I need some headphones

I totally agree, but why would I spend my own money for someone elses project that's not as important to me as my own. If my day job is only going to pay so much, they have to live with the fact that they only get so much in return. It's not an issue of preferance, that's why I try to use the best equipment I can for my stuff. But for someone elses, I use what they give me. No worries, we're all right, seeing different sides to the same coin, so to say. Friends?

Joe
 
Walter_Graff said:
Sorry, I don't get it. Why we would not want to always hear and see the best is beyond me. It's just not a professional attitude as far as I can see.
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With that mindset, everyone would be using Meyer HD-1 Near Field Monitors and a Dual Link SDI Panel for a video monitor.. perhaps even something more esoteric. Everyone has to succomb to the realities of budgetary constraints at some point and this company has determined $35 is the max for this line item.

I don't think Sony headphones are the end-all-be-all for sound monitoring and neither does any location mixer. They're used because they're reasonably affordable and people have been using them for a long long time and folks are just "conditioned" That's it. They're aren't incredible, they're just common.
 
thisiswells said:
With that mindset, everyone would be using Meyer HD-1 Near Field Monitors and a Dual Link SDI Panel for a video monitor.. perhaps even something more esoteric. Everyone has to succomb to the realities of budgetary constraints at some point and this company has determined $35 is the max for this line item.

I don't think Sony headphones are the end-all-be-all for sound monitoring and neither does any location mixer. They're used because they're reasonably affordable and people have been using them for a long long time and folks are just "conditioned" That's it. They're aren't incredible, they're just common.
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No, with that mindset folks would be trying to use the best equipment they can afford. I'm not against using $35 headphones. I am against an attitude that says, who cares about the sound we can fix it later. That's unacceptable. But maybe the fact that I work in million dollar audio rooms with top engineers has spoiled me. Wait, on second thought it hasn't. I still say use the best you can afford and don't give in to the 'who cares now, fix it later attitude' whether you have a budget of 100,000 or 100.

And I never said Sony was the end all just that the headphones mentioned are well respected for producing accurate sound on loacation or in less than perfect sound situations and for the money are a great deal.
 
Hold on, no one said, "who cares about the sound we can fix it later" in this post. That's not the issue here. You seem stressed to get this upset, is there something else you wanna talk about?
 
Walter_Graff said:
I am against an attitude that says, who cares about the sound we can fix it later. That's unacceptable.
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This is the problem Walter, you are misquoting me. I never suggested he takes a who cares attitude. Nor did I refer to cheaping out on audio. My point was that in the grand budgetary scheme the VIDEO editer does not need perfect sound reproduction. If he did he would be using some Genelec MONITORS and not headphones. Can't say I have ever heard of any professional doing a final mix on headphones. If he tried I would laugh him out our front door.

Since he is not talking about audio editing or monitors then sound does become a moot point and cheaping out on headphones is not the end of the world.

BTW, Walter I am a professional location sound mixer, work on professional TV productions everyday (as well as the occasional film). I give my directors cheap headphones for their comteks and I will be damn if I given then a pair of my good Sony's or Senn's.

I think you misinterpreted my post.
 
Perhaps I did misinterpret. My apologies if I did but with statements like :

"For basic post-sound monitoring, headphone quality is not critical."

and

"In the grand budgetary scheme the VIDEO editer does not need perfect sound reproduction."

I know I would have trouble hiring you. I guess we have different standards. None is wrong, just different.

In fact let me give you an example of how headphones cost us recently. We got audio from a shoot in California for a program we are producing and it had constant scratching noise on it. I've heard this noise before. It's caused when a mixer battery is low and there is not enough voltage in the mixer. It makes audio near impossible to fix, let alone nearly unacceptable. So when I investigated I found out that that day the audio guy decided to use his little walkman headphones because it was a nice day and as he said they don't give the greatest sound and he didn't really hear anything and was sorry. So instead of using quality headphones, I got audio that cost $6000 to fix. Had he used industry standard headphones, he could have changed a $1 battery and saved me $5999.
 
It was taking a program into a professional audio facility (http://www.hsrny.com/) and "fixing" what should have never been in the first place. It would have cost more to reshoot it cause that involves going to Cal again, finding a time when the talent was available, and hiring another (not the same audio guy) crew to reshoot. Then it has to be reedited, and done very quickly cause of the delivery schedule so for this program it was cheaper to fix it. An average cost per minute for a finished program of this type is $1000 a minute so we lost $6000 of that just fixing what some experienced audio guy did cause it was good enough to use his walkman's headphones because it was nice out and sunny and he didn't want to sweat. Problem with many of these so called professional audio guys is they never find out they screwed up because we never tell them. This time we did. But there are many other instances where we don't but have to fix what they recorded because they didn't try to get the best possible sound they could. I had an audio guy fall asleep last week on a job. He will never work for our organization again. Tough? No I just expect that if you are a professional you act like one and do your job the best you can. Because you were out all night working on Samuel Jacksons new film is not my care. Instead of trying to make a few more bucks, you should have rested rather than jeopardize my shoot.
 
Walter_Graff said:
Perhaps I did misinterpret. My apologies if I did but with statements like :

"For basic post-sound monitoring, headphone quality is not critical."

and

"In the grand budgetary scheme the VIDEO editer does not need perfect sound reproduction."

I know I would have trouble hiring you. I guess we have different standards. None is wrong, just different.

In fact let me give you an example of how headphones cost us recently. We got audio from a shoot in California for a program we are producing and it had constant scratching noise on it. I've heard this noise before. It's caused when a mixer battery is low and there is not enough voltage in the mixer. It makes audio near impossible to fix, let alone nearly unacceptable. So when I investigated I found out that that day the audio guy decided to use his little walkman headphones because it was a nice day and as he said they don't give the greatest sound and he didn't really hear anything and was sorry. So instead of using quality headphones, I got audio that cost $6000 to fix. Had he used industry standard headphones, he could have changed a $1 battery and saved me $5999.
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If you were trying to hire me to edit your video, fine, I don't video edit (except in a pinch). Nor do our video editing bay have Genelec monitors. My DAW does. If your house can provide quality monitors to your video editors then clearly you work in a different budget range then I or 99% of people in here.

Your example has nothing to do with my point about video editing. Sounds like my level of professionalism is higher then your sound guy though. If you give me his name I will be sure and warn producer from using him.

The DVXuser forum members are usually people tremendously strained by budgets. The professionals who come in here try and offer up the best quality solutions for what they are doing. If you read thru here you will see them constantly pushing for Me66 type mics while the seasoned contributors push for a minimum of 416. You need to recognize the level in here and work with it.
 
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