# Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 (control room modeling)



## zolhof (Jul 10, 2019)

"The Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin brings the acoustic environment of the legendary Abbey Road Studio 3 control room to your headphones, so you can always trust the production and mixing decisions you are making."



Science or snake oil?

edit. well, I read the endorsement by Alan Parsons and Giles Martin... they definitely have more experience with Studio Three than I do (which is zero experience haha). Pretty cool concept, but I'm always skeptical about these miraculous plugins that in the end just create more issues than they solve.


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## ProfoundSilence (Jul 10, 2019)

this is a bad joke. 

you can always trust if you have shitty monitors, shitty headphones, shitty signal chain - that it'll sound like that. If it could magically give your budget headphones the response of insanely expensive hardware, it still doesn't change the signal flow of your DAW in any way, or the quality of sounds being played through it. 

It's basically just a tool that *kind of* corrects your headphones EQ curve and gives you 3 quick mix checks with different curves. I've used waves NX before and found no significant difference(other than it colors your sound if you leave it on) and in reality there are much more direct options for correcting your frequency response like sonarworks. 

I feel like waves made this plugin to get channels like white sea studios views on youtube


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## Dietz (Jul 10, 2019)

Well - binauralization is not snake-oil_ per se,_ but a technique to avoid the in-your-head localization issues of head-phone listening. Personally, I already liked (and still own) one of the first "real" products that used this approach in the early 90ies, AKG's legendary BAP-1000 (for Binaural Audio Processor) and their K-1000 earspeakers.

... I assume that Waves uses this technique to some extent, too.


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## ProfoundSilence (Jul 10, 2019)

waves NX isn't terrible - but this is basically waves Nx + random coloration. (i.e. soundgoodizer)

At the end of the day, if I mixed something with waves NX on my ATH-M50x's(using the profile for that specific headphone) it sounded like crap when I bypassed waves NX, and played it on other devices - but would sound fine if I left it on. Likewise if I left it off and mixed it all, it sounded fine on all as well and if I tossed waves NX on at the end using the same profile, it all sounded wrong. 

Moral of the story? mix/test on multiple setups, and learn to get used to your specific room/monitors and how the mixes you like sound on them, and develop a baseline based on that. 

Abbey roads sounds like abbey roads because of all of the gear, and the acoustics. That plugin doesn't give you their venue to re-record the sounds you're using. It also doesn't magically treat your room. 

The person on the other end is listening to your track in mono on their cellphone on the toilet. So you're better off using a cell phone + bathroom IR on your master chain for mixing than abbey roads.


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## Zero&One (Jul 10, 2019)

ProfoundSilence said:


> The person on the other end is listening to your track in mono on their cellphone on the toilet. So you're better off using a cell phone + bathroom IR on your master chain for mixing than abbey roads.



I KNEW one day my productions would have an audience!


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## Hans-Peter (Jul 10, 2019)

zolhof said:


> Science or snake oil?



Science. Been using and creating my own head-related impulse responses (HRIR) for some time. If done properly, it sounds so much like the room you just sampled that you can’t tell the difference. When subjects are given an AB test (speakers vs headphones) after having gone through the HRIR capture procedure, a typical first response is that they think the (open) headphones are switched off. It always makes me grin when they realize what they heard originated from the headphones.

Apart from psychoacoustic experiments I use the same method for mixing. Perfect for multi-channel setups.

However, Waves’ solution suffers from the limited personalization options (still, better than nothing). As long as you don’t measure impulses at the entrance of the ear canal, there is really no guarantee that NX’s HRTF model will sufficiently approximate your own response. But this could be fixed in the future.


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## Henu (Jul 10, 2019)

zolhof said:


> snake oil


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## jacobthestupendous (Jul 10, 2019)

Lots of science is nifty, if not particularly useful to me.


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## Saxer (Jul 10, 2019)

Does it add latency to the whole system?


