Target curves for the sound signature of headphones are a helpful design target during the development process. While a lot of attention has been made to fi nd target curves that match the listening preference of consumers, equivalents for studio headphones date back to the 90’s. In the context of music production a mutual target or even standard is essential as to make mixing; mastering more gear-independent. This becomes even more important since the main tool for sound engineers shifts from loudspeakers in professional environments such as acoustically treated studios to headphones, often additionally equipped with virtualization algorithms. This enables them to be more fl exible; to rely less on potentially expensive loudspeaker setups. The diffuse fi eld target curve that is currently still the only standardized target curve for studio headphones is often reported to not match a real loudspeaker-equivalent of studio environments. In this paper, we approach to find a new standard target curve for studio headphones emulating the frequency response of a loudspeaker setup in modern studio environments. For this, we give an overview of current target curves; match them to their equivalent loudspeaker setups. Based on that we propose a new methodology for a measurement-based target curve incorporating typical panning paradigms of music signals based on measurements inside multiple control rooms. To verify the results, we conduct listening tests with professionals in multiple studio environments.
