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Can anyone explain to me how big studios run their headphone mixes.

I am usinig an ART headphone distribution amp that will run 6 Sets of headphones. I am currently running them from the control room to the rest of the studio. I was reading some other threads and they say that running headphones more than 15-20 feet can cause some unwanted noises.

I am fininding that i am getting hiss, squeels and general degradation in sound quality.

I read about headphone distribution where everyone who is using headphones in the studio has there own volume control and you only send line level from the control room.

What equipment would you need?

can you recommend any perticular brands?

And is there anything else i need to think about.

Chris

Comments

Kev Wed, 12/06/2006 - 14:37

use the search

simple headphone distribution amps
cheap ones like Behringer and Alto and they go up from there
simple and quick

Simple power amp with a passive distribution box
search the net and you may even find my page
lots of headroom

Complex Cat5 cable, multiplexed, multi-channel systems that give the musician a chance to mix their own cues
http://www.aviom.com/
lots of expense

anonymous Fri, 12/22/2006 - 03:17

NO! Commercial studios do NOT just send out a signal to a simple headphone amp for the simple reason that every musician needs a different mix.

The popular systems are from Furmann, Hearback and Aviom. We use regular mini-mixers.

Our system is rigged up so that a stereo mix is sent to one of the stereo inputs of the mini-mixers and two or three cue sends are sent to the other channels. The musician also has the ability to mix in his or her own signal on topo of that. Each musician has a mini-mixer on a chunky mic stand in front of him and can adjust volumes and tone as needed without asking me or who ever is engineering for anything.

All these mixers are fed from a single output that is buffered by a set of distribution amps, as the mixer outputs cannot deal with feeding all these inputs at once asa the impedence would be too low.

The headphone out on the mini mixers is enough for most things, but the drummer gets a high powered headphone amp as they are all deaf anyway!