Is there still any actual benefit, in terms of sound, to using Reference or similar plugins, if you are using reference headphones?

I use the Sennheiser HD 400 Pro Reference Headphones, which seem flat across the spectrum. So is there anything else to be gained from using a correction plugin like Reference, or is it mainly for headphones that color your audio?

 

Honestly I had some good results with it a few years back. I was able to track down a file specifically made for my headphone model. If you can track that file down for you HD 400 Pro - you might get a good result. Honestly I dont remember where I found my file and I have since lost it.

 

If you know what good mix sounds like on your headphones wouldn't "flattening the spectrum" make your mix journey longer, since what you are hearing is different from what you're used to?
you'd have to get used to what a good mix sounds like, with the flat setting...

 

With my Sennheiser Reference headphones, Im not totally sure how much flatter they could even get. They sound great with good and distinct lows, mids and highs, but don't seem to color any aspect of the sound, that I notice, at least. I am basically just curious if that is essentially what these plugins do, and are mainly aimed at headphones or monitors that color the sound dramatically? Or if there is any worth to them beyond that, to someone who is using reference headphones to begin with?

 

I mix on a Sennheiser HD58X, and I find Sonarworks really annoying on them. The sound is totally different from what I'm used to, and simply too flat for me to make any useful judgements. No bass, no highs, nothing. I can pull a fully mixed song into it and it will sound really boring, so I fail to understand why I need it. And this is coming from someone who used Sonarworks for years on a HD598, and that one was a real improvement on audio quality.

 

There is still HRFT, binaural effect, frequency/channel crosstalk in air and flat is a relative term.
However if you know you headphones and how they will translate then the rest is academic.






Do what works for YOU and don't worry about what everyone else is doing or needs.

Edit*

 

Last edited: Sep 15, 2023

What I've learned over the years : Get to know your mixing medium - intimately, by monitoring professional mixes and figuring out the eq curve of your headphones, monitors and room. Once you have that figured out, then the workflow is locked in. When you keep buying shit and trying this and that, you have no reference base. A good mix is possible on hifi speakers if you know how they perform - well enough. Just like software - pick something, get to know it, and stick with it. yay!

 

I think both of those headphones are aimed more towards audiophiles than studio mixing, so it's funny you have opposite opinions of them with Sonarworks. The opinion on the 58X's with Sonarworks probably is the answer I need, because every time I see Reference pop up, I always think "I should try that", but never do because of the thought it will just sterilize the sound of headphones that are already designed to be naturally flat. And your thinking on that kind of verifies that for me. Thanks.

 

That is for the IE 400 phones. They are in ear headphones. The HD400's that I have are over ear studio reference headphones. Your point is still noted though.

On a side note, that graph is kind of surprising to me. I believe those IE 400's are aimed towards portable studio work, but dipping that dramatically at 15k is a bit of a head scratcher. I could actually see Sonarworks helping there, to add some natural sparkle back into things, because your mix would feel warmer through those than it really is.

 

There is a problem with this.

You are putting an already mixed file in this way. This doesn't tell you anything, other than that you did a good mix.

 

So you're telling me that the aim in this case is to make my mix sound flat in Sonarworks? Because that seems really difficult. Maybe it could work if I listened to them flat all the time, but I'm already used to the sound of the headphones and judging what is too much or too little feels more straightforward than balancing it around a flat target.

 

Yeah, taking someone else's opinion on what works for them as a verification of what would work for me would generally be a problem, lol, but I'm basically just trying to give myself reasons to not bother trying it, because I'm lazy and have plenty of other stuff I don't fully know how to use. lol.

I always see it and the lazy part of my brain tries to tell me "maybe THIS is the thing that you need." So I was looking for some confirmation bias perhaps.

 

using it with the 580s made my mixes better and easier

 

Not exactly what I meant. I just think you are probably getting your mixes closer now than you used to (without the assistance of software); rather than Sonarworks not being as good as it was before, or that these two sets of headphones should not really be testing wildly different for you.

 

super useful to have flat frequency response for adjusting guitar tone especially when you are getting deep into the speaker IR territory. I never had 1 complaint from client since I've been tuning guitar tone using the flat frequency with sonarworks. They love it and said im the best. It will sound weird when I'm back on my shitty no-low-end-high-end-excited monitor for mixing but it's part of the workflow and I know the guitar will sound awesome and mix everything based on it, around it to complement it. For guitar driven music of course which is 80% of stuff I mix.

