That's the problem APL is attempting to solve with their Virtuoso software.

 

Last edited: Feb 6, 2026

There is that paper from Griesinger (the Lexicon legend) where he talks about hrtfs and directional sound perception and stuff like that.
He sais that all out of the box systems are doomed to fail. His experiments showed it would be possible though. By not just measuring ear dimensions and head, but also the ear canal in a complex 3d model. the paper sais with all measurements done right and proper algorithmic translation of the material fed to the headphones real out of head and surround experience is possible.
I'd kill to hear a system like that once. But even if a company would offer a service like that, I would think its a scam with some woodoo done on your ears and giving you a razer gaming headset in a fancy box

 

Nah, 9ty is right. Patching signals to each ear directly is not "stereo listening". Its more lilke dual mono
If you happen to have a free standing absorber baffle around you can test that with speakers.
Listen to speakers in a near fiels like you would normally, then place the absorber between the speakers beginning from you nose.
Now left ear hears very little of right speaker and vice versa.
This is gonna be a drastic change in perception and because we are not used to that as much as we're used to headphones it is quite eerie.

 

I see your point and agree to some degree, I like to think that ears don't really listen to anything. It's our brain that decode the info provided and it's easy to fake our brain, Doppler effect is a common example.

 

I can see your point, too. Especially the part with the brain ... as I said, that's the main reason I definitely prefer mixing on monitors the vast majority of time. With headphones I believe too much decoding seems to be going on, at least for my brain. My brain is definitely more used to listening to environments (on the street, in rooms, in the studio, in cafés etc), everything feels more natural. Listening on loudspeakers is so much more fluid, more natural. Sound and perception listening on headphones is way more static, because when listening to sounds in a room, every little move of your head changes perception. It's physics - physics we are very used to.

Don't get me wrong, obviously there are people out there mixing on headphones most of the time. Based on opinions I read, many of them feel like frequency response emulations of rooms is helping them - which is totally fine and understandable. Personally I don't know a single person in real life who mixes more than occasionally while using mainly headphones.

 

100% agree, we born with ears not headphones. That said, the widest stereo field is easy to recreate on headphones faking our brain, just play a sine wave on one side a flip phase to the other side. That is the problem with headphones, it's so unrealistic and unnatural but still very wide.

Nothing can compare the experience of listening directly with our ears, it's immersive, wonderful and so natural.

To push the discussion a bit further, even high end loudspeakers can be considered a kind of headphones but bigger, stronger and less closed to our ears. The reproduction of a recorded voice or instrument, at today, will never compare to the real one listened live.

 

Well...About 30 years ago I thought that I might buy a mid priced Rotel amplifier and so found a dealer close to where I was in L.A. so that I could audition it before buying. It was a very fancy place and I was offered something to drink the moment I entered the joint. The salesman brought me an expresso (with a but of lemon rind on the saucer) in a very nice Italian designed cup and asked me to follow him into the listening room which was large with a big old leather couch. I sat down in the center and asked me to close my eyes. I did so and out of the two perhaps six foot speakers came the sound of Ella Fitzgerald and a trio playing something or other. I was awestruck because I could make out exactly where everybody in the recording was standing. The room was directly in front of me and I could actually visualize it. I heard the stand-up bass player's pants brush against his instrument and it kinda freaked me out because at that moment to me I thought that it couldn't sound that good, that real if I was actually there. I don't know who the salesman thought I was, but I had like $600 in cash on me. lol.

I can without a doubt say that what I heard compared most fabulously to the real thing listened to live. It was as if Ella and her band had given me a private concert. Damn!!

 

Nice story indeed and a good reading!

 

Update for the HEADPHONE LAB is available v1.1.0
For me it showed no updates available in Cubase (as I do not run as admin most probably)
opened in SaviHost and showed update available (link below in spoiler)

Spoiler: download link:

Download HEADPHONE LAB

 

Last edited: Mar 5, 2026

Finally, the DT 1770 Pro MK 1. I'm not quite sure why it took as long as it did.

 

I finally got around to testing the Beyerdynamic Headphone Lab plugin last week. After a thorough session with my DT 770 250 ohm, here’s the breakdown:

1. the Calibration section is solid as expected with the creator of the headphones. I compared it to SoundID and Realphones. They all take slightly different routes to get to "flat," but the end result is similar. I still prefer Realphones, but this holds its own.

2. I decided to be brave and mixed a client’s song entirely within the plugin. I hadn't heard the track before, so I just dove in, pretending I was listening to my monitors. It felt incredibly natural and was actually quite a fun workflow.

3. I finished the mix and sent it to my colleague at the studio to check the translation. His professional assessment? "It sounds like ass."

4. Once I switched back to my monitors, the discrepancy was staggering. I expected some variation, but the mix collapsed, stereo image is hell, I don't expect it at all. Here is what I observed:

- while the overall frequency remained relatively balanced (neither too bright nor too dark), but the stereo image completely fell apart. The separation I thought I had achieved in the headphones became a blurred mess on the speakers.
- this was the most critical failure. In mono, the mix essentially vanished. Aside from the kick, snare, and a massive amount of snare reverb, everything else like guitars, keys, synths, and FX disappeared. I remember I checked countless of time to make sure widely panned element to have more on the center of the image (it's a alt rock mix) but none of them is there.
- the snare reverb felt physically detached from the source, with a perceived pitch shift that made it sound "sour" or "wrong" compared to the dry snare hit. Also it feels like big fat mono reverb. I use the same snare reverb (it's stereo) I've been using all the time and I always EQ it to make it fit with the snare but this never happened to me before.

Final verdict :
While the Frequency Calibration/Correction section is decent and provides a usable flat response, the Room Emulation is a trap. It provides an enjoyable, immersive experience while mixing, but it creates a false perception of the soundstage.

Mixing on headphones without monitor referencing is already a bad idea on its own, however, adding this specific emulation layer introduces a level of phase-related chaos that simply does not translate to the real world. In my experience, it's better to stick to a flat calibration and learn how that translates, rather than letting a plugin "trick" your ears into a spatial reality that doesn't exist.