My Pod Sounds Great With Headphones. How Can Achieve That Sound In My Active Monitors?

[Blackjack94]

Hey guys, 

 

Im getting cool sounds in my pod hd500 with Headphones, very clear with a lot of dynamic. Everything is very detailed. But i just cant achieve that great tone through my Active monitors, sounds loud, but all that clear sound with a lot of body disappear, Sounds loud but without any detail. (Cleans and High Gain tones) 

 

I will attach a pic of the inputs of my monitors. As you can see, are pretty big (8-inch) and expensive monitors but Im really disappointed because i spent more than 500 dollars (in my country, south america). 

 

my pod Hd settings are:

 

-PAD: sounds very nice, i don't have distortion in my cleans

-studio/direct

-Line

 

My gear:

 

-Schecter Hellraiser C1 Fr with Emg`s

 

There is a way i can achieve good sounds? Please give me a hand :)!, what kind of cables should i use? 

 

i have 3 normal mono guitar cables and 2 XLR. I heard about xlr to 1/4, but sounds very complicated.

 

Thank you very much!

 

Pd: excuse my beginner english level 

[silverhead]

The sound you hear through headphones for any given HD500 preset will be different when you listen to the same preset in any pair of speakers/monitors. That's because the frequency characteristics of the monitors will be different than the headphones. I don't think there's anything wrong with your speakers, and I doubt that your cables are to blame.

 

To regain the 'body' in the sound that you speak of you will probably have to tweak your presets. Only trial and experimenting can guide you. Leave your HD500 set to Studio; that's correct for both headphones and studio monitors. Start by tweaking the tone stack of your amps, then FX, specially EQs. Experiment with adding/removing EQ FX if necessary.

 

Most people maintain separate setlists if they really want to achieve the best results from both monitoring methods (headphones and speakers).

[Rewolf48]

Theoretically the sound from quality monitors should be identical to that from quality headphones, but there is one very big difference between the two: the environment in which they exist.

 

Headphones are a closed system - just the headphones and your ears, nothing to corrupt it.

 

Monitors however are in a room and are sitting on something; the "loss of detail" you report  to me sounds like the room is giving you lots of reflections in addition to any reproduction variations from the headphones (no system is perfectly flat in response so as Silverhead says you need to tweak EQ), but you might experiment with toning down the room effects as well.

 

This is a complicated subject so rather than type an essay I will just point you to some web pages that have already tried to explain it:

 

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar02/articles/monitors.asp

http://www.uaudio.com/blog/studio-monitor-placement/

[Blackjack94]

Thank you very much guys!