[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

Nate Najar wrote:

what are decent headphones for tracking with minimal bleed but very
comfortable with good sound?

Sennheiser HD25, use earplugs if it is loud around you. Their
stereo-perspective translates well and allows meaningfull and correct
adjustments of a mic pair. I have regretted it when I tried using the M50
headphonees for on site monitoring. I am not familiar with measurements of
them, but I tend to assume a narrow high frequency peak. Also they have a
full bass, but it gets misleading if you'r in the room the audio exists in.
The slimmer bass-range of the HD25 and their modest - 6 to 12 dB assumed -
isolation works better in real life usage when you need to be be able to
evaluate stereo.

I have a pair of sony mdr7506 and they
sound terrible.

Ears are different, ours do however seem to be similar.

and then I need a pair for editing/checking mixes.

AT M50, they have a great tonal balance that translates well to
loudspeaker-playback IF there is no simultanous performance-audio to confuse
you. I like them at home when loudspeaker-playback would be unsuitable, but
they seem to cause ear fatigue when levels stop being modest. Which is why I
suppose a narrow peak in the treble-range.

ideally I'd have
the same pair- just something comfortable and sounds good. I don't
use phones THAT much, nor for any extended period when editing, but
occasionally I do use them.

Reminds me, I need to get that SRD5 fixed .... hopefully it only was the
resistors that blew when my NAD302 hummed wildly some time ago due to a
semi-pulled soundcard mini-jack. Which is to say that things Stax tend to be
good but beware of second hand electret-versions, I have had to discard a
pair ... the energized ones are more durable. Grado's are also great for
@home-use, a friend has a pair that I should not have tried to use for a
recording, I ended up putting the main pair too close to a choir.

Yes, it is non-simple, as non-simple as selecting phono-cartridges. What
complicates that is possibly also the playback room's influence -
loudspeaker euphonics included - what complicates the headphone-choice is
that the acoustic impedance of your specific ear canal influences their
response.

N

Kind regards

Peter Larsen