by Christian LeBlanc » Thu Mar 24, 2011 10:16 am
So my Shure 440's arrived last night, and man, what a difference. This post is less a professional review of them, and more an account of how a pair of 'good' phones first sound to someone who's not used to them :)
Now, keep in mind that for close to a decade, I've been using the same pair of plastic, $20 headphones with a volume attenuator attached. Ones with foam padding over the ear pieces so they sit right against your ears, not the ones that go over your ears like the 440's. I nobly, romantically, and erroneously always reasoned that if I could make a mix sound good through these, then it must be alright. (please ignore the face-palm smily, should you choose to respond)
Superficially, I had to get used to the isolation these things give me. With the cheap headphones, a lot of outside noise comes in, and it was always a little comforting to hear my wife puttering around while I had the phones on. I was honestly starting to feel a bit lonely with the 440's on, as they cancel out a lot of outside background noise. Isolation is good, just a little nerve-wracking at first.
The first thing I did was to open a simple demo I recorded a few weeks ago (one track of rhythm bass, one track of 'lead' bass noodling). I noticed right away that lead line sounded way more nasally than I remembered it sounding. I tweaked the EQ a little, and quickly got it sounding nicer to me.
I next puttered around throwing together a little demo using my new Harmonist pedal (drum machine pitch-shifted, detuned clean guitar chords (+10/-10), distorted harmonized e-bow (3-voice), and distorted harmonized guitar 'solo' noodling (2-voice). One big thing I noticed was fatigue: with the cups around my ears, the drum sounds I was hearing just felt a little too physical. For a plus, the distortion pedal I was using had 4 EQ dials, and I think the 440's really let me notice every little difference between my adjustments.
When I was done, I put on a remastered CD of The Cure's "Disintegration" to properly test them out, and started listening to the first track, Plainsong. Ok, the windchimes at the beginning sound really well-defined now, a little clearer, and I can place them better from left-to-right now. Cool.
Then the song proper kicks in, and I'm wondering where the hell all these powerful, booming bass sounds are coming from. It's like a thick, low wall is assaulting my head, and the isolation these headphones provide just emphasize it even more. After a few minutes, I skipped to "Disintegration," and had the same feeling. It was honestly a bit...I don't know if "overwhelming" or "disconcerting" is the right word, maybe something in between. Anyway, by this time, my hearing felt too fatigued to do much more testing, so I called it a night.
So, I think the fatigue will go away as I get more used to them, while the clarity they provide will help me sort sounds out a lot better. I feel like I will be able to control and manipulate my mixes much more effectively than before, although I'm not positive that I would like to sit around listening to my CD's through them just yet :)