Headphones - query re: volume

[Smogo]

I'm currently in the process of building a home studio, the components of
which are relevant to my question are my monitors (Alesis M1 Active Mk2) the
mixing desk (Behringer UB1622FX-PRO) and my PC's soundcard (Soundblaster
Live! + Live!DriveII).

When recording vocals, obviously the monitors need to be muted, and the
backing track needs to be audible to the vocalist (and, if possible, the
sound recordist) through headphones. What I have found is that the easiest
way of muting the monitors is simply to plug the vocalist's headphones into
the Live!Drive; this kills all output from the PC to the mixer. However,
output to the headphones is too quiet for the vocalist to sing along to.

The headphones I'm using at the moment are cheapies I bought years ago
(Unitone HD-3030). Obviously pricier cans would give better sound, but what
I want to know is: would they also give louder volume than the cheapies?
Are there such things as headphones with built-in amplifiers?

The alternative is to plug the headphones into the mixing desk; this way I
can turn up the backing track to the volume the vocalist requires. The
frustration with this is that I can only mute the monitors by switching them
off, which entails either pulling the mains plugs or reaching around the
back of the monitors to feel for the power switches, both of which would get
tiresome after a few hours' recording, and I can't imagine would do the
monitors much good either.

Thanks in advance.
--
Cliff
http://www.psychophile.co.uk

[Smogo]

"Smogo" > wrote in message
...
> The headphones I'm using at the moment are cheapies I bought years ago
> (Unitone HD-3030). Obviously pricier cans would give better sound, but
what
> I want to know is: would they also give louder volume than the cheapies?
> Are there such things as headphones with built-in amplifiers?


Further to this, I suppose what really should be asking is: am I getting low
volume out of my cheap cans because they're cheap, or is it because the
Live!Drive doesn't give much power out of its headphone socket?

Ta
Cliff

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> What I have found is that the easiest
> way of muting the monitors is simply to plug the vocalist's headphones into
> the Live!Drive; this kills all output from the PC to the mixer. However,
> output to the headphones is too quiet for the vocalist to sing along to.
>
> The headphones I'm using at the moment are cheapies I bought years ago
> (Unitone HD-3030). Obviously pricier cans would give better sound, but what
> I want to know is: would they also give louder volume than the cheapies?

Headphone sensitivity - the sound pressure level for a given input -
runs all over the place, and it's rarely specified in a way that you
can predict what you'll get when plugged into your system, or even
easily compare one to another. Often the generalization is that "low
impedance headphones are louder than high impedance headpones" but
that only works if you have sufficient power to drive the lower
impedance at the volume you desire. It also ignores the basic
efficiency of the electromechanical transducer (the earphone itself)
and the efficiency in which it couples to your ear. In other words,
you can't tell **** until you plug them in to your own system.

The way to get around this is to get yourself a dedicated headphone
amplifier. This will have sufficient power to drive just about any set
of headphones to adequate volume (some to head-splitting volume). It
has its own volume control, and usually has multiple outputs (with
individual volume controls) so you and the singer can listen at a
comfortable level. Once you get enough power to drive any reasonable
set of headphones, you can start shopping for phones that are
comfortable, sound good, and can fit into your budget. A headphone
amplifier need not be expensive. Of course higher grade ones can sound
better, but given what you're working with, I suspect that you'd be
overjoyed with something like the $100 Behringer one.

> The alternative is to plug the headphones into the mixing desk; this way I
> can turn up the backing track to the volume the vocalist requires. The
> frustration with this is that I can only mute the monitors by switching them
> off, which entails either pulling the mains plugs or reaching around the
> back of the monitors to feel for the power switches

Given that you have a mixing console, you could use one output for the
headphone amplifier and another output for the speakers, and they'd
have individual controls. I'm not familiar with your particular mixer
so I can't tell you which to connect to what jacks, but if you read
the manual you should get a pretty good idea.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Smogo]

"Mike Rivers" > wrote in message
news:znr1078756957k@trad...
>
>
> The way to get around this is to get yourself a dedicated headphone
> amplifier.

Excellent; thanks for the advice!

Cliff
http://www.psychophile.co.uk