Why the car?

[guscave]

I’ve used a lot of different types of “virtual room” plugins and the one thing you have to consider is that you’re still listening to them through the same speakers, in the same room. This is why a “good” reference tracks will always be a better option.

I've been using the Voxengo Curve EQ to get a visual on where my mix and my reference track differ and it's helped a lot. But again, you need to have a very good reference track that is as close to your song as possible. Otherwise you'll get conflicting results.

[fuzzbox]

Yep! I totally agree guscave. But now and again I listen to the reference track through my VRM as well!

[Telefunkin]

Hmmm.. the Focusrite VRM gadget sounded like a useful thing, but it looks like its been discontinued. Shame, as it was half the price of the Mixchecker (which I still haven't tried yet).

I'd seen the Ocean Way plugin before, but thought of more as a recording/mixing solution, but it does indeed offer another take.

Update: I tried the Mixchecker,and it seems to do what it says. I played back a mix of mine through all the available settings and nothing upset me in any of them. I suppose that means the mix translated well and I should be happy, but I find it difficult to get very excited about the application of a few different EQ curves, most of which sound worse than the original. I know that's the whole point though. Maybe I should just try and locate some frequency response curves for the various simulated devices and simply recreate them in my own EQ. Wouldn't that do the same thing? It might take a while to find the curves but surely it wouldn't be difficult to apply them....would it? In the words of J. Clarkson (Top Gear) "How hard can it be?"

[fuzzbox]

When I discovered..., well was taught to use reference tracks when monitoring, it opened up a whole new world. All you need is your reference tracks and a pair of speakers... it really doesn't matter which ones so long as you A/B on the same speakers you get a good mix. The more experienced you are at A/B-ing then the better the mix. You don't even need any room acoustics... if you constantly A/B... How hard can it be! LOL
But also ensure you level-match as well!

[guscave]

Totally agree with fuzzbox. Once you get use to A/B with a good reference track, you don't need anything else. At the end of the day what you're trying to achieve is to have your song sound as close to a professionally mixed and mastered commercial song. So why not use that song to get there?

IMO the Virtual room plugings are a waste of time. You're still going to get a false sense of how your song sounds in other systems because you're still listening in the same environment.

[mojobone]

Totally agree with fuzzbox. Once you get use to A/B with a good reference track, you don't need anything else. At the end of the day what you're trying to achieve is to have your song sound as close to a professionally mixed and mastered commercial song. So why not use that song to get there?

IMO the Virtual room plugings are a waste of time. You're still going to get a false sense of how your song sounds in other systems because you're still listening in the same environment.

Um, but not on headphones, which presumably eliminate your room from the equation; I theenk Waves' NX was mentioned upthread, somewhere.

[guscave]

Totally agree with fuzzbox. Once you get use to A/B with a good reference track, you don't need anything else. At the end of the day what you're trying to achieve is to have your song sound as close to a professionally mixed and mastered commercial song. So why not use that song to get there?

IMO the Virtual room plugings are a waste of time. You're still going to get a false sense of how your song sounds in other systems because you're still listening in the same environment.

Um, but not on headphones, which presumably eliminate your room from the equation; I theenk Waves' NX was mentioned upthread, somewhere.

True, headphone will eliminate the room issue, but if those cans do not have a true flat eq response (which most don't), you're going to be adding (or removing) even more false frequencies to your mix.

Ex: My headphones tend to add about 6db boost at about 100hz and also at about 16k . Unless the VR software first compensates for this extra boost, it's not going to give me a true representation of the room I'm trying to emulate.

[fuzzbox]

I have used Reference 3 by Sonarworks and that goes someway to eliminate the room… or rather give the listener a flat response in the headphones that you’re using because the software is calibrated to do that for particular set of headphones. For me, I think it works reasonably well with my limited experience.