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Sonarworks Speaker/Headphone Calibration WOW

Sorry poor phrasing - not actually possible with TotalMix AFAIK but might be with something else similar... if your soundcard software hosts plug ins (like Audio Hijack does)...
This can be done in TotalMix using its internal loopback feature, but the method consumes an additional pair of inputs and outputs, and has its own defects. Assign your DAW main outputs to an unused pair of RME outputs, then turn on loopback for those outputs and route them to an unused pair of inputs, then assign those inputs to the plugin host of your choice (I've used Blue Cat Patchwork for this successfully), then assign the plugin host's outputs to your monitors. (I'm describing this from memory, I hope it's reasonably clear.) In addition to being cumbersome, this has another disadvantage, at least using ASIO drivers on Windows. Every time you switch DAWs, you have to restart the plugin host containing Ref3. That's a side effect of the way ASIO works.

But Soundworks now provides another way. The Systemwide version of Reference 3 is now available (I think the price is $59). It's limitation -- which is fatal for purposes of this discussion -- is that the Windows version doesn't support ASIO. I doubt that anyone in this forum uses anything but ASIO.
 
This can be done in TotalMix using its internal loopback feature, but the method consumes an additional pair of inputs and outputs, and has its own defects. Assign your DAW main outputs to an unused pair of RME outputs, then turn on loopback for those outputs and route them to an unused pair of inputs, then assign those inputs to the plugin host of your choice (I've used Blue Cat Patchwork for this successfully), then assign the plugin host's outputs to your monitors. (I'm describing this from memory, I hope it's reasonably clear.) In addition to being cumbersome, this has another disadvantage, at least using ASIO drivers on Windows. Every time you switch DAWs, you have to restart the plugin host containing Ref3. That's a side effect of the way ASIO works.

But Soundworks now provides another way. The Systemwide version of Reference 3 is now available (I think the price is $59). It's limitation -- which is fatal for purposes of this discussion -- is that the Windows version doesn't support ASIO. I doubt that anyone in this forum uses anything but ASIO.

Yes the systemwide. (JRR shop has the upgrade which i coudnt find in the sonarworks site.)

does anyone know if the systemwide adds noticeable latency in mac os?
 
This can be done in TotalMix using its internal loopback feature, but the method consumes an additional pair of inputs and outputs, and has its own defects. Assign your DAW main outputs to an unused pair of RME outputs, then turn on loopback for those outputs and route them to an unused pair of inputs, then assign those inputs to the plugin host of your choice (I've used Blue Cat Patchwork for this successfully), then assign the plugin host's outputs to your monitors. (I'm describing this from memory, I hope it's reasonably clear.) In addition to being cumbersome, this has another disadvantage, at least using ASIO drivers on Windows. Every time you switch DAWs, you have to restart the plugin host containing Ref3. That's a side effect of the way ASIO works.

But Soundworks now provides another way. The Systemwide version of Reference 3 is now available (I think the price is $59). It's limitation -- which is fatal for purposes of this discussion -- is that the Windows version doesn't support ASIO. I doubt that anyone in this forum uses anything but ASIO.
mc_deli actually made me thinking about totalmix yesterday which lead me to loopback feature. I haven't all figured so thank you very much for the explanation. Very interesting.

When you say "switch daws", do you mean every time you open a daw, the host with sonarworks stops getting audio? Or you meant it happens when you close one daw and open another?

I am researching these options because while demoing I had problems with systemwide, probably for the reason you mentioned.
 
Yes the systemwide. (JRR shop has the upgrade which i coudnt find in the sonarworks site.)

does anyone know if the systemwide adds noticeable latency in mac os?
There was a thread here. Yes, it does add more latency.
Can't find the thread now.
 
... When you say "switch daws", do you mean every time you open a daw, the host with sonarworks stops getting audio? Or you meant it happens when you close one daw and open another? ...
If I recall correctly, it happens when you close one DAW and open another. It's fine with the first DAW you open. To be positive, I would have to reconstruct what I did, since I'm not using it now.
 
