mastering earphones

since my studio is located at home and i can't really crank it up real hard i'm looking for some good earphones for mastering.

can anyone recommend some? thanx!

well, no headphones are actually goodfor mastering. but i know the problem you're having and often have to resort to the same tactics myself. i just have a pair of sony mdr-7506's. they do just fine but the bass never gets reproduced on other speakers the way i mix it down in the headphones. my friend uses headphones by Grado and he swears by them. i soon will be looking more into them myself. they look pretty good and they have a wide price range to fit your budget. i would avoid the cheap foam ear-covers though. they hurt your ears and don't block out outside noise. the ones i've heard sound good, but i've never really examined them for my personal use.

hope this helps somewhat.

it did, thanx man, i'll check those out in the stores this week!

[c s]

i'm very happy with my (surprisingly cheap) AKG K 141 headphones. i never had the chance to compare it to many others though. but i like it.

it did, thanx man, i'll check those out in the stores this week!

i'm not sure if they carry grado's in most stores. i know i've never seen them in major music stores in the u.s., so you may just have to check out their webpage for distributors. i think you may have to find some audiophile shops for a listening session. any good store (even major chains) will let you bring in your speakers and allow you to play familiar tracks through them, and then compare the sound to other speakers/headphones that you're interested in. make sure you use tracks that you know inside and out so you can really pick out differences between other headphones/speakers.

no headphones are good for mastering. the grados are good headphones , as are the sony mdr-v900s (lots of bass), but they are useless for making a track ready for release.

if you can't crank it up where you write music, then at least invest in a nice system for your car so you can do the car stereo test when you drive around. that's the next best thing -- you know how other people's music should sound on your car stereo, so it makes it easy to know what your tracks need as well.

Originally posted by piscaries


any good store (even major chains) will let you bring in your speakers and allow you to play familiar tracks through them, and then compare the sound to other speakers/headphones that you're interested in. make sure you use tracks that you know inside and out so you can really pick out differences between other headphones/speakers.

yeah, they let you do this at our stores too, got my cd already ready, i'll check that out, thx!

Originally posted by octavecat
if you can't crank it up where you write music, then at least invest in a nice system for your car so you can do the car stereo test when you drive around. that's the next best thing -- you know how other people's music should sound on your car stereo, so it makes it easy to know what your tracks need as well.

exactly, we do this anytime when got some tracks ready for release, we have some quite nice car stereos around, definitely worth the bucks (AVI-basstubes rocks!)

car stereo's nice, but i'd rather listen to the stuff on as many other
peoples home stereo sys as possible. a car has that compression box thing goin', like the waves the speakers produce will be cut and compressed inside the car without being able to breath. in comparisson to an ordinary home stereo, you'll most definetly have way too much bass, beside the fact that car stereo's almost never give you full frequency-width and are tuned to the owners listening-pleasure. also, bass comes with volume, meaning you should really turn that shit up to listen to it properly. i think i remember that bass has a logarithmic volume curve, compared to high frequencies with linear volume curve. they were called fletcher/munson curves. maybe you'll find something about this.
oh, and about the headphones, don't do it.