Adjusting headphone volume

[Mark-P]

I'm using an A7s2 with a small Sony preamp and boom and am pretty new to production. What do you set your headphone volume based on? Do you just set it to a comfortable level for listening and use the meters to adjust the actual recording level? What is the best approach to this?

Thanks.

 

[Alex H.]

Do you just set it to a comfortable level for listening and use the meters to adjust the actual recording level?

Pretty much.

Meters only tell you part of the story: that something is passing through the signal path. Listening tells you the other 80% of the story: the quality of what’s being recorded. Noise, RF interference, and other things will make the meters bounce, but active monitoring will tell you whether or not it’s a clean signal being recorded.

So yes, use the meters to reach target recording levels and set your headphone monitoring to a comfortable level for active monitoring.