u/Hashtagpulse

Hi, I'm posting this because of my personal experience over the last 15 years. I used to be obsessed with having a 'flat' frequency response in the headphones I use for producing, recording, mixing, and mastering. I had flat (enough) cheap headphones back then that I would both listen to music with, and make music with. About 5 years ago, I bought some Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pros thinking that it would be some kind of revelation, as people constantly talk about how those headphones fixed their marriage. Now, because open back 900 megaohm wired headphones are impractical to with a phone, I also got a pair of Sony XM4s so I could have some noise cancellation while I was listening to music.

Problem is, no matter how much I referenced music on my 1990 Pros, I was constantly trying to mix the songs to the sound signature of the XM4s. Which would make the tracks sound plain bad when translating to other speakers. In 4 years, I never managed to fix that behaviour.

So, I decided to just use the XM4s for everything. I understand the sound signature of those XM4s better than any other headphone out there and as soon as I started using them for everything (wired, not Bluetooth; I'm not a complete animal), suddenly my mixes sounded great and more importantly, translated well on other devices.

What gives? People seem to be convinced that if you use consumer headphones for audio work, your thing will drop off. What am I missing?

I am weary of frequency dead zones causing me to miss an obnoxious peak in the 9.5k region (where my headphones seem to be the quietest), but going through a sine sweep, apart from a few perceived volume peaks and valleys, there doesn't seem to be any significant dead zones. Freq curve peaks could cause me to cut too much of a certain frequency, but surely if my mixes sound close to my references, and they sound not terrible on tiny speakers, and perhaps good on the speakers of a 2000 Fiat Punto, then they're good to go, no?

I'm almost certain I've played every damn game that fits this description but I'm looking for open world games with driving that has an emphasis on weight transfer. Driving is my favourite thing to do in a video game but 99% of them that I've played feel too arcade-y for my taste. It seems that even in games made for driving specifically (NFS, Burnout, Forza), the cars weight transfer and suspension seems to be stiffened up to accommodate a less cautious driving style. But I love that in games like GTA 4 and Mafia: The Old Country, you're punished for not being mindful of the weight being thrown around. I just finished Mafia 1, 2, and Old Country (I didn't like the driving in 3), and I'm looking for more like it. Especially like Old Country, the driving on simulation mode feels ridiculously fun to me.

I think one of the problems most games with driving have is that the roads, paths and terrain tends to be very flat and straight, which I find boring to drive on.

Here are some of the games that I've already played that may be suggested otherwise (they don't all fit the description, but I'll mention them just in case):

- GTA IV

- The Mafia Series

- Snowrunner/Mudrunner

- LA Noire

- Cyberpunk

- BeamNG

- Wreckfest

- Mars First Logistics

- Mad Max

- The Crew

- My Summer/Winter Car

- CarX Drift/Street

- Motortown: Behind The Wheel

- Euro/American Truck Simulator (I'm looking for regular cars really, regardless of whether the game is set in 1907 or 2907)

- DIRT, WRC, Colin McRae, Richard Burns Rally

- Street Legal Racing: Redline

- Battlefield 1943 on the XBL Arcade

- Forza, Gran Turismo, Assetto Corsa, iRacing, Live For Speed, and a few other of the popular racing sims/simcades. Some of them aren't open world, so don't really fit the bill for me. I like the freedom to explore and act like a normal pedestrian sometimes.

Any suggestions? Driving doesn't have to be the main focus of the game either