Zoom Gear & Home Recording Forum

Anyone have a suggestion as to what brand & style of headphones would be best for the HD16 ? We have a tiny recording studio & will be recording some local talent if we ever get the HD16 figured out. Should I try to find headphones with a 1/4" (6.3 mm) plug ? We're having trouble now with headphones that have an adapter on them. They have a 3.5 mm plug with the 1/4" adapter. I checked & both are stereo. Thanks ! Bill.

Hi,

First, you should buy headphones that are best suited for your ears (what sounds good to you), how they physically fit your head and your recording situation (live or in a studio).
Almost any stereo headphone will work work with the HD16. If the input jack on the HD16 is 1/4" then most of the time you will need a 1/8" to 1/4" stereo adapter in order to connect the headphones to your HD16.

I do a lot of on site recording so I use SONY MDR-V6 because they are closed back, comfortable and have a frequency response of 5Hz - 30,000Hz. I also use them in my studio.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/sto ... ifications


http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDR-V6-Monit ... B00001WRSJ

Some headphones have an exaggerated bass response so they sound good while listening to your favorite band but not so good when you are trying to record a track, mix/master a song.

The Sony's are fairly flat sounding (no added frequency coloration) as compared to my studio monitors.

Have fun and good luck!

VOXBOX

To give an informed response, we need to know a few more things. Are you looking for something suited to tracking while recording or for the mixing and mastering process? What's your budget?

Strictly speaking, you should be mixing on monitors in a treated room, which quickly gets into big bucks. But a good pair of headphones will get you by. As voxbox said, you want something that doesn't color the sound - you need to hear the sound the way it is, not the way most headphones will juice it up. If you can get it to sound good with a nice, flat response, it'll still sound good when it's juiced. But if you mix on a pair of juiced cans, it may not sound good on another pair that's juiced differently.

If you're looking for something to track while recording, you may want better isolation while providing comfort. I had been using a pair of Sony MDR-V600s, which have served me well in mixing, but they let in a lot of sound from the outside. When my buddy and I started recording acoustic drums, we needed something so he could hear the other tracks with his drums mixed in, and as little as possible from the actual drums themselves. I bought a pair of Beyer Dynamic DT770 Pros. At $188 (and as much as $250, depending on where you shop) they're a little salty, but they work well for recording drums and they provide pretty flat response for mixing. They're pretty comfortable, too, which is important for long sessions. If you don't need that much isolation, you should be able to find something for less money. Also, for recording vocals, some people actually prefer to hear themselves a bit from the outside instead of just in the phones.

I wouldn't worry about 1/4" vs. 1/8" plugs. Most studio cans come with an adapter, but you can pick one up for a few bucks at Radio Shack if necessary.

Thanks for the answer guys. Isolation & comfort are exactly what we'll need. The problem is as I posted in the past that the headphones we have aren't working with the HD 16. Someone replied that we may be shorting out the audio. These headphones work fine on everything else but nothing on the HD 16. It's very frustrating. They are cheap headphones & have the 1/8 adapter on them. The adapter is stereo. Anyway, I figure that we need to begin all over again with a good set of headphones. Apparently the adapter makes no difference at all though. I'll have to check ebay for pricing on the headphones that were suggested to me. As soon as we can figure out how to get the headphones to work, we should be free & clear. The guy I bought the HD 16 for is an old blues artist that has 45's etc. recorded. One is on a major label. He knows nothing about the recording process though. Somehow the two of us will figure it out but this headphone issue is really holding us back. When we plug them into the HD 16 we hear nothing through them & the audio is still heard through the external speakers. Bill.

Have you tried any other headphones with the HD16? You could even use the 1/8" adapter to plug in ear buds from an MP3 player or whatever else you have sitting around. That would at least tell you whether the problem is with the adapter or something else.

No real suggestions... I'm stuck wearing glasses, and find that on-ear headphones become painful after a short while. And I find in-ear headphones uncomfortable -- and, for your uses, they don't block out enough exterior noise. So for me -- headphones that go completely around the ear are best. I have, I think, two sets that qualify. One set is Yamaha, came as a freebie with some purchase -- can't find a model number on them. Have a set of Sony MDR-V600 that I bought to monitor my Canon XH-A1 video camera -- I think these were sold AS studio monitor headphones. I also have a set of Brookstone Noise Cancelling headphones bought for travel -- about $150, replacing the $180 set that were on-ear and got too painful. I do have a set of Sennheiser HD 490, but they are on-ear (though not quite as painful as they are open-back design and the "cushion" covers the entire surface, not just a vinyl ring on the edge of the ear) -- these are for when I feel I need more TV definition without waking the neighbors <G>


But before spending the cost for circum-aural headphones (for some reason, they tend to be more expensive then on-ear) you need to confirm that you don't have a faulty headphone jack (and more -- since the HD16's sub-out can be configured as a second headphone jack, if multiple headphones tried in BOTH jacks give you faulty results you either have TWO ruined jacks OR a very badly configured master output).

I started a thread on this a while back in another section on here....some good advice and tips in there

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14278

Thanks to everyone who responded. I have some good ideas now to start. I haven't got back to Johnny's store where the HD 16 is as of yet & I am hoping to tomorrow. I'll bring some cheap headphones just to see if the adapter on the set we used may be troublesome. It did work fine when we plugged it into his keyboard. I sure hop the 16 isn't defective. It was only used one time & I bought it from a music teacher through eBay. He never had to use headphones so was of no help with this problem. I'll have to email him again to let him know that we still have not solved the problem. Best to all, Bill.

I use samson studio reference CH700 headphones, very comfy and the mixes seem to come out pretty good for me, forgot where I bought them but they were pretty cheap . and no I don't work for samson

I thought the aforementioned sony's were remarkable, amazing, perfect, flawless, comfortable, and better than life itself. That is, until I got a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50. They are so much of an improvement over the 7506's that I feel I wasted my money on the sony's. Don't take my word for it, headphone.org has them on their top ten. I thought the straight cord (as opposed to curled cord) was going to bother me but I actually prefer it since you don't have to fight tangles or knots.

The band phish also uses them for their live work. see photographs here:
http://www.proaudiostar.com/phish

http://www.headphone.com/selection-guid ... phones.php