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## germancomponist (Jul 10, 2019)

If you work some time in an acoustic environment, your ears and your brain find out the best way to get there the best mixes you are available to do. Look at Mr. Junkie XL, who does excellent sounding mixes in his so bad sounding room ...... .


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## storyteller (Jul 10, 2019)

Waves NX is neat. I have the hardware accessory as well. I’m a bit of an audiophile, so I get bummed out if anything isn’t perfect. Waves NX is a great tool that can help you mix with headphones by simulating 3D space, but it isn’t perfect by any means. I wouldn’t rely on it helping you solve how to mix with headphones, but it is a tool that can help you get a better mix.

That said, I find myself loving waves nx when it comes to watching movies with headphones. That is usually when I flip it on.

I haven’t tried the new plugin, but I am having a hard time justifying how it would help anyone. Might be wrong tho... jury is still out for me, awaiting evidence to be entered into this hearing.


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## Paul Cardon (Jul 12, 2019)

One of the most exciting parts of this if you can get the head tracker attachment, is how it can be used for surround sound monitoring when you don't have the abilities or room to setup a quad/5.1/7.1

I do have quads in my space, but being able to do an extra bit of checking on headphone virtualization with head tracking? Super cool. And it looks like they have Studio 3's surround rig sampled in this as well.


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## labornvain (Jul 12, 2019)

One theory is that the people running Waves have completely lost their minds. And while they blow through huge amounts of development money on this useless, ridiculous technology that will never help anyone ever produce hit songs, their bread and butter plugins are growing increasingly obsolete (All of their plugins, for example, should have gotten the ability to mix in dry signal for easy parallel processing years ago.)

Another theory is that Waves is trying to position itself for a V.R. play, and this is all sort of an attempt to monetize the development with silly products until they figure out where their company fits in this new tech space.

Who knows...oh wait. This just in. Yep. They've lost their fucking minds.


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## chocobitz825 (Jul 12, 2019)

labornvain said:


> One theory is that the people running Waves have completely lost their minds. And while they blow through huge amounts of development money on this useless, ridiculous technology that will never help anyone ever produce hit songs, their bread and butter plugins are growing increasingly obsolete (All of their plugins, for example, should have gotten the ability to mix in dry signal for easy parallel processing years ago.)
> 
> Another theory is that Waves is trying to position itself for a V.R. play, and this is all sort of an attempt to monetize the development with silly products until they figure out where their company fits in this new tech space.
> 
> Who knows...oh wait. This just in. Yep. They've lost their fucking minds.



funny thing is I was actually surprised by their bass plugins. I like them..but this product is really a lot of sales talk. Its not really particularly useful. It feels like a gimmick and maybe some people might be inspired or find a way to make it work..but it seems like it has the potential to do more harm than good.


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## nas (Jul 13, 2019)

Just get *Sonarworks Reference 4 * and be done with it.


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## JEPA (Jul 13, 2019)

stick to your monitors until all this tech is proven right..


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## cmillar (Jul 13, 2019)

I love Waves plugins; but Sonicsworks 4 does the job very nicely when used with good headphones like Beyerdynamic DT770's.

Yesterday, I was re-mastering some previous work with some Waves plugs that are fantastic....but, running it all through the Sonicsworks 4 (..I was in my studio setup so could use my monitors instead of the headphones.)

But, the Sonicsworks headphones version works incredibley well.


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## Beat Kaufmann (Jul 13, 2019)

Every PlugIn manufacturer says: "Buy my PlugIn and your mix sounds good!"... In this case, as if the mix had been made at Abbey Road Studio. Why do manufacturers do that? They want to earn money, as we all have to ... as me too.
As for this Abbey Road plugin: If your mix sounds bad - for whatever reason - it won't save it, of course. I'm not saying the Abbey Road plugin is badly made. On the contrary, I suppose people have done their job very well.

----------------------------------------------

Basically the category "coloring plugins" is controversial. You want to use it to simulate other loudspeakers or, like here, other room acoustics and speakers. Because you don't hear the simulated timbre through a neutral system, but through your own, which is probably only budget- or middle-class, you don't really get the desired effect. Of course, this is about headphones. But if you have different headphones, you know how they can sound very different as speakers do. In addition - especially with orchestral mixes - not all tasks can be solved in headphones.

