- #Sonarworks reference 4 headphone edition upgrade#
- #Sonarworks reference 4 headphone edition software#
If you have $700, it’s the Sonarworks’ top of the line. There’s also a Premium Edition, which includes the Reference 4 Studio Edition, a set of Sennheiser HD 650 headphones, and a custom calibration curve for the headphones.
#Sonarworks reference 4 headphone edition upgrade#
An upgrade path is available from the Headphone Edition to the Studio Edition, and you can buy the calibrated microphone separately.
#Sonarworks reference 4 headphone edition software#
The Reference 4 Headphone Edition software is available for around $100, while the Reference 4 Studio Edition, which lists for around $300, includes a calibrated microphone so you can calibrate your speakers to your room. Note the low-end boost, and midrange dips. 2, for KRK’s KNS 8400.įigure 1: Sonarworks provides a compensation EQ curve that’s equal and opposite to the headphone’s characteristic curve (shown in blue).įigure 2: KRK KNS 8400 headphones average response. 1 shows the curve for AKG’s K702, and Fig. However, Sonarworks has a service that does custom headphone profiles for $149, and also sells headphones that have been profiled.)įig. (Note that these curves are averages, and headphones can vary quite a bit also, not all headphones in the world have profiles.
If your headphones boost the bass, have a deficient midrange, and excessive brightness, you call up your headphone’s profile to cut the bass, fix the midrange, and tame the excessive brightness with a complementary response curve. Sonarworks has measured a ton of headphones, and produced compensating curves. I wanted to test it in my studio environment. It was impressive, to say the least, although I still was skeptical. At a recent Summer NAMM, I had a chance to hear the headphone system in action. As someone who often needs to mix on headphones while traveling, that piqued my interest. However, Sonarworks is also about headphone tuning, not just room tuning. I figured one band-aid is probably the same as any other band-aid. JBL’s MSC 1 and IK’s ARC 2 definitely made a difference, and they helped, but any room tuning system always had a bit of a band-aid feel.
I’d known of Sonarworks for a while, but I’d used room tuning software before, with varying degrees of success. But overall, attaining a flat frequency response for mixing and mastering is hellishly difficult. Sure…if you have $400, go get a set of Sennheiser HD 650 headphones, which have a pretty close to flat frequency response. Many of them hype the high and/or low ends. But if you mix in a room that, for example, emphasizes the bass, then you’ll mix the bass way lower than you should-and this doesn’t even take into account frequency response issues within the speakers themselves. If you mix with a flat response, then everything will sound a little bit wrong on systems that don’t have a flat response. We need a flat frequency response for mixing and mastering to minimize timbral differences when your mixes end up in a consumer playback system. So even if your speakers were perfect-which they’re not-the room will make them imperfect. They are the weakest link in our audio chain, because speakers form a partnership with your room’s acoustics. No matter how good our software is, or our musical chops, ultimately we have to mix (and listen through) speakers or headphones. It sounds too good to be true – flatten the response of your monitor speakers and headphones. This is an excerpt from a case study from written by Craig Anderton, Author and Educator at
“flatten the response of your monitor speakers and headphones.” Once you start mixing with Sonarworks, you don’t want to mix without it.
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