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Sonarworks Speaker/Headphone Calibration WOW

ka00 said:
Umm, has anyone tried the headphone calibration preview on the Sonarworks site and found it made things sound worse?

I took a listen to the comparisons for my Sony 7520, and felt the music lost character and felt flatter when the calibration was engaged.

I’m guessing this has to do with trying to make the sound output as flat and neutral as possible. Kind of like how RAW or LOG formats in photography/video try to capture a neutral image that can be tweaked in post.

If that’s the case, then the thing I’m not getting is how will you know when you are done mixing? Because if seemingly the goal is to use this plugin to transform something that sounds rich and full and render something that sounds flat, like how I heard the songs on the site after calibration, then clearly that’s not the final step in the process?

I mean, how do you then know what you’re listening for and how to improve it if you are presumably having to ignore your instincts to add more bass or more treble for example, in order to make it sound flat like the examples on the site with the calibration engaged?

Obviously there’s something about this I’m not fully grasping, so don’t take this as criticism of the headphone calibration plug-in per se.

Rather, I’m just hoping some kind soul can dumb this whole thing down for me as I’m trying to trust my ears but seemingly can’t with this workflow (unless of course my Sony 7520s just happen to be hopelessly out of spec for some reason and everyone else’s sounds great with the plug-in).

Thanks
Click to expand...

Reference, reference, reference... Plain and simple...
Sonarworks is fantastic, just make sure you reference your music with the closest possible target also being passed through the room correction...

Regardless of whether you're working in a acoustically brilliant space, or a space you've had to do some correction on; any skilled angineer will tell you they begin any session listening to a few references they know intimately well so they can understand how the room's fingerprint is influencing reproduction of references they religiously refer to...
 
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Thomas A Booker said:
Based on this:

I assume that is what Jaybee is talking about?

Unless I'm mistaken, if you were using systemwide but not using ASIO in your DAW, there'd be no point putting the plugin on the Monitoring FX as the audio would already be getting processed by the systemwide version.
Click to expand...

Hi, just for clarification. On my PC Systemwide handles all the audio outside the DAW (iTunes & any web pages etc) but as soon as I open Reaper the Sonarworks plugin which is placed in the Monitor FX section takes over and does use regular ASIO as you would expect.
 
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For the record as a Mac user i've found even with the latest version of Systemwide, there's still too much latency when using it as the output device in logic.
Audio Hijack is still the best option.
It's a shame as I'd love to just turn on the Mac and not have to keep reminding myself to switch on the plugin.
I must admit Sonarworks has reinvigorated my love of listening to music and has taken away a huge "hawwwww" 100-200hz from my speakers.
 
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I have one last question.
Listening spot option 'calibration limit control' where you can pick "reduced", "natural", "extend" e.t.c in the highs and lows?
Are people using this or just leaving it off?
 
Finally did my calibration, and yes Wow! I had just treated my room, and using 1st generation Adam S2a's. Pretty radical eq curve :eek: but it sounds amazingly better .
 
I feel super dumb but can anyone please tell me where to find the 'measuring / setup' part of the software?
I only see systemwide in my programfiles/sonarworks, but nothing on that interface leads me to the measuring software. I can only load the calibration file, not create one.
Am I missing something? I upgraded directly from the headphone version, so now I have 'studio edition' or whatever it's called. Was I supposed to install something else? Re-install?
I can see the license is activated but where is the program?

I've emailed sonarworks but not sure what their response time will be.
Wanted to take measurements tonight since my mic just came in.

Thanks
 
T.j. said:
I feel super dumb but can anyone please tell me where to find the 'measuring / setup' part of the software?
I only see systemwide in my programfiles/sonarworks, but nothing on that interface leads me to the measuring software. I can only load the calibration file, not create one.
Am I missing something? I upgraded directly from the headphone version, so now I have 'studio edition' or whatever it's called. Was I supposed to install something else? Re-install?
I can see the license is activated but where is the program?

I've emailed sonarworks but not sure what their response time will be.
Wanted to take measurements tonight since my mic just came in.

Thanks
Click to expand...
as far as i can remember u can choose what to install during installation process. after installation i had a desktop icon for the measurement process.so if u really cant find it it be go through the installation process again.hope that helps,best regards
nik
 
nik said:
as far as i can remember u can choose what to install during installation process. after installation i had a desktop icon for the measurement process.so if u really cant find it it be go through the installation process again.hope that helps,best regards
nik
Click to expand...

Right, I can vaguely remember seeing it at some point so I guess it must have been during installation, or perhaps the first time I opened the program.
I'll reinstall and see if that works, Thanks!
 
Kaufmanmoon said:
For the record as a Mac user i've found even with the latest version of Systemwide, there's still too much latency when using it as the output device in logic.
Audio Hijack is still the best option.
It's a shame as I'd love to just turn on the Mac and not have to keep reminding myself to switch on the plugin.
I must admit Sonarworks has reinvigorated my love of listening to music and has taken away a huge "hawwwww" 100-200hz from my speakers.
Click to expand...

What I do to get around this is leave systemwide on, (for general listening), route Logic directly to my interface, and use pink noise and Logic's match-EQ to capture reference's EQ curve. If you unlink the channels it clones the left and right corrections SW makes, and has a zero latency setting...
 
Noam Guterman said:
Did anyone upgrade to Reference 4.1? How did you like the improvements? Especially the revamped calibration process
Click to expand...

I did. I actually had to use a beta of 4.1 per Sonarworks because for some reason the previous version just wouldn’t work with my system. That said, 4.1 worked flawlessly and was really simple and straightforward. Also kudos to Sonarworks tech support for their quick responses and resolution.
 
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