Let's actually explain the function of the Abbey Road plugin with colors: Let's assume that your own system colors the music so that it sounds slightly green. The Abbey Road PlugIn now adds for example the typical "Abbey Road red part". Now your music sounds different, but not like Abbey Road, but brown. So what does that help you now?

One last point:
It seems that the main focus of this PlugIn is on timbre and a sense of space. But:
There's so much you can do wrong in a mix. What do you do if your mix doesn't sound great even with the plugin?

That's why...
----------------------------------------------
*For good mixes I would rather invest the money that way:*

1a) Your own system should sound as neutral as possible - hardware solutions
1b) Your own system should sound as neutral as possible - software solutions
2) Purchase reference recordings and compare your own mixes again and again.
3) If you don't manage to get at least close to the reference recordings, you should educate yourself.

Beat


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## Paul Cardon (Jul 13, 2019)

Beat Kaufmann said:


> Every PlugIn manufacturer says: "Buy my PlugIn and your mix sounds good!"... In this case, as if the mix had been made at Abbey Road Studio.


It seems like some people in here are confused about what this plugin is doing? This isn't for effecting your mix. This is purely for monitoring. You are NOT and SHOULD NOT render with any NX plugin activated. It's only for virtualization of a different listening space in headphones when monitoring a mix.


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## Henu (Jul 13, 2019)

Beat didn't say that either. Nevertheless, he is 100% correct, especially with the coloring-analogy. 

If this $ 99 plugin magically first neutralizes your cheap headphones completely flat and then makes them sound and behave exactly like the room in Abbey Road, I'll take ten pairs right away and sell my monitor pairs away. 

Seriously people, _do not EQ your speakers or headphones on top of already-colored (original) sound_. The whole idea is to get your monitors and phones as FLAT as possible in most cases- not to paint "green on red". Your mixes will sound horrible if you do that and completely different anywhere else than at your control room. At that point you may as well render with the ABS3 on and it prolly doesn't make it any worse from that.


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## Paul Cardon (Jul 13, 2019)

Henu said:


> Beat didn't say that either. Nevertheless, he is 100% correct, especially with the coloring-analogy.
> 
> If this $ 99 plugin magically first neutralizes your cheap headphones completely flat and then makes them sound and behave exactly like the room in Abbey Road, I'll take ten pairs right away and sell my monitor pairs away.
> 
> Seriously people, _do not EQ your speakers or headphones on top of already-colored (original) sound_. The whole idea is to get your monitors and phones as FLAT as possible in most cases- not to paint "green on red". Your mixes will sound horrible if you do that and completely different anywhere else than at your control room. At that point you may as well render with the ABS3 on and it prolly doesn't make it any worse from that.


It’s not just an EQ curve. It’s an entire binaural and room modeling and crosstalk simulating plug-in. It’s obviously not going to create a perfect situation. It’s specifically recreating a bunch of inherently imperfect aspects of real world monitoring. I use NX (the original, not this one) from time to time, and especially as an extra monitoring space for surround sound content as my room isn’t ideal for my physical quad setup I use from time to time. This stuff is like using MixCubes or a monitoring system in a different room, etc.

It’s not too expensive and it’s a very interesting tool at the very least.


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## elpedro (Jul 13, 2019)

Snake Oil. good money making from people who cannot afford the real thing, how the hell does it "know" my headphones?


