Good headphones that have bass boost built in?

[MDesigner]

Here\'s my situation: I have an Audiophile 2496 card.. great stuff. My speakers are your basic 2 + subwoofer set.. really nice bass sound to it, but no headphone jack. So I bought this little device that I plug the sound card and speakers into, and when I plug in headphones, it cuts off the speakers and routes the audio to the headphones. This is great, but now my audio is coming directly from the Audiophile into my headphones.. and there is no bass adjustment in the Audiophile control panel.

Now, the headphones I have are Sony MDR-7506. pretty decent monitors. But is there a good pair of headphones that has some sort of bass adjustment built into it? I like bass. images/icons/smile.gif It\'s nice to hear the big \"PLUNK\" of the contrabass pizz.

Thanks!

[marcuspocus]

What about a headphone amplifier? some are very cheap, and provide bass,mid, treble adjustement, plus give you a nice comfortable level.

[MDesigner]

Cool. Can you recommend one? i have a fairly tight budget, just warning you

[marcuspocus]

http://www.behringer.com/02_products/prodindex.cfm?id=HA4600&lang=eng (\"http://www.behringer.com/02_products/prodindex.cfm?id=HA4600&lang=eng\")

Sells for about 79£, if you want to pay even less, try to find the previous model : HA4400

[MDesigner]

Thanks! I was actually looking for something a bit more compact (I don\'t have a lot of room here). I think I might just try to find some Koss headphones or something w/ some oomph in them.

[Simon Ravn]

MDesigner: BTW I am sure you already know this, but mixing your stuff with \'non-reference\' headphones is prolly not a very good idea:)

[MDesigner]

Originally posted by Simon Ravn:
MDesigner: BTW I am sure you already know this, but mixing your stuff with \'non-reference\' headphones is prolly not a very good idea:)<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Actually, Simon, I\'m not much of an audio tech guy.. I just throw music together images/icons/smile.gif So I don\'t know why this would be a bad thing. You\'re saying it\'s good to plug my Sony headphone monitors directly into the Audiophile?

[Simon Ravn]

If you do your mixing with a setup where you are altering the audio signal dramatically, you will not hear your audio the way the majority of other people will. If you have, say, a 10db bass boost from 120hz and down, your bass might end up being underplayed on most other systems. So your bassdrum will be too low and wimpy, for example.

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Originally posted by MDesigner:
Here\'s my situation: I have an Audiophile 2496 card.. great stuff. My speakers are your basic 2 + subwoofer set.. really nice bass sound to it, but no headphone jack. So I bought this little device that I plug the sound card and speakers into, and when I plug in headphones, it cuts off the speakers and routes the audio to the headphones. This is great, but now my audio is coming directly from the Audiophile into my headphones.. and there is no bass adjustment in the Audiophile control panel.

Now, the headphones I have are Sony MDR-7506. pretty decent monitors. But is there a good pair of headphones that has some sort of bass adjustment built into it? I like bass. images/icons/smile.gif It\'s nice to hear the big \"PLUNK\" of the contrabass pizz.

Thanks!<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Hi Sam,

Simon touched on this, but you DON\'T want to listen to a bass-boosted signal while mixing. The lack of bass you\'re noticing in the headphones probably means your subwoofer is cranked too loud in your speaker rig.

I went to your website to listen to some of your mixes, and I think you might actually want to try mixing on those 7506s flat!! I\'m hearing a lack of deep bass in your mixes, which probably means you\'ve got an exaggerated bass in your monitoring rig.

Tonally, the 7506s should get you close. If there\'s not enough bass in the mix with the 7506s running flat, then you need more bass! I would budget for some actual studio monitors, rather than spending any money on a headphone amp. A multimedia/subwoofer rig is going to be very difficult to balance for good bass mixes.

[MDesigner]

Bruce,

Hmm.. well, what if I\'m not hearing enough bass in my 7506s? Should I use the GigaStudio NFX4 EQ? Or should I EQ it in Sound Forge?

[Simon Ravn]

MD: You should use a pair of \'reference\' monitors to make sure what your bass situation is - not headphones - and maybe try and take your stuff to a hi-fi system and listen how it turns out.

[MDesigner]

I can\'t afford ref monitors! images/icons/frown.gif

[Chadwick]

Ernstinen\'s right.

If you are mixing ONLY for your personal pleasure, and ONLY for playback on that ONE system in your studio, then it doesn\'t matter what you do as long as you like the sound.

BUT, as soon as you decide you want to be able to play your mix somewhere else and have it stand up against professionally mastered stuff, you have to get critical with your monitoring.

Any bass boost created by your monitors, and not by your mixing, will fool you into thinking your mix has that bass in it. The tendency then is to go light on adding bass to your mix. In your room that sounds ok, because the monitors are adding bass for you.

Go somewhere else with flatter monitoring, and your mix will be unsupported and sound thin in the bottom end - because you never really added that bass you were hearing to the actual mix. It was just an artifact of the sonics of your room.

Definitely pick a few CDs which you regard as benchmarks in terms of the eq you are looking for, and then try and \'learn\' how they sound on as flat a system as possible - because that\'s the real sound of those mixes you like. If your mixes have the same balance as the benchmarks, they should stand up just as well on various systems.

We have some great speakers at work, but they are mainly used to hear \'detail\' in the mix, and impress clients. Because what we do is only broadcast on TV, we get pretty conservative with monitoring mixes. We use speakers similar to what you would find in your average Sony TV. Often we mix on one speaker in mono, and we ALWAYS check final mixes at very low volume. Think about it -how many people will listen to a station id at \'balls to the wall\' levels - almost no one, so we\'re not doing ourselves any favours by mixing with that playback in mind. Sure it hurts to hear a great piece castrated by this kind of treatment - but it\'s simply reality. Maybe in a few years the average home entertainment system will surprise us with a big leap in quality images/icons/smile.gif

Rather than find a \'pumping\' speaker setup which makes everything sound great, go for as unflattering and flat a sound as you can in your control room. That way you know that when things are pumping on your system, they\'ll have to pump on other systems as well - which is a great feeling images/icons/smile.gif

Sure, switch to some fun Ubermonitoring from time to time, but always come back to reality and check your mix on a flat setup - it\'s the only way to know that your mix will sound as good elsewhere as it does at home.