Sennheiser HD600 headphones for mixing/mastering

Hi Forum,
I'm packing my home mixing/mastering studio away for a move and tried to purchase something within budget (not electrostats!) that would let me continue doing a few mixes and finalizing until I get setup again.

I realize cans have an effect of the stereo field, depth, dynamics, and frequency balance (what else ?) but as long I'm in this situation I'm gonna play along and see if I can get anything to translate well to other listening environments almost like I would using my normal setup. I might have to run out to the truck more to check a final result, hehe.

Comments on this type of fun ? Anyone been thru this, what headphones did you use, results etc. I usually only use cans for detail work, noise reduction, or to get a different perspective. The HD600's seem to give a better dynamics picture (my old pair sony 7509's would really lie about mid range dynamics) although I can see already that there's no getting away from the stereo field issue. The freq range is a lot better as these are open-aire type and I can hear whats going on in the bass a lot better.

Anyway - I'm still breaking these in. Headphones - the good bad & ugly stories please !  

Hi Kylen,

the Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO work well for me because they are closed (important for recording in noisy invironment) and well balanced in terms of sound. They also have a very deep, warm low end. Some people call them the "electrostats without electrostats"...

So long
catwalk

Hi Catwalk - I looked at Beyers too - I'll bet they sound good and fill the closed headphone bill quite nicely. Electrostats without electrostats - cool !

http://www.headphone.com/layout.php?topicID=2&subTopicID=18&productID=0020110770

I have a sony 7509 for closed work (they've been demoted, hehe) and used the HD600's last night to 're-master' an old recording to try and get the hang of them. So far they're not broken in yet and besides that I wasn't able to get the hi-mids correct so I have to keep learning those cans !

Here's a review of the HD600's:
http://www.stereophile.com//accessoryreviews/408/

The interesting part is something I didn't read at first - these cans are so clean and distortion free I turned them up way too LOUD while trying to learn them - but I didn't notice they were real loud till I took them off. Luckily it was only about 5 min exposure but geesh - like the article says none of the warning signs that tell you something is too loud were there - hehe gotta be more careful.

That made me think of 2 things - an array of transducers place at appropriate points on the body that would translate certain freqs to vibrations or some sensation. The other thing is deep dish phones - like the guy with a boogie-box strapped to his head only a huge set of deep dish phones - oh I guess that won't work since reflection would begin to appear...too much science fiction !

I guess I would like a way to determine SPL in a set of cans - I have the radio shack SPL meter so I can monitor around 83dBA SPL but I have no idea how that translates to cans - 2 somewhat different worlds really I guess - sound pressure comes into it somehow though...

I'm still breaking these in, only about 15 hours on them so far, I guess they need about 100 hours to be broken in.

One thing I noticed already is the re-master job I tried didn't translate in the hi-mids. I think I might try listening to some sweeps and EQing them a bit in terms of my own personal HRTF (head related transfer function). These headphones also have a bit of diffuse field EQ on them already but I need to personalize the sound a bit more so it's flatter for my bone structure, hehe which can be a little thick. I thinking I'll need to play with the octave centered at 3KHz or thereabouts - according to some Bionic curves and HRTF curves I've seen and taking into account my re-mastering results I should bump this up some.

I think I remember a thread around here somewhere about HRTF I'll try and search and see what other folks are doing while they're in the can(s), hehe.  

PS: I guess I'm actually more interested in the diffuse field EQ curves for now like described here:
http://headwize2.powerpill.org/articles/hguide_art.htm
Also the biotic EQ curves that account for cochlea resonance and such - I'll see what curves I come up with after a few tone sweeps.

Well - it looks like I can only go so far even with these fine headphones. They definitely have a great frequency balance and I could learn them to get a mix/master 75% there I think but what is getting me still is the lack of ability to judge dynamics. I've never been able to set a dynamcis processor precisely in a set of headphones, reverb either.

OK then I guess I can say I'll be doing spot checks, some listening and (dropping my earlier figure) getting the audio 40-50% of the way there.

Anyone else spend lot's of time in the cans with great translation to other playback systems ?

PS I guess the ear eq I was looking for is a temporarily discontinued product - maybe I'll see what elase is out there:
http://earq.net/