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## lokotus (Jul 13, 2019)

Hans-Peter said:


> Science. Been using and creating my own head-related impulse responses (HRIR) for some time. If done properly, it sounds so much like the room you just sampled that you can’t tell the difference. When subjects are given an AB test (speakers vs headphones) after having gone through the HRIR capture procedure, a typical first response is that they think the (open) headphones are switched off. It always makes me grin when they realize what they heard originated from the headphones.
> 
> Apart from psychoacoustic experiments I use the same method for mixing. Perfect for multi-channel setups.
> 
> However, Waves’ solution suffers from the limited personalization options (still, better than nothing). As long as you don’t measure impulses at the entrance of the ear canal, there is really no guarantee that NX’s HRTF model will sufficiently approximate your own response. But this could be fixed in the future.



thats interesting, so if done right, a professional mixing engineer could not tell the difference ? - did everybody feel the same if "done right" ?
That would mean the brain could be fooled but do you think that the approximation if not "done 100% right" is something that might create more problems than solve in this case. I mean even if this plugin would deliver a 80% experience of Abbey Road (100% would not be possible anyways since impulse and transient behaviour of headphones vary), still better than mixing on the headphones without it, right ?


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## lokotus (Jul 13, 2019)

elpedro said:


> Snake Oil. good money making from people who cannot afford the real thing, how the hell does it "know" my headphones?



I wonder what the result of his findings is: 
a) Waves is not 100% accurate, and this plugin sucks so the people are fooled because of the marketing. 
b) its physically impossible (Impulse, transient response) to create an algorithm with different headphones hardware that replicates this 100% 
c) Its actually helpful and gets you 80% into the felling of being at Abbey roads so this plugin helps vs mixing without it. Nevertheless the marketing is exaggerated because this product approximation might not work for everybodys heads/brains ...


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## lokotus (Jul 14, 2019)

lokotus said:


> I wonder what the result of his findings is: a) Waves is not 100% accurate, and this plugin sucks so the people are fooled. b) its physically impossible to create an algorithm with different headphones hardware that replicates this 100% c) Its actually helpful and gets you 80% into the felling of being at Abbey roads so this plugin helps vs mixing without it.





Beat Kaufmann said:


> Every PlugIn manufacturer says: "Buy my PlugIn and your mix sounds good!"... In this case, as if the mix had been made at Abbey Road Studio. Why do manufacturers do that? They want to earn money, as we all have to ... as me too.
> As for this Abbey Road plugin: If your mix sounds bad - for whatever reason - it won't save it, of course. I'm not saying the Abbey Road plugin is badly made. On the contrary, I suppose people have done their job very well.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------
> ...



great advice but I would add 1a) Your own system should sound as neutral as possible - hardware + room acoustic solution that is about 50% of the sound. In other words great speaker in a bad room have less overall value than mediocre speaker in a ok"ish" treated room. 

By the way- waves is trying to improve "neutral hardware" aspect by also giving eq profiles for certain headphones in their software...


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## pmcrockett (Jul 14, 2019)

Stepping back from the marketing hype for a minute, I think everyone agrees that Studio 3 isn't literally comparable to mixing in Abbey Road and isn't going to replace a decently tuned monitor setup. But acknowledging that Waves is playing up the Abbey Road gimmick doesn't tell us anything about how the plugin actually functions.

Debating whether loudspeaker sims are viable as a broad concept also doesn't tell us anything about Studio 3 in particular -- these sims exist regardless of whether people think they're a good idea, and there are quantifiable differences among them that would lead someone who uses them to choose one over the others. The best test of their viability is to use them in production and evaluate their impact on your mixes.

I'm currently demoing Studio 3. I've been using vanilla NX for several years and generally like it, so I'm mostly interested in whether Studio 3 addresses the shortcomings of NX and not in whether it accurately models the Abbey Road control room. I haven't yet done any mixing with Studio 3, just listening to reference tracks, but here are my observations so far:




Customization options are slightly different between NX and Studio 3. Studio 3 lacks NX's ambience and speaker angle controls, but adds the distinction among near/mid/far monitors. Both have head tracking (webcam/Bluetooth), headphone EQ, and head modeling, and Studio 3 automatically loaded my head modeling profile from NX.

I'm not sure whether the distinction among near/mid/far monitors in Studio 3 is useful overall or not, but the selections do at least reflect the general differences I would expect to hear from their respective sizes. NX seems most similar to Studio 3's far option.

