Headphone/Speaker Calibration Software?

[allen]

Has anyone had any experience with Sonarworks or other similar software packages? If you have, do you feel it improved your mixes and/or made them translate better from one listening environment to another?

http://sonarworks.com/headphones/overview/

Allen
https://soundcloud.com/allen-myers

[shorttonpro]

I love it personally.

I use both the speaker / room correction version, and the headphone correction for the Sennheiser HD800s.

Speakers are good, headphones are good, have acoustic treatment, but the plug-in gets things much closer to flat than before.

The headphone software comes pre-calibrated for most popular models which is pretty cool for collaborations since you can share feedback more reliably if you know it isn't being overly influenced by the frequency response of the playback system. Hope it gets used by more and more people.

[Cruciform]

Use the headphone version in conjunction with Waves NX to create a really useful reference alternative.

[allen]

Thanks Scott and Rob. Both the Sonarworks and Waves Nx plug ins sound like great ways to help improve my mixing environment when working with headphones.

Scott, do you find using both headphone and speaker calibration in your treated room provide similar results? I imagine the room has some impact. I am wondering how much of a difference is noticeable when you move between the monitors and the headphones.

Allen
https://soundcloud.com/allen-myers

[shorttonpro]

It does ease the transition between switching between the two and make the playing field more even. They both exist in the same plug-in, just have to remember to flip a switch when going between the two calibrations.

Good suggestion to try with Waves NX to get the normal crossfeed and bleed associated with speakers in your headphones.

Also found it beneficial to get some extra software where I could run VSTs on the output of my computer, so I can listen to Spotify through the correction.

[cardell]

I use IK-Multimedia ARC Room Correction. I wouldn't mix without it.

Stuart

[mojobone]

Sonarworks might be the most detailed of the bunch, (also the most expensive) but this one's also worth a look. http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-isone/

[Len911]

Sonarworks might be the most detailed of the bunch, (also the most expensive) but this one's also worth a look. http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-isone/

oh, I have this one!

hmmm, it appears the goal of sonarworks is to flatten the response of the headphones and taking into account the head between the phones?

isone adjusts the head between the phones, and has different frequency responses of various monitors, etc. also allowing the angle of the speakers and monitors to be adjusted, and room size, distance from speakers,etc.

I'm not sure I'd say the sonarworks is more detailed, just flat frequency response. They also have a speaker calibrator for flattening the monitor response. The idea being that it doesn't matter what headphones or monitors you use, expensive or cheap, that they level the playing field by offering a flat frequency response. I suppose you'd have to a/b various headphones and speakers to see how well it works.

isone takes a different approach by using binaural setup to adjust for head interference to get the sound more like a speaker setup. I believe one of the monitor presets A, B, or C is suppose to emulate Yamaha NS-10's, there's different presets and frequency response curves, I think you can even change the frequency response curve to be flat.

The whole thing to keep in mind about reference monitoring, is that it is just that, monitoring, it doesn't add or take away anything, true, it may cause you to add or takeaway, but still the whole point in using reference monitors is IF they allow you to mix for a compromise that sounds good on the greatest amount of end-user listening systems. It doesn't matter how flat the freq. curve is. It's whatever you need to make that translation. That's sort of the story behind the NS-10's, and there is even some argument that you also need to set them on top of a console?

No one will ever really know for sure what you mixed on, because it's mostly about how well the mixer translated, or what the listener is listening on,lol!