As a geezer of a certain age my hearing is dropping off in the high frequencies. My right ear loses sounds around 11kHz. My left ear is about 6dB down on the right ear by 7kHz. So my frequency response is lop-sided. So this makes monitoring mixes and masters difficult, especially in headphones. One solution I have is to use a separate EQ plugin which allows left and right channels to be set individually. (In Cubase I have this resident in the Control Room panel). So in the DAW and also in Wavelab I can use the plugin. But for other audio applications on the PC there’s no similar solution.
I’m using a Steinberg UR24C audio interface which has its own headphone preamp. For monitoring on speakers I can can a fair idea of the soundstage. For headphones I had been considering another solution - a headphone preamp. But there’s no such preamp with individual tone controls. One option is to use two preamps (like the Fosi SK01 which has bass-mid-treble controls and looks quite a nice unit), and to use only one channel of each preamp and use the eqs separately (i.e. one preamp for the left channel, the other preamp for the right channel), and connect this to line (2) out on the UR24C. … but that’s just my use-case. Does anyone else have any useful solutions to this problem?
IK Multimedia ARC On-Ear comes to mind. Not sure if it’s possible to have different corrections for left and right.
Sonarworks Reference would be the wrong solution, hast the same correction on both sides.
If I understand correctly, you need a hardware solution between your UR24C and your monitor speakers?
You could try the Behringer FBQ2496 (the “Feedback Destroyer”), which is very popular for use in room correction. Despite the name, it can be set up as a graphic EQ and even controlled via MIDI.
Mix with your eyes as well as your ears, just run a Freq Analyser to see where your energy levels are and perhaps even compare to a well mixed and mastered recording you’d like to match sonically…EQ, Levels, Space, etc.
It’s not nearly the same price point, but the RME UCX II interface offers a RoomEQ (a 9-band parametric EQ) on each outputs, including the Phones output. You can set a different EQ and volume trim on each side, in sync or independently. This is a great interface with a very good feature set. Unfortunately, their smaller interface, the Babyface, doesn’t have the dsp chip to run the RoomEQ.
(I know we all know this, but it may be useful for anyone new to recording/mixing.)
On top of all this fine advice, whatever you use for monitoring, really get to know them by playing all kinds of stuff through them (music, speech, &tc), not just your own mixes.
Being a hobbyist I have the luxury of a single stereo pair through which I listen to virtually everything.
That looks very interesting -thanks! I was thinking of a stereo GEQ. Annoyingly I used to have a JVC SEA GEQ but gave it away last year when I thought I wouldn’g need a hardware EQ again!. The speaker situation isn’t too bad, it’s mostly the headphone issue where the channels are directly injected into one good(ish) ear and one not-so good!
Anyway - thanks for the tip. Amazon reckon this unit has an availability of between August and December this year. Hopefully I can source one a bit sooner.
Oh yes - totally agree. I painfully go through each of my tracks to sort a relevant reference to suit it. On the DAW computer I have Presonus monitors which are good (plus sub at a suitable crossover. I also check on the hifi and a few other speakers. But I agree - you need to know the fingerprint of all of these and how they respond to various music types.
Thanks - I like your style and expensive taste! I was willing to throw a certain amount of cash at this, but this seems a bit steep. Still - it may come to that!
Yes - I do that with Wavelab meters, Ozone meeters, etc, and also using reference tracks. Actually this time around I’m trying to rely more on the sound than the visual meters, but they are necessary and I do use them!
To keep it analogue and avoid an unnecessary A/D-D/A conversion, you could also look at the FBQ1502HD (in stock here) and place it between the UR24C and a headphone amplifier.
Yes, because it’s line level, and for correction of hearing loss. What’s wrong with analogue anyway. if it’s done well? Cheap also does not necessarily mean bad, but it’s easy to find much more expensive ones.
You could first make sure your monitor response is flat. There is tech that helps with this, like Sonarworks ID , the microphone and software that will correct room acoustics. And maybe they have headphones to help too, don’t know.
Why does that matter? Because when you know that your speakers are telling the truth, then you can trust your software instruments more. So when your meters and eq are telling you something but you don’t hear what it’s telling you, then you know the problem is your ears.
But one of the only solutions to this is to get young people to mix for you. And/or have them listen with you and talk about the differences in what you hear and what they hear. Having multiple young people do this with you; getting second opinions.
And maybe a hearing aid. Maybe there is tech now that can help the problem.
I know of pearl powder for the eyes, but not sure about nutrition for hearing. That’s a tricky one. I know that prolonged fasting causes healing autophagy and weight training causes huge increases in human growth hormone, which has repairing and anti-aging effects (this is not medical advice; I am not a doctor). There might be some healing herbs out there specifically suited for hearing, not sure.
There might be custom hearing aids out there, that you customize. You find out what frequencies you can’t hear then you tune them. They would increase the amount of those frequencies.
Not sure how that works though. Or if your ears are damaged or your brain can’t perceive those sounds. So adding volume could do nothing at all, not sure.
The added frequencies work very well when I use an additional EQ in Control Room to add gain in the left channel only. I dont want to go to the hearing aid route, at least not yet. I don’t know how that would work under headphones!
The reason I mentioned a hearing aid is because of this
The tech is getting good, to the point it’s restoring hearing. So I thought maybe something like that could be used for hearing loss for music too.