NX has a synthetic quality to its sound, like it's applying an algorithmic reverb (which is, I assume, basically what it's doing). This synthetic aspect can be heard clearly if you cut off playback abruptly -- you'll get a short reverb tail that sounds nothing at all like what you'd hear in a real room. Comparing NX to real monitors, it's sort of the audio equivalent of an early-era CGI duplication of a real image.

Studio 3 is a substantial improvement in that regard. One of the promo videos mentions that they took impulse responses from the control room, and I believe it -- the difference in sound between NX and Studio 3 is comparable to the difference in sound between algorithmic and convolution reverbs. If you do the playback cutoff with Studio 3, it still doesn't sound exactly natural but it sounds less bizarre than with NX. It's too early for me to say whether this actually translates into a better overall user experience, but it does at very least seem to address something that I regarded as a major deficiency in NX.

Another aspect of NX's fakeness that has been improved upon is the head tracking. With NX's tracking, turning your head more than about 45 degrees causes an uncanny level drop off in the ear that faces away from the monitors, as though reflections from the back wall of the room aren't being modeled properly. Studio 3 still isn't perfect on this, but it's better than NX.

There's a big difference in frequency spectrum representation between the two. NX hypes upper-mids slightly, and Studio 3 rolls them off. NX sounds a bit harsh in comparison with Studio 3, but NX also seems to color the audio less than Studio 3. NX has the feeling of being in a room with harder, more reflective walls, whereas Studio 3 feels more like I would expect a studio to. I'm not sure which of these frequency response profiles is preferable in an actual mixing situation.

To elaborate on coloration, NX overall feels a bit more like it's moving the actual sound of the headphones to a point in front of you, and Studio 3 feels a bit more like it's actually simulating monitor characteristics. Studio 3's sim feels more natural to me than what NX gives you, but it also means the signal out of Studio 3 feels less perceptually similar to the original headphone signal. This may or may not be a good thing -- I'd have to explore it in a real world situation to know.




Like I said above, these are just preliminary impressions that may change once I've tried mixing with Studio 3. But my early reaction is that it's an improvement over NX. It feels like NX 2.0 rather than the branded cash-in edition that I was concerned it might be, and it may well end up supplanting NX in my mixing workflow.


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## lpuser (Jul 15, 2019)

I wonder if anyone has first hands experience on how this plugin should be used?

When adding it, all I hear is a change in sounds - which is of course expected because it simulates a specific room. But how is this supposed to help me when mixing? The problem is: I have absolutely no idea how reference tracks sound in that environment, so - at least in my understanding - I will need to listen to loads (and I really mean loads) of tracks with the same plugin instantiated in order to get a feeling how mixes should sound and then be able to compare it to my mixes.

Or am I wrong? If you adding the plugin, it adds a colorization which makes my track sound "strange" at first. Chances are that I try to add effects in order to "compensate" for that, which in the end won´t create a better result when unloading the plugin.

And my biggest gripes are still: Moving the head when working with a large 2 monitor setup contantly changes the location inside the headphone, which is (at least for me) very hard to get used to. How do you all cope with that? Thanks.


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## steveo42 (Jul 15, 2019)

The way I understand it is, this plugin allows headphone users to experience the sound of Abbey Road's various monitors in the Abbey Road studio. It's main purpose is NOT to flatten the response of headphones like say SonarWorks does. However since some headphones are supported directly, there seems to be some flattening ala Sonarworks built in as well assuming you are using one of those limited choice of models.

So basically this plugin does not flatten the response but gives the listener the psycho acoustic feeling that they are listening the the high end monitors in the Abbey Road studios Where as SonarWorks is for flattening the response of a given set of phones and nothing else.

So, that being said, the way I see it is if you own Sonarworks and Abbey Road, it would be best to put SonarWorks last in the chain, but in reality, I don't think it matters. This is assuming you are not using and selecting one of the pre-built headphones in Abbey Road in which case I would not use SonarWorks at all.

