Using Open-backed Headphones For Tracking

A quick snap of the rather busy live room at Half Ton Studios, taken during a break in the session described in the text. Jem Doulton’s drum kit is in the foreground, with some Hifiman open‑backed cans visible on the floor tom. Behind him you can see Ted Morcaldi’s guitars and pedalboard, and Tom Rogerson’s keyboard rig. Ted’s amps were in a different room in order to achieve better isolation.

Conventional wisdom tells us to use closed‑back headphones for tracking. But might there be advantages to going open?

Headphone drivers radiate sound from both sides. In an open earcup, sound from the rear can escape into free air. In a closed‑back design, it has nowhere to go. If it can’t be absorbed, it will bounce around inside the earcup, interacting in unwanted ways with the sound from the front of the driver.

For this reason, open‑backed headphones generally sound truer to the source than closed‑back headphones. But, for exactly the same reason, applications for open‑backed headphones are more limited. If you’re overdubbing to a previously recorded track, you probably don’t want that track escaping out of the headphones to spill into the microphone. Hence we tend to use open‑backed headphones mainly for editing and mixing. For tracking duties, we opt for closed‑back phones.

At least, that’s the conventional wisdom. But I’ve long thought that, in theory, there is a good case for using open‑backed headphones in some recording situations. And I recently got the chance to put that theory into practice.

Canned Heat

To my mind, the most rewarding recording sessions involve musicians playing together in a room. Whether it’s a classical ensemble, a heavy rock band or a jazz trio, nothing matches the magic of live performance in the studio. The best studio musicians can generate this magic regardless of how they’re monitoring — but how they’re monitoring makes a big difference.

Not using headphones at all can work very well for acoustic music, or instrumental styles. But it’s a commitment. The musicians and amps all need to be in the same space, and spill will ensure there’s limited scope for isolating and fixing individual instruments, or altering the arrangement after the fact. It’s particularly difficult with line‑ups that...