Has someone bought headphones which were pre-calibrated at Sonarworks? Or sent them your own? Is it worth it would you think?

I'm in a situation where I'm only able to mix with cans so hmm...

Or is it audio voodoo?
 
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Has someone bought headphones which were pre-calibrated at Sonarworks? Or sent them your own? Is it worth it would you think?

I'm in a situation where I'm only able to mix with cans so hmm...

Or is it audio voodoo?
I think you can work this out a bit... find the freq response graph for your cans and see what it's like. You know Sonarworks is basically going to flatten that. Of course, you can use SW to flatten the response and then tilt if you want. So, do you really need it? Do your cans have a big dip in the mids? Are they hyped in the bass? Do you have problems mixing the low end?

I would have thought 99/100 users will get by with the general calibration profiles. Again, depending on what cans you have, how much do you think the freq response is going to vary between individual units? Does that make it worth sending and spending?

And, you can come over to my place and check HD650s with/without SW anytime ;)
 
They calibrate the individual cans. I always thought that isn't the graph for every HD600 about equal? How much could be gained by calibrating individual cans?
 
How much could be gained by calibrating individual cans?

Up to 2.2db more accuracy is their official stance. Might happen that your cans hit the average curve exactly and you gain nothing, might be that the overall tone changes noticeably. Schrödinger's Cat.
 
They calibrate the individual cans. I always thought that isn't the graph for every HD600 about equal? How much could be gained by calibrating individual cans?
https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/hp/sennheiser-hd-650.php
In this case, with the HD series, IMHO very little to be gained from calibration, very very little from individual calibration. I don't use the headphone calibration... but then I don't mix on headphones (I got the headphone part of SW free, if that explains why I have it ;) )
 
So... are there no AudioHijack alternatives for PC?
As of windows 8 (which I don't think this aspect has been updated in further Windows versions), only two audio devices could be supported at once, which makes the concept of Audio Hijaack and the OS X version of multi-output audio devices very difficult to replicate in Windows. There are some sneaky ways about it though. The capacity to use more than one device is only available in WDM drivers, which makes it almost irrelevant for serious DAW users. However, ASIO4ALL is essentially a WDM wrapper in ASIO, so you can use that if you wanted to try this in order to use an ASIO device. That said....

You should be able to replicate something similar to what @Daniel James is doing with Audio Hijaack by using a portable install of Reaper as a passthrough for your system audio with something like Virtual Audio Cable on Windows (in place of OSX's Soundflower driver). What I am about to describe is the process in OS X, but it should be similar in Windows. It is essentially a way to replicate the official Sonarworks Systemwide Audio app but with lower latency and greater flexibility. For me, when using headphones, I also like to use the Waves NX desktop app for system audio, so I wanted the Sonarworks headphone plugin to fall in line AFTER waves NX, which is not possible with the official Sonarworks Systemwide Audio app.

The solution was to create a mini DAW instance running in the background via a portable install of Reaper. I have a free Reaper project file https://store.storyteller.im/product/a-storyteller-systemwide-audio-demo/ (available here) with complete setup instructions for OS X using Soundflower in order to route system audio through a tiny two track DAW project. It has worked well for me so far for system audio. You may want to read through the instructions in the project file to see how it could be replicated in windows, but make sure to substitute Virtual Audio Cable for Soundflower. Of course, Reaper is free to demo and very cheap for a license.
 
€19 for the v4 including systemwide seems like a decent deal.

Interesting that I've received six emails from Sonarworks during the last 30 days but nothing about the release of v4.
 
reference 4 is out. in case you didnt know ;)
I didn't know. Nor did I get an email. Thank you for the post, otherwise I'd still be using v3.

I got the free upgrade... so now I'm glad I didn't buy the Systemwide plugin as well because the upgrade was free either way. Downloading now. Hoping they all play well together. :)
 
weird a bit i got an email from them, but whatever.

good for us we have a place like this ;)

happy i could help
 
Running on Win7 here. So far,all is working great. It's nice to have everything running through the same calibration finally.
 
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