Just my impression. I'm thinking of buying but not there yet. I do own Sonarworks everything and it is fantastic.


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## pmcrockett (Jul 15, 2019)

lpuser said:


> I wonder if anyone has first hands experience on how this plugin should be used?
> 
> When adding it, all I hear is a change in sounds - which is of course expected because it simulates a specific room. But how is this supposed to help me when mixing? The problem is: I have absolutely no idea how reference tracks sound in that environment, so - at least in my understanding - I will need to listen to loads (and I really mean loads) of tracks with the same plugin instantiated in order to get a feeling how mixes should sound and then be able to compare it to my mixes.
> 
> Or am I wrong? If you adding the plugin, it adds a colorization which makes my track sound "strange" at first. Chances are that I try to add effects in order to "compensate" for that, which in the end won´t create a better result when unloading the plugin.


In theory, headphone correction software such as Studio 3 helps balance out the issues inherent in mixing on headphones to give you a monitoring situation that more closely resembles a loudspeaker setup that doesn't suffer from those issues. The differences between monitors and headphones are that headphones usually have less bass response, more stereo separation, no room ambience, and none of the channel crosstalk between your ears that you get with monitors.

Ideally, you should already have an idea of what problems, if any, these things are causing in your headphone mixes. If you're already happy with your headphone mixes, you likely don't need the software. If you're not sure whether you should be happy with your headphone mixes, spend some time listening to your mixes compared with other people's mixes that you like on a variety of different playback systems and note any problems you hear in your own mixes that you didn't notice in your mixing sessions (e.g. is the mix too bassy?). Also think about the sorts of mix decisions that you tend to have trouble making confidently (e.g. do you feel like you can never get reverb levels just right?).

A couple key points here: First, the goal of the software _is not_ to be literally indistinguishable from monitors. That's what the marketing hype is all about, but the actual reason to use it is to have a mix environment that improves your mixes. Don't get too hung up on the room simulation aspect, because whether the correction software sounds like a literal room is secondary to whether it actually benefits your mixing process.

Second, listening to a bunch of reference tracks on the correction software isn't (IMO) as important as figuring out what's wrong with your current mixes. Yes, you should definitely have some idea of what music in general sounds like through the software, but the premise of the software is that you already know generally how to balance a mix and that your headphones are the weak link. Just going for it and doing some mixes with the software, then comparing your results to what you'd been getting without the software is likely to be more revealing than trying to directly match references.



Some of the things to look for when evaluating your old non-corrected headphone mixes are:

Frequency spectrum imbalances. You will tend to mix to compensate for the weaknesses in your monitoring system, and with headphones this means that you may unwittingly overemphasize the bass frequencies in the mix to compensate for the headphones' natural lack of bass, resulting in a mix that sounds dark and muddy on other playback systems.

Reverb levels. Because you don't have any room ambience when mixing on headphones, your perception of how reverb sits in the mix may be different if you listen on actual speakers.

Stereo placement. Stereo images sound much wider and more clearly defined on headphones. You may find that your stereo image is too narrow when listening on speakers or that mix elements you thought were distinct on headphones aren't as distinct on speakers.

Noise, glitches, general weirdness. Headphones are like an audio magnifying glass, and they may sometimes lead you to focus on minute details that wouldn't actually matter that much on speakers.



Once you have an idea of how your headphone mixes are lacking, try the correction software. Do a full mix with it, then compare the results to things you mixed without the correction software (remember to disable it before exporting the mix). The two things to evaluate are first, whether the new mix sounds better than the old ones on various playback systems, and second, how you felt about the mixing process itself. Regarding that second item, for example, I've found that using correction software lets me move faster in programming EQ and stereo placement, because the corrected headphones are doing less to bend the audio away from what I expect to hear -- I don't have to do as much mental translation from what I actually hear on the headphones to what sound I actually want.

