So I’m (probably) finally getting my act together and going away to school after a year and a half of not doing what I should be. Given where I’m going to be living–in a dorm or in a tiny apartment–I can’t bring everything I’d like to with me. Specifically, I wont be able to bring the stereo I use with me that I use to produce the basslines in my tracks.
So really I need a pair of excellent headphones with great bass response. I don’t want to say money is no object, but I know I’m looking at spending a couple hundred dollars.
(It’s also worthwhile, though sad, to point out that I’ll have to give up DJing for those months that I’m away at school )
The lower the ohms, the easier it is to be driven. For example, if you are going to mostly use a pair of headphones w/ a portable mp3 player, or your laptop, you will want a lower ohms rating. Once the ohms rating gets too high it requires a good headphone amp to drive your cans so that you can hear the full range of sounds they are capable of reproducing.
I have rhe Allen & Heath Xone: XD-53s for DJing and they have a ton of bass and are some of the best headphones out there, they are designed for DJing but i plan to use them for producing too along with my trusty Sony MDR-V6s (light weight and more comfortable).
funny,
I just did this quest as my girlfriends sister is living with us now, and she sleeps right next to my studio.
my friends at gearslutz pointed me in the direction of the Audio Technica ath-m50, they are awesome, and only run about 100 on ebay,
the other option is the sennheiser hd650 everyone has been raving about these and I spotted Prydz and Tocadisco with some a few months ago, they say you can mix down a track for real on them, the only problem is they are open back, so any one around you can hear your tracks and will probably be sick of listening to your bassline over and over…
they are pretty expensive too,
the ath-m50 are comfortable, and really accurate, thats what you want for production,
IMPORTANT
Dj headphones while they sound awesome, tend to hype frequencys, esp that all to crucial low end, so the image that you hear is not what you are really doing, I learned this the hard way from my silver sonys, working on the road when I previewed some tracks in a set, my shit was weak sauce. you will need some thing accurate and low, one more thing is that you prob wont produce at the same volume that you would monitor your mixes at, dj headphones are ment to go loud too
ok enough rambling, I hope I can help, the guy that suggested the beyerdynamic is prob right on the money too, they make great stuff, I used some at a studio last summer.
I’m going to be upgrading to these soon for production. don’t bother with the DT100 or DT150’s, I have them at work and the bass response is no good for producing electronic music. They are industry standard because of the isolation they provide (essential when recording with a band) and because all the parts are replaceable - not because of the sound quality!
Sennheiser HD 25-II are great, otherwise some open back ones will give you a good sound also. You need to get a few tracks together that you know really well, take them into a shop and try some pairs out - see what sounds best to you!
hd 25 are a djing headphone… they spit out tons of mids so you can hear the snare and they have a weird heavy bass response. Plus they’re too tight to wear for extended periods of time.
I’m a fan of the akg 240s. Flat response, the lower mids are a bit harsh so after six hours fatigue starts to set in but I know them like the back of my hand and even when I’m using expensive upper end monitors I still check my mixdown on the 240s just because they translate so well. Plus you get a nice long cord that’s completely replaceable.
You want to be careful about getting production headphones (or monitors) with a heavy bass response, because then your mixdowns will be extremely bass deficient and they won’t translate to other systems at all.
112db’s redline monitor plugin is pretty good at that, not too expensive either
I logged some hours this weekend with my new ath-m50’s, and wow,
I just sat down and made a few quick tweaks to the mid range of some mixes i had been struggling with.
sorted..
i have a pair audio technica ath-m30s . really great studio headphones for the price point (-100$). my only gripe is that they are a little uncomfortable after long sessions (6+ hours) because they are very tight on the ears, it took months of wearing them to get used to it.
so if you have biggish ears, avoid them!
I use the Sennheiser HD 280 Pro’s. They are great! They drown out sound like nobody’s business and carry good clean bass. Also good for djing. It’s hard to produce in just headphones though. You want to make sure you get a flat frequency response out of whatever monitor headphones you choose.
And like Kid Quest said DJing phones and Producing headphones are completely different. You should post whatever headphones you ended up buying.
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