The first thing to realize about headphones is that there is no such thing as "flat". Due to the close proximity of the speaker to the ear (or ear canal / ear drum in the case of IEM headphones) the term "flat" is 100% subjective, meaning only you yourself can know what "flat" is.. and the only way to figure that out is to spend a lot of time A/B testing and listening to mixes that have been verified to be "good" (which in terms of frequency response is almost all modern high profile artists mixes).The only thing I know about the subject is that the most "flat" sound possible is sought so that it respects the fidelity of the audio both when listening to tracks from other artists and when creating your own.
Thus, in my opinion, the absolute number 1 feature of a headphone that you should consider first is how comfortable the headphones are to wear.
As soon as you go past the 150 to 300$ price point, almost all headphones will be "good enough" to make good mixes on as long as you get used to them and understand the strengths and weaknesses of headphones in general. Some of the weaknesses can be counteracted.. for instance you can use EQ to re-voice a headphone with weak bass or highs, though at the cost of added distortion.
Thus the 2nd feature I always recommend to base your purchasing options on is the amount of distortion produced by the headphone + amplifier combination. If you manage to minimize the amount of distortion, you'll have an easier time equalizing the headphones successfully to suite your optimal "flat" representation.
I also highly recommend using some form of cross feed plugin (for instance Goodhertz CanOpener) or some kind of virtual room emulation (for instance Slate VSX or Realphones). This may help in mix translation as the virtual room will be reactive to the various phase differences of your audio sources, in a way that is very difficult to detect if you use only the headphones themselves. This same phenomenon also makes it much easier to hear EQ and especially dynamics changes (compression, transient processing, gating etc).
Finally.. and most importantly: Just like any monitoring solution, be it headphones or speakers, learning your own monitoring chain takes time and effort! You can't just slap on a pair of headphones and think that you can immediately create a mix that sounds good and translates everywhere. It takes some effort to train your brain to recognize all the clues and limits of the mix.
The quickest way to get good results is to do at least 1 or 2 hours of active listening to professional tracks every single day for at least a few weeks.. and while doing it, keep tweaking your own personal Headphone EQ curve until you are 100% satisfied with the results, meaning that all the hundreds of different professional mixes that you listen to through your headphones, all sound "perfect" at all times. None of them should lack bass. None of them should be too shrill. None of them should be too honky or too hollow. Once you've done that, you have established a baseline for your own productions. Now stick to that baseline and start mixing and don't forget to frequently do A/B tests with professional mixes!
.. if you do this method rigorously for a few months you should be able to get results that rival pretty much any "pro studio" out there (provided that you know how to mix/produce in the first place, but that's a completely other skill).
Statistics: Posted by bmanic — Sun Nov 17, 2024 8:27 pm