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thinking through music

The Perfect Room: Two Perspectives

“When you put on a pair of headphones you are wearing the studio on your head, which is 100 percent reproducible. I’ve never been in a room that affected how my headphones sound.” – Andrew Scheps

“What you perceive when you listen to a mix isn’t some kind of objective reality: it’s almost entirely constructed inside your head, in response to the cues and clues your brain gets from objective reality. 

As soon as you walk into a room, your brain starts to analyze the acoustics, and adjusts almost instantaneously to the new sound. By compensating for the room, you can hear what the source actually sounds like, in the same way your brain will take account of the ambient light when judging what color something is. But when you hear a recording of a room, your brain can’t make those corrections anymore. Suddenly you’re hearing reality.” – Dan Worrall

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Thomas Brett

2 responses to “The Perfect Room: Two Perspectives”

  1. Frank Hudson Avatar
    Frank Hudson

    Those were a couple of interesting statements. One surprise: to hear Scheps say he uses inexpensive Sony-7506 headphones for much of his mixing work. I would have expected a much more expensive set of cans which would claim a flatter response.

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    1. Thomas Brett Avatar
      Thomas Brett

      For sure—and using those inexpensive headphones shows that Scheps knows them and trusts that what he hears in them will translate. His Oxford talk is also interesting.

      Reply

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