Obviously, this is all pretty subjective. If you're extremely comfortable on headphones, and you like your production processes, and you're confident in your mixes, trying to add correction software likely won't help anything. Conversely, if you don't have enough experience to objectively evaluate your own mixes, you may not even be able to determine whether the correction software is doing anything useful for you.



lpuser said:


> And my biggest gripes are still: Moving the head when working with a large 2 monitor setup contantly changes the location inside the headphone, which is (at least for me) very hard to get used to. How do you all cope with that? Thanks.


I'd suggest just turning off the head tracking. It's a cool feature that can help sell the illusion of working with monitors, but it's not in any way essential. Turning it off and resetting it to the sweet spot is fine, ultimately, because you should be mixing from the sweet spot anyway.



steveo42 said:


> The way I understand it is, this plugin allows headphone users to experience the sound of Abbey Road's various monitors in the Abbey Road studio. It's main purpose is NOT to flatten the response of headphones like say SonarWorks does. However since some headphones are supported directly, there seems to be some flattening ala Sonarworks built in as well assuming you are using one of those limited choice of models.
> 
> So basically this plugin does not flatten the response but gives the listener the psycho acoustic feeling that they are listening the the high end monitors in the Abbey Road studios Where as SonarWorks is for flattening the response of a given set of phones and nothing else.
> 
> ...


I've traditionally used NX and Sonarworks together, with Sonarworks placed after NX. I use an AKG K702 pair, which is actually in NX's headphones list, but based on NX's EQ solo feature (which gives you just the headphone profile without the room modeling) I decided I liked the Sonarworks version better and disabled it in NX. If I switch to Studio 3, I probably will use its built-in K702 profile instead of Sonarworks, because Sonarworks seems to do things to the bass frequencies out of Studio 3 that I'm not sure I like.

Even if you aren't using Sonarworks in conjunction with Studio 3, I don't think they're necessarily redundant. Sonarworks without Studio 3 gives you another reference point for your mix (i.e. how does it sound on neutral headphones?). Especially when mixing on headphones, I think it's good to actively stay on top of how the mix translates to other monitoring systems so you don't run into unpleasant surprises when the mix is finished.


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## steveo42 (Jul 15, 2019)

pmcrockett said:


> In theory, headphone correction software such as Studio 3 helps balance out the issues inherent in mixing on headphones to give you a monitoring situation that more closely resembles a loudspeaker setup that doesn't suffer from those issues. The differences between monitors and headphones are that headphones usually have less bass response, more stereo separation, no room ambience, and none of the channel crosstalk between your ears that you get with monitors.
> 
> Ideally, you should already have an idea of what problems, if any, these things are causing in your headphone mixes. If you're already happy with your headphone mixes, you likely don't need the software. If you're not sure whether you should be happy with your headphone mixes, spend some time listening to your mixes compared with other people's mixes that you like on a variety of different playback systems and note any problems you hear in your own mixes that you didn't notice in your mixing sessions (e.g. is the mix too bassy?). Also think about the sorts of mix decisions that you tend to have trouble making confidently (e.g. do you feel like you can never get reverb levels just right?).
> 
> ...



Yea, I agree.. If the Abbey Road program has a profile for your headphones, use it and disable Sonarworks for sure.

After reading the various blogs and so forth regarding this plugin I think that people are totally missing the boat.... This plugin is meant to improve the experience of mixing exclusively in headphones. And we all know how that can be a death trap... Some folks can do it successfully, most of us fail miserably.

So basically this plugin is supposed to give the impression of mixing on the mains, or other monitors in Abbey Roads studio but while using headphones.
So it's a psycho-acoustic thing rather than a headphone frequency response smoothing thing like say SonarWorks.

Different stuff and I suspect people are mixed up.


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## Paul Cardon (Jul 15, 2019)

steveo42 said:


> Yea, I agree.. If the Abbey Road program has a profile for your headphones, use it and disable Sonarworks for sure.
> 
> After reading the various blogs and so forth regarding this plugin I think that people are totally missing the boat.... This plugin is meant to improve the experience of mixing exclusively in headphones. And we all know how that can be a death trap... Some folks can do it successfully, most of us fail miserably.
> 
> ...


