Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
Cheers, C
I've always been a studio musician and never a DJ, but I hate reading forum posts about what bad taste DJs have in sound. Theirs is a completely different use-case scenario from audiophile listening and studio recording because it almost never involves listening to headphones in a silent room; DJs are cueing the next track while listening to the one in the room. If they used reference headphones with full representations of highs and no compensation in the lows, DJs would naturally find themselves turning up the volume to hear the lows and probably damage their hearing as a result.
So you're talking about doing a live recording situation? Not as in audience, as in everyone plays at the same time? Or the drummer using the headphones when the mics are under/behind the drums?
As for vocals I would never allow an open back in the studio. I've had vocalists use closed back and the mic have picked up the leaks of those from the gap in the seal caused by thick glasses. Inside of a studio I would never use open backs. I love them. But they have their place. For recording the performer usually wears sony 7506's, or some other mid to low quality monitor headphone. We use cheap monitors because all that matters to the performer to hear, is if they are in tune and have decent tone quality and enunciation. A drummer would probably prefer the closed back over open just because the drums are so loud that you can hear everything outside of them and they overpower what's inside the headphone. Closed back keeps those sounds out too. Using open back for electric keyboard recording is fine because the keyboard sound is sent to a computer instead of being picked up acoustically. Using a real grand piano the mics pick up a lot more things as they are usually put farther from the piano so the strings that are closer to it don't sound louder, and the volume is then turned up On it afterwards so all the little sounds (even if your clothes make noise) will be picked up.
open back is for the mixing room, mastering artists use a mix of everything to make sure it sounds good on all devices, and closed backs are basically studio's best friend.