Hi folks!

I am using APO (with Peace addon) for correction of my monitors. Anything that is being played by windows (audio by any media player, browser etc) is working fine, sound is changing with any change on EQ, however when I open any DAW, sounds remain unchanged and are unaffected by APO. And that is fine.

However, I am wondering if I i make a lot of damage, by simply placing EQ on the master channel on DAW with my correction settings and just before rendering any audio will turn it off - I am quite suspicious it would have impact on the mix as some level. So I would prefer some sort of EQ that stays 'above' the daw and let the signal go through it, without DAW even knowing about it. Is it possible? IS SonarID something I really need?

 

yeah, in reaper you right click on the top right (where the audio device is) and you add a monitoring fx. you hear through it but it won't be rendered

 

For this purpose, Nuendo and Cubase offer the "Control Room". It does exactly what its name says: It emulates a virtual control room. You can make all kinds of changes using EQ or plug-ins without affecting the recording itself. The changes to the signal only affect the monitoring path.

I am sure that such a concept exists in other DAWs as well. (Sequoia, for example, offers a "Monitoring Section" with similar options.)

 

Like vuldegger and Edna said: insert the EQ with your correction in the monitoring FX-chain (Reaper)/Control Room (Cubase)/Listen Bus (Studio One) or whatever else it might be called depending on your DAW.

Pro Tools doesn't have something like this, so you would need to insert it on your master bus. If you use PT you should be using a mix bus before the master bus, and only insert stuff like correction software and various metering on the master bus.

I believe FL Studio doesn't have a dedicated bus for monitoring effects/software either, so you would need to set up a mix bus that feeds into the master bus here as well. Just remember that you will have to render from the mix bus, not the master bus.

And no, I don't believe that disabling/bypassing SoundID when you render will have any impact on your mixes at all. It's not like in the analog world where the signal still passes through a piece of hardware even though it's in bypass. In the plugin world, bypassing/disabling a plugin in your DAW is the same as removing it from the chain entirely.

 

Last edited: Mar 1, 2025

Thank you for the advices!

 

it's a common practice,
some DAWs have dedicated monitoring plugin section which automatically gets bypassed on render/export,
just be aware of the fact no EQ corrections make your monitoring better, just different,
you can experiment with various sim plugins too, like IK ARC or Audified Mixchecker

 

Definitely, I know it's far from ideal... I would not touch it at all if I could make full room acoustic treatment, so let's say for now i would like to check if I can set some EQ and target some problematic areas after my measures on REW. Switches back on my monitors help a little, however there is still huge ass peak at around 150hz and dip at 119hz. I have some proQ setting already and will do today another measure to see if that actually help any bit. But feeling like messing with too much dB (+4, and I would need like 15 at least :D ) on low freqs is not a great...