Driver's Ed.

As I get back into mixing my favorite way to procrastinate is by studying esoteric yet slightly related audio phenomena that increases my understanding of my current setup's pros and cons. For example, my current monitoring setup is my pair of LCD-X (2021 Edition) through a Monoprice Monolith THX AAA DAC/Amp. I won't get into the Monolith's specs since when choosing the unit a few years ago, I just wanted "endgame" and came to the conclusion that for my low budget, lack of access to a room with decent acoustics, and portability considerations, headphones were the best bang-for-the-buck. And the highly-praised THX amps tested well enough for my understanding of audio at the time. Even now it offers a compelling value proposition for literally anybody. I was more of an "intense hobbyist" back then.

Prior to my Audezes, I had a pair of SHP 9500, HD6XX and Focal Elex phones. The best at transient response to my ears was the Elex, and even though it was much heavier (in weight) than the Sennheisers, I still preferred their over-exaggerated soundstage that made the sides sound like they extended behind my head. As I begin the journey of headphone monitoring plugins like Realphones and Airwindows Cans, I want to understand why this topic is so controversial. Even if mastering engineers are using them.

Amir from Audio Science Review offers a glib remark at the offset of his LCD-X review "If you think you have an exact idea of a headphone performance, you are likely wrong!" How close the driver is to the ear, pad swapping, the shape of one's ear, these are all factors that change according to the user's anatomy.

Tuning to a Harman Curve makes something sound good, but tuning to create a flat frequency response is what makes something more accurate. It's better to mix to a freq response target that sounds as close to objective goodness than to mix to a flat response. The possible benefits of this are that the engineer might have more fun along the way.

Our anatomy contributes to our perception of audio. The neck and chest amplify certain frequencies, it's just that the ears are the ones that contribute the most to our psychoacoustic perceptions. By eliminating variables that contribute to one's perception of audio, its important to understand what we're missing out on when switching from mixing on speakers, to headphones, and to IEMs.

When mixing, we tend to forget about any EQ we've applied to "correct" our monitoring system. It's a distraction. Fletcher-Munson curves are to be memorized and then considered when mixing at low volumes, due to the variability of amplitudes/frequencies at differing dB. There is simply too much information to absorb when listening to all of a song's facets simultaneously. It's much more practical to keep these things in the back of one's mind, than to laboriously consult them every time. This memorization of what sounds good to you is what creates an engineers "sound" which can then be doubled-down on as a selling point (or not). But doing so makes mixing more personal, fun, and therefore better for everybody. We can be analogized to chefs who are also part-time food critics. We get paid to criticize and conjecture what would be a subjectively-arrived-at, objectively better take. A more universal take. And to then apply another layer of art on top of an existing one. How can an opinion be universal? It's not that it's the final opinion, it's just one that sounds better to more people, like the artist or label execs.