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Anyone Using Sonarworks?


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If you're not familiar with it...there are two elements. It applies a compensation curve to headphones to flatten them, as well as a way to calibrate your monitors for flat response.

 

I haven't done the monitor calibration yet, but tested four different headphones. After being compensated for flat, they really did sound the same. Hmmm...

 

Anyone have any experience with this? Anything I should know before doing the speaker calibration? Thanks!

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I haven't done the monitor calibration yet, but tested four different headphones. After being compensated for flat, they really did sound the same. Hmmm...

 

Anyone have any experience with this? Anything I should know before doing the speaker calibration? Thanks!

 

That's a clever way to evaluate their headphone calibration system, and I think it's a great piece of information to include in a product review or article about headphone correction. I'll be looking out for it. ;)

 

I looked over the list of currently supported headphones, and while there are several on the list that I would like to have, the only set I have that they offer a calibration profile is the Sony 7506. I might try comparing the Sonarworked (?) 7506s with my Fostex T20s, though both are at least 30 years old. If I have to mix on headphones, I find that the Fostex gives me a decent mix when I listen on speakers, but I prefer the Sony phones for editing because I can hear annoying little details with them that get smoothed over with the Fostex phones.

 

Speaker correction was Sonarworks' original product. I was skeptical about it when it first came out, but played around with a copy of their first release that they pushed on me. It made some changes but there's nothing that it, or any other "room correction" program for that matter, can do with irregularities resulting from reflections in the room - and that's what causes most problems in a listening room. By making measurements at several points in the listening area, they try to come up with a best compromise, but all they can do is tweak what's being fed to the speaker, not what the room does to bugger it up.

 

If you've already treated your room acoustically so you're hearing what the speaker is putting out (or measuring the result in an anechoic environment), their speaker correction can make a Behringer sound more like a Genelec. And, if you have a decent room, making that comparison between speakers, as you did with headphones, could be useful information. But until you get the room's acoustic characteristics as good as is practical, you'll only get the improved accuracy in a small sweet spot.

 

 

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Is this similar to Waves NX software?

 

As an aside, I just bought Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 kinda just for fun (at the low intro price). But I'm thinking it might be a lot more useful than I was expecting.

 

I might start a thread on it once I drive it around the block a few more times.

 

nat

 

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I haven't done the monitor calibration yet, but tested four different headphones. After being compensated for flat, they really did sound the same. Hmmm...

 

Anyone have any experience with this? Anything I should know before doing the speaker calibration? Thanks!

 

That's a clever way to evaluate their headphone calibration system, and I think it's a great piece of information to include in a product review or article about headphone correction. I'll be looking out for it. ;)

 

I have two updates on this.

 

* I have three pairs of KRK KNS 8400 headphones because I like them for tracking - removable cord, volume control, light weight, etc. Interestingly, two of them sounded the same. One sounded bass-shy. Now, I don't know if that's a defect in the headphone, or whether that's why Sonarworks says that their headphone profiles are an average of multiple headphones, but the "odd man out" KRK was quite different.

 

* Even though the frequency response of the different headphones ends up being the same, the headphones still have different degrees of definition. So Sonarworks helps level the playing field when evaluating headphones because you aren't distracted by the frequency response.

 

Speaker correction was Sonarworks' original product. I was skeptical about it when it first came out, but played around with a copy of their first release that they pushed on me. It made some changes but there's nothing that it, or any other "room correction" program for that matter, can do with irregularities resulting from reflections in the room - and that's what causes most problems in a listening room. By making measurements at several points in the listening area, they try to come up with a best compromise, but all they can do is tweak what's being fed to the speaker, not what the room does to bugger it up.

 

To be effective, it just about requires near-field monitors. They take a lot of the room out of the equation, so you're left with most of the compensation occurring with the speaker. My room is reasonably well treated, and the speakers are far from walls and corners, so I have high hopes for what the speaker correction will do.

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Is this similar to Waves NX software?

 

I don't think so...

 

As an aside, I just bought Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 kinda just for fun (at the low intro price). But I'm thinking it might be a lot more useful than I was expecting.

 

I might start a thread on it once I drive it around the block a few more times.

 

nat

 

I'd be VERY interested in that!!!

 

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Is this similar to Waves NX software? . . . As an aside, I just bought Waves Abbey Road Studio

 

Waves Nx, has preset EQ profiles for about a dozen different sets of headphones, similar to Sonarworks, though Sonarworks offers a larger selection of headphones.

 

But what Nx does that's different from Sonarworks is actually somewhat similar to Abbey Road Studio 3. It simulates the acoustics of a control room, where Abbey Road adds the sound of the studio room, and adds that to the headphone mix. It also does something that I don't really understand that allows you, when using headphones, to create an Ambisonics mix (Virtual Reality kind of stuff) or a multi-speaker surround mix.

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Update time...I did the speaker calibration. It took about 20 minutes, and yes, it's about compensating for the room as well as the speakers.

 

I have to say it's pretty amazing. The sound from four different pairs of headphones, and the speakers, sound essentially the same. Mixing in a system with a flat response is a sort of Holy Grail for home recording, and this is the best solution I've found yet.

 

It was also very instructive to see the response of my listening environment. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be...the "native" curves of quite a few headphones aren't all that different.

 

I posted a review of the Reference 4 Studio Edition on craiganderton.org if you want more info (and screen shots).

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