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Last edited by a moderator: Jun 7, 2024

That way you'll still not knowing which is the best, but probably which is the most popular. I would recommend you to literally download all options you have available and try them side by side listening to your favorite tracks and maybe trying some basic mixing between your favorite choices to see which one sounds more reliable to you. My personal recomendations after trying almost all of these options are DearVR Mix for a more real room sound simulation and Realphones for a more "headphone" style sound (this one will correct your headphone frequency and change the spectrum to simulate the acoustic "artifacts" but will still sound like a headphone so it's easier to get used to how it should sound if you already know your headphones well). Another honorable mention is the Sienna by Acustica, but that changes the sound a lot and everything sound more mid focused, I tried to get used to that, but aways end up exagerating on reverb and stereo processing. But regard my experience I recommend you to try that one for yourself.

 

Yes, free and good.

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2022

Did you play around inside Sienna Guru?

 

Yes, still didn't sound natural to me. I've really tried to get used to Sienna, but I end up selling it cause my mixes were not translating well.

 

You forgot 2 applications.
- Slate VSX
https://stevenslateaudio.com/vsx

- Immerse
https://embody.co/pages/proaudio

 

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Last edited by a moderator: Jun 7, 2024

That's a complex question really. Try to listen to your favorite tracks and listen to how they sound, I think they should sound natural and confortable to you. Try to listen to the balance of the instruments, low end, stereo, depth, how the drums sound, etc.
The main idea is to get a tool that sound natural and confortable to you with your headphones, cause in any case you'll need to spend time to get used to how it should sound anyway.

 

Interesting subject, please keep the opinions coming. I trialled a bunch of them a few weeks ago and couldn't find one that fully satisfied me. Of them all, Realphones sounded the closest to what I would consider a pleasant working environment, so make sure to check that out. Very generous 40 day demo as well.

You could also consider trying to do a manual adjustment with an EQ according to headphone profiles. Check out this post, for example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/9o2f5n/psa_oratory1990s_list_of_eq_presets/

You just look up your headphones, insert an EQ and adjust according to the specifications. I don't have much experience with that but if you know your way around you might wanna try this.

The most confusing thing for me was that the differences in sound between the different plugins was very big. So I never knew which one was 'truly correct' in the end.

 

This project offers a wide range of corrections via IR, parametric and regular EQ with instructions and etc... Doesn't simulate room, but make a huge number of phones more "flat" to not be misleanding with coloration of your phones even if they claim to be totally flat. Hope it will be usefull:

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results

 

I don't think it's Sienna as I can get the basics close to other room emulations. It's just that headphones aren't speakers. You really have to spend a lot of time listening to lot's of different music. It will never be an ideal situation, more of a workaround IMO.

 

Yeah, Sienna has it's own sound, the thing is that I didn't get used to that sound. Somehow Sienna has a dry sound and sound more narrow than the other alternatives, so I end up compensating that by exagerating on reverbs, delays and stereo processing. I know I could keep checking with a reference to avoid those mistakes, but I really prefer to switch to another plugin where I felt more confortable with "the sound I needed to achieve", if that makes sense. But that's just my personal experience with my HD650 headphones.
Anyway, if you're into working on headphones I strongly recommend you to, at least, try the DearVR Mix or Monitor plugins (the up to date versions, with the headphone spectral compensation technology), in my opinion they have the most natural room simulation to date.

 

Funky that so many voted for Sonarworks Reference 4 even tho it doesn't introduce a room at all.
The sound will always be in the head and not naturally infront of you.
This is very usefull when mixing Bass/Kick (especially teh knock of a psykick sound more real)
Sienna sound nice but the latency is a no go for me, maybe for listening but playing nope

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2022

Ever tried Realphones with your hd650 ? They reduced the latency/cpu usage of DearVR Mix ? Laast tiem i tried it was way to much latency for me and there was no native apple silicon version :/

 

Same here, I mixed tuff on Realphones and after putting my phones off, listening to my studio speakers it sounded the same

 

Headphone calibration software
https://audiosex.pro/threads/headphone-calibration-software.58960/

 

Well @user1293435134 you will have to test them all. If I learned anything about Speaker/room simulations than that they depend mostly on taste. I really tested a lot of them. I hate sienna and realphones. Sounds awful to me, other users swear on it.

For a long time I used morphit+canopener. Works pretty good, but what I noticed is if you do not have a room simulation it is hard to mix reverb.

Embody Immerse has 2 really good speaker+rooms in it that are clearly one of the best I ever heard. But to be honest, 2 speaker room combinations out of 5 rooms with 3 speakers in it is not much. So it is quiet pricey for me.

In my opinion, worth of testing. Embody, dearVr and wavenx series. But that is really personal taste.

Stay away from slate vsx. I tested it. It sounds good, but the headphones felt really cheap to me, so I sent it back. Maybe the newest version is better, who knows.

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2022

The problem I have with morphit is that you only get very rudimentary options to change the frequency response. You can have three points in the EQ curve and in my memory it wasn't enough to do a change that I wanted to do. I'd love to see them offer more options there.

 

Yes, one of the best solutions for mixing on headphones in my opinion. And their support team is one of the best I had the pleasure to contact. Aways helpful and doesn't take ages to answer, like Acustica for example.

Actually I don't care much about that, I don't record things in real time tho, I just use the keyboard to come up with an idea than edit it manually in the piano roll. For that I don't see any latency issue.

 

For sure it's a good point, i use Sonarworks Reference 4 first and after put the Ghz CanOpener Studio 3, for crossfeed and sometimes put one of the room emulations from waves, because my phone dont have corretion on waves. But this days most of all i really use Realphones because of the wide reange of options to verify my mix, cause i cant afford right now references monitor, in Brazil they are in a death price... Very good point in your post !!! Health and peace !!