anyone who says studio reference headphones should be completely flat is kinda doing a fantasy on themselves, flat headphones are really good if you are in the mixing room, but even then its not needed if you are a production person. Billie Eilish’s brother Fineas did all the mastering and mixing for her debut album on audio technica M50X’s, the Beyerdynamic DT 770s are very well regarded in studio scenes and they are HIGHLY V shaped, and sure flat headphones for studio reference are there, but there is hard competition in the sony 7506
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Fair point. I do know of Billie Eilish and it’s amazing what she and her brother are doing.
When it comes to music, it’s the least about the equipment… especially speakers/headphones. Those are just fine details that one may care about due to perfection, but besides that… no matter how expensive the mic, or the headphone, or the speakers… or anything is, none of it will make you a better musician.
But something that I have in mind is how do I know how balanced a headphone is - for example, the S4X has noticeably less bass than the EXTW37 from Direct Sound, this would essentially mean that you would be putting way more bass if you exclusively used the S4X for producing music… now, of course, a real producer or mixing/mastering engineer will use a normal headphone or car audio system to listen to the final result, this would let him/her know how the normal people will be listening to it. But I guess it’s worth noting things like that
Ooooh! If you can provide a link that would be awesome. Because I can’t even think of what terms to search for.
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that reminds me…
the beat to XO Tour LLif3 by Lil Uzi Vert. a song that people put as one of the best of the decade, was made exclusively on a beats pill because he didn’t have his studio monitor speakers on him… he just mixed the sound to sound good
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Damn…
That put further meaning to “all my friends are dead”, producer’s monitor speakers were “dead”. I guess the beat maker and Uzi shared the same pain
Something in my aging, decrepit brain just went click. In the link to the abm0 post he refers to Dr David Griesinger and bingo! that’s the guy. Here’s the YT vid, the demonstrations start just before minute 12: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-JGAobDwGs. And that’s just a demonstration of ear canal variance. I can only imagine what happens when we add pinna and concha variations.
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what im saying is that anything can be studio reference
just dont phone it in and adapt to how your headphones sound…
NTR im looking at you stop complaining about people lying about headphones being “professional grade”
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Absolutely!
For forever now, I have been trying to find the interview where some modern artist said how he literally mixes (or masters, don’t remember) music on a little mono FM radio. That was like nuts to me, his defense was that the music should sound “fire” even to people in prison or in the “hood”, and I never forgot that interview… but forgot who the person was 
Btw, who is NTR?
No Theme Reviews, basically he is trying to do the ASR shit and talk about how “on this song the subbass was not that strong”… mostly as an excuse to get angry at people like audeze and chord and anyone that he will call a shill company who pays zeos and darko for positive reviews (instead of… i dunno, people having different opinions)
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Well then, he probably shouldn’t even use the mono radio. Just jack everything up to 10 and call it a day lol. I’m really curious now who this dumbass is so I can listen to the mess he’s recorded.
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The interesting thing is that his music was one of those very high quality ones, like clearly it sounded above the quality of others, that’s why it was kind of fascinating to hear him say it.
I am assuming he only used it as one of the devices used for mastering and listening to the final mix - I remember him saying that it would reveal any imperfections and things of that sort.
That’s what bugs me… I couldn’t find the interview, and now that it has been at least 2 or 3 years since I remember hearing it, i just gave up on the search
Huh. Really interesting. If you ever find the interview I’d love to see it.
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One day 
(totally not)
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You can’t. The only way to produce “reference-grade” headphones is to tune them to some population-average target curve for neutral/natural FR, like the Harman target. You can’t evaluate a headphone vs. that target with your ears unless (A) you are the 1 in 1 mil. guy who has his HRTF shaped exactly like the Harman target or (B) you’re a trained listener with decades of experience listening, measuring and EQ-ing various headphones (like some sort of Tyll Hertsens or whatever).
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Yup. You don’t need Harman Neutral headphones, you need " @voja neutral " headphones. whatever they are.
Also, how detailed they are. Because I could seriously mix with Panasonic RJE-120s (they’re like, 5$?), but I would definitely not hear everything.
This seems like a jab at me. Am I wrong for trying to understand what “reference” and “neutral” mean?
If so, then I’d better believe whatever the manufacturer claims the product to be (aka marketing), and should just trust people who don’t know what they are talking about and write poetry (aka most of reviewers).
Completely unnecessary comment, immature too. We all (should) know that you can make music on basically anything, but if you are selling a 400 eur product that claims to be any better than your 5$ Panasonic’s, well then I am trying to understand why so =)
That would be true if all he wanted was to listen to neutral sound. But he wants to evaluate headphones as a reviewer, to make recommendations to the general public. “Voja-neutral” doesn’t help in that case. Equal-loudness EQ also doesn’t help. You need population-average based measurements to make population-wide recommendations.
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Might not help in the field of headphones but in the world of speakers/monitors, from the words of “reference and neutral” my brain is screaming “Genelec”. Pointing and looking at the studio and master studio series.
Have to say i liked the video @MaynardGK. It was very enlightening in the way of headphones and audio. So trying them is still the best way to find out how they sound and basically one could level them to reference speakers with the standards mentioned on video, then find out the differences or comparing them in sound, to you the listener.
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I think we have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as reference headphones, especially due to the widely different perception of sound each person has. This could be real and accomplished with studio monitors, but not quite with headphones - at least not at my position. There would need to be done a great amount of research, averages, measurements, etc. to even try to call a headphone reference-grade.
This is the quote that I think explains it the most straight forward way.
This being said, I will proceed to make observations on my perception and explain what I am hearing (of course, using minute stamps and reference tracks to explain what I am hearing - this way other people can play the same minute stamp and conclude what they hear).
Thanks to everyone!!!
And that goes for all headphone, speaker, iem chains…all subjective, all a personal preference and that’s it really 
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