Yup, exactly! It's an emulation for MONITORING. Not an effect to put on your tracks, but an added way to listen to and test the sound of your tracks as if you were in front of monitors in open air, an experience that is VERY different than mixing in unaffected headphones.


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## pmcrockett (Jul 15, 2019)

For anyone who's wondering about stereo image on headphones vs. speakers and wants an example of how huge a difference software such as Studio 3 makes in the stereo image, check out something mixed with oldschool hard panning such as Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence." On uncorrected headphones, the mix separates into three distinct locations that sound almost comically distant from one another, but if you listen on speakers or on a room simulation, the hard-panned elements gel because both ears hear both channels. On speakers, the musicians sound like they're in a line in front of you, whereas on headphones they sound like they're in a semi-circle surrounding you. Toggling a room sim on and off while listening to it gives you the unusual sensation that the mix is being unwrapped from around your head and spread out in front of you.



For me, at least, dealing with this particular discrepancy between headphone sound and monitor sound is the most important aspect of what these room sims do.


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## lpuser (Jul 17, 2019)

pmcrockett said:


> In theory, headphone correction software such as Studio 3 helps balance out the issues inherent in mixing on headphones to give you a monitoring situation that more closely resembles a loudspeaker setup that doesn't suffer from those issues.



Thank you very much for your in-depth explanation.

What I found is that putting Studio 3 on will result in a quite different sound. Comparing the sound of my mix with Studio 3 active does not sound nowhere close to any other professionally released songs in comparison. However when I compare my mix without Studio 3, it does at least coming close.

So the question is: How do you get used to the "sound" of Studio 3 in order to understand how your mixes should be changed? Are you listening to comparable songs with Studio 3 engaged and learn how they sound, prior to start mixing with the plugin?


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## storyteller (Jul 17, 2019)

lpuser said:


> Thank you very much for your in-depth explanation.
> 
> What I found is that putting Studio 3 on will result in a quite different sound. Comparing the sound of my mix with Studio 3 active does not sound nowhere close to any other professionally released songs in comparison. However when I compare my mix without Studio 3, it does at least coming close.
> 
> So the question is: How do you get used to the "sound" of Studio 3 in order to understand how your mixes should be changed? Are you listening to comparable songs with Studio 3 engaged and learn how they sound, prior to start mixing with the plugin?


The idea is NOT that it will make your mix sound better. The idea is that the environment created by using the plugin is the same environment that Abbey Road engineers would be using when mixing a song. So if you wanted to compare your mix to another top 40 song mix, then that song would also have to be played through the plugin to compare the two mixes. It is a "virtual listening environment" albeit you'd also have to use some type of headphone correction plugin like Sonarworks in conjunction with it for it to produce the desired result. This is because they have simulated the room, but not taken into account that each headphone make/model has a different sonic signature than the next. Well... I say that. There is a limited list of headphones it supports, but it is a very limited list and from what I can tell, Sonarworks does a better job with that side of things.

Hope this helps. It isn't perfect (by any means), but in theory, this is how you are supposed to use the plugin and how it should work (in theory).


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## lpuser (Jul 18, 2019)

storyteller said:


> The idea is NOT that it will make your mix sound better.



Thanks a lot, yep that helps. I was a bit unclear regarding "making the mix better", because I know that the plugin itself won´t improve anything, but was talking more about the expected result. Using ARS3 should help creating better mixes in the end. IMO for somebody who is not used to this room, I think it is hard to judge what should be added, removed etc. because a reference is missing. Usually you know how final (comparable) mixes sound and try to adjust accordingly. Using ARS3 means that I would have to analyze my references inside this room first, get used to how they sound and can then start making my mix sound as closely as possible.

Therefore I was actually wondering how somebody who is already using this plugin has approached this issue.


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## benmrx (Jul 18, 2019)

IMO, you would want to treat this plugin just like you would when buying new monitors. You want to get used to how things are supposed to sound.


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