Is This Thing On?

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Notes Headphones

I recently decided that I needed to invest in a new pair of headphones. I really liked my pair of Shure SRH-840s, but had begun to find that I couldn’t really rely on them for mixing or critical listening work. The sub-bass extension was weak and unreliable and the highs sort of tapered off which, combined with the liquid smooth midrange, resulted in a pair of headphones that were very pleasing to listen to, but would smooth over imperfections in audio rather than highlight them, which is the opposite of what I need. I also began to think their sound-stage might be a little suspect as they seemed to have some weird cross-feed with hard panned material. If I hard panned a source to the left, I could still hear a little of it still coming out of the right. As I started panning back to center, the right side would fade for the first few clicks and then start increasing as expected. So, if I panned something to 97 in Pro Tools, it would actually sound like it was panned further than if I had panned it 100. So, while I had a great pair of headphones for listening (and tracking) I didn’t feel comfortable trying to mix on them. Since my monitoring situation at home is less than ideal (good speakers but a crappy room) and I’ve found myself doing more and more mixing while at work, where headphones are a necessity, I felt that an upgrade was warranted.