimes be challenging due to coloration i.e. bass boost, extended highs, exaggerated frequencies, etc. Always use professional headphones instead of consumer headphones (ie airpod, Beats, etc) when mixing and you can avoid some of these issues.

To get the ultimate mix with headphones, pair a good set of headphones with a calibration or environment simulation plugin.

A calibration plugin will tune the actual frequencies coming into your headphones and decrease the coloration effects. The best one IMO and the one I use every day is Sonarworks Reference 4 Headphone Edition. Reference 4 is great because it provides presets for your specific headphone make and model and is able to adjust the frequencies accordingly to give you a sound you can trust. 

Once you do that though, you need to establish a new baseline for your sound and determine what “good” sounds like on the new settings…

2. Learn your headphones and use professional mix references

So you have a calibration plugin set, what’s next? 

Get familiar with your new normal. 

One of the things I’ve observed in other professional studios I’ve been at as a producer and when I interned, engineers at those studios didn’t necessarily have to check the mix in the car because they knew their environment very well and how things ‘should’ sound in that environment. That takes time and constantly mixing and working in that environment, with those monitors, and for our purposes, in our headphones.

One of the legitimate shortcuts (like the good kind, not the cut corners kind👍) I learned while I was a studio intern is using reference mixes. This refers to using professionally mixed and mastered songs directly from a CD or extracted into WAV or AIFF (NO MP3s!) and comparing your mix against it. 

Obviously your mix won’t sound exactly like a mastered song and you’re not attempting to get it that loud yet, the idea though is to get guidance through the frequency balance and vocal clarity on professional, high quality mixes.

For headphones and monitors alike, one benefit to using reference mixes is that you can ‘study’ the sound of your system by listening to quality mixes on it for extended periods of time. This helps establish a new normal and baseline for what you should expect out of your own mixes (don’t go overboard though, remember your comparing mixes to mastered songs). 

Reference 4 allows you to use the plugin’s calibration both in and out of your DAW so you can do the listening study on your computer’s audio/media player. 

I don’t think you need to do this forever but for the first 6 months after I got Reference 4, I started my production sessions out with around 15 minutes of listening to songs through the headphones and reference 4, to help reset my ears to what ‘should be’.

Another way to take advantage of reference mixes is using an A/B plugin that will allow you to play a song and volume match it to your mix. The A/B plugin will also bypass your mix channel & master channel plugins when you play the reference song so you get a full ‘my mix’ vs this reference song comparison. 

I currently use Sample Magic’s Magic A/B but unfortunately they no longer make it so here are a couple other options

ADPTR Audio Metric AB

Mastering the Mix REFERENCE

WHAT SONGS & ALBUMS SHOULD I USE?

Here are some recommended songs and albums that you can use as reference mixes. In general any well mixed album can do, but generally you want to aim for something considered high level and similar in style to what you’re aiming for

ALBUMS

  • Dr. Dre – Chronic & Chronic 2001
  • Rick Ross – Port of Miami
  • A$AP Rocky – Long. Live. A$AP. – This is my favorite album to use as a mix reference
  • Amerie – All I Have – Dope R&B album Mixed at the Hit Factory, Mastered at Sterling Sound
  • Russ – Zoo – Russ has been highly successful and self-engineers his projects. I think this album sets an appropriate and obtainable baseline as a mix reference
  • Michael Jackson – Off the Wall & Thriller

SONGS

  • Busta Rhymes & Diddy – “Pass the Courvoisier Part II” – if you have something with heavy acoustic guitars there really isnt’ anything better to reference with
  • Kendrick Lamar – “Damn”, “Loyalty”, Money Trees”
  • Migos – “Walk it Talk It” – A very dynamic song, well mixed 808s, bells, and vocals, with different voices and styles to reference against
  • Cardi B – “Money” – Mixed by Leslie Brathwaite one of my 2 favorite engineers, the other being Bruce Swedien (Michael Jackson)

3. Trust the process. Use solid mix practices with your headphones

Now to tie everything together, it’s really as simple as using the same mixing techniques and principles you would follow when mixing on monitors.

 

You’re looking for balance and feel. With a headphone setup that tells you the truth, and understanding what true quality sounds like on that setup, you now have the advantage of knowing that when it sounds good, it most likely is but, AND I WANT TO EMPHASIZE THIS, when something sounds off IT IS. 

This was the biggest pain point for me when I started using better monitors and headphones with Reference 4. When I heard something that sounded a little too loud, or a little too brittle, or little too harsh, or the bass is a little low, then listened to the mix in my car I realized the things my headphones were trying to tell me is exactly what was wrong with the mix. Then frustrated I have to go back and fix it. 

Upgrade your system using calibration and the right headphones. Train your ears. Then trust them. You got this

SO IAM


audio engineeringbeat mixingheadhphonesmasteringmixingmixing albumsmixing beatsmixing musicmixing songsmusic producerproducersreference mixreference mixessong mixing

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