For metal people that already spent 300000 hours for their guitar tone in the mix, the sonarwork helps me to get the idea how it sound on flat response so I don't remove important character from it. I basically use it for guitars only. I tried mixing with flat response but the mix turns out weird and doesn't translate to the way I like it, so I stopped doing it. It lacks punches and feels spiky if you know what I mean, excited over 3-5kHz (hate it), I like it around 800-2kHz.

 

Last edited: Sep 15, 2023

Do you think these are different enough for you to stop liking the program?

 

So the thing is, a flat response isn't about flattering the sound with pleasant smiley curves, presence peaks or shiny shelves, it's about revealing potential issues that may go unnoticed otherwise. To some that may indeed sound "boring" but it is how the mix translates to other playback systems that is important.

No headphones or speakers are ruler flat and most certainly different drivers of the same model aren't equal to one another. Even with matched pairs, that matching is within a tolerance (albeit it quite small).

In a room, unless it's perfectly symmetrical, the left and right channels will have completely different curves by the time they hit the ears due to room modes. Not only that, the difference in the physical attributes of each ear may be radically different to one another (mine certainly are), which complicates matters further.

Similar issues are present with headphones. The left and right drivers may differ in their output and the difference between ears is magnified due to the removal of room reflections reaching the opposing ear.

In most cases the published frequency response figures for drivers are averaged for the model and not specific to the actual unit that you buy (with a pair of quality matched speakers that difference will be reduced and the response figures will be specific for the unit). Dependent upon the manufacturers tolerance the difference could be quite significant.

With Sonarworks calibrated headphones, that difference is removed and a more accurate picture can be created, to the point that channels can be confidently flipped to assess ear bias. Try this with uncalibrated off-the-shelf headphones on a full mix to reveal the difference in driver + ear response. Chances are that the mix will disintegrate.

 

I don't think there is such a thing as a "flat response" headphone even the reference ones. So this is where Sonarworks comes in handy.

 

This is why people will recommend bringing in your reference tracks right from the start and enabling correction software, if you plan on using it.

The headphones frequency response curves are plotted as "actual" based on the data in the profile, and to correct the calculated variance to flat, an inverse is generated and applied as the corrections. All we now have is a pair of headphones we will assign the word "flat" to it. It may still not be perfect, but you have to accept that it is "perfect" and a constant. At this point, it is still just two squiggles on a graph and a flat line. You have your reference songs imported to your DAW project, which you know well; and have accepted them as also "done perfect" for the style of music you are working on. When you match your song against your "perfect references songs", you can say these things are all the same. Before you export a render, you turn it off. What you hear is pretty much what is actually there in the file, because you have been using 2 constants and only one variable (your mix). So then you can move to next step; trying to figure out what is up with your monitors.

How could you get a different result where you would blame the differences in 2 headphones models? These are even the same manufacturer, so if their data is wrong, it's still probably wrong around the same way. Maybe this is a new software version or title being used, new menus, forgetting to turn it off, or whatever? There is probably something else like that going on; because if the program varied from version to version in sound, no-one would even use it.

By loading a completed mix which is already "perfect", and then applying the correction supplied by the profile's frequency curves inverse, you are double-dipping any correction for the difference between the two profiles.

 

Last edited: Sep 15, 2023

The frequency response is only half of the headphones, I still own both and they sound vastly different. Correction works great on the 598, because it fixes most of the low end. On the 58X, everything after 3khz sounds weird.

Either way, that's just my perspective. I don't need Sonarworks to mix anymore, I know my headphones enough and I check my mixes in several speakers. The flat sound feels worse to my ears, thus making it harder to judge correctly. I have been testing it on and off since 2018, still sounds the same.

Also worth noting that my 58X is one of the first batches they made. Since then, the manufacturing changed locations. There is a chance their model is polled from a revision that sounds a little different than mine. That said, I don't like the sound and I mix objectively better without it.

Edit: just for fun, I'll mix something with Sonarworks applied today and see what happens.

 

Last edited: Sep 15, 2023