Anyone try Sonarworks Headphone Calibration?

Discussion in 'Headphones' started by The Alchemist, Dec 2, 2015.

  1. Changeling

    Changeling Tube Slut

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    Test notes using Metaplugin + WavesNX + JRiver Media Center with Lynx AES16 - Yggdrasil -> Mjolnir2 -> HD800 (stock balanced cable, no mods).

    Second round with same SW setup + ModiMB -> Spdif converter -> Vali2 -> Beyerdynamic T5P.

    My purpose of this test is to first and foremost try to investigate whether a close to mono crossover will allow my ears to enjoy hard panned stereo recordings without:
    1. Single side ear death, fatigue, anger, rage, gear abuse and tears.
    2. Being forced to always listen to a pure mono mixdown which sometimes causes otherwise very dynamic and lively recordings to fall flat and die.

    Risk: that I like it so much that I feel forced to file a divorce with Roon only a few days after the launch of 1.3 which allows for album art/booklets to be viewed within the software - one of the greatest updates in playback software history.

    Opportunity: that this solution is the final solution towards living with my jazz collection without having to mix to mono and sometimes suffer from dull/flat/dead music...

    I'll keep filling in findings here throughout next week but the initial experience is...holy shit! How the hell can I go back from this?!
    I'm quite sure I won't stay with the factory defaults, well maybe with Room Ambience, that's one insane setting to play with.

    Here's the Metaplugin wrapper loaded into the jRiver DSP. It's needed for Waves NX to work with a dedicated playback software.

    As you can see I've loaded NX into the wrapper and then I'm just sending audio L and audio R through Waves. That's all you need. This is the demo version, I haven't bought the full version yet.
    Once you chose "Load plugin", you navigate to the Waves dll file and it loads within the wrapper.
    The different versions (Stereo, 5.1, 7.1) will land on top of each other, so you need to move them around and/or remove them to get the view as seen below. You'll only need 2 channels anyway.

    [​IMG]

    Here's the NX Stereo dashboard.
    You can click on the ? in the top right of the Head Modeling setting to see how you're supposed to measure your head and why.

    After that you're basically positioning the artist(s) in relation to each other and in relation to where you sit.

    Room Ambience setting defaults on 17 and I've left it like that for now. You can create "distance" between your head and the recording. Haven't dug too deep in this yet.

    Speaker position defaults at 60° and Waves recommends that you keep it at that to start with.
    I'm coming from a preference of MONO in which the setting for speaker position is 0° so that's where I started. I'll work myself towards 60° and stop wherever I can find it bearable. In the image below I'm at 20°.

    My left ear is borderline hyperacusis so I'm trying to find a speaker position setting where hard panned stereo sounds "natural" and not flat/dead as I sometimes get from mono yet bearable for my ear(s).

    There's another setting called Rotate in which the speaker pair can be moved around 360°. They keep their position in relation to each other, but the sound projection against where you sit is changed.

    To avoid clipping I've set the Output Gain on -3. It seems to work well to start with.

    [​IMG]
    Day1: I've quickly realized that a front speaker position of 60° is not going to work for me with any hard panned stereo recording. I've done about an hour of listening per 10° and so far I think that a setting around 20° is what I prefer. Now what happens if I rotate the speaker position slightly towards the right side and by doing so saving my left ear a little bit extra? First thing that happens is that I had to readjust the distance between left and right a bit. Interesting. I'll come back with more throughout the week.

    Day2: Been traveling for a couple of days but finally some time to listen in peace and quiet again. I'm finding that for me the Speaker Position Front setting of around 20°-30° is what I come back to. In terms of Speaker Position Rotate, I'm very happy with 8-15° rotation to the right, but of course this setting will vary depending on front setting.
    With these settings I perceive that the hard panned stereo recording I've tested with so far will place the most far left instrument at an 11-11:30 setting with 9.00 being lateral of left ear and 3.00 being lateral of right ear. The most far right instrument will be at about 2:30.

    Of course this is a serious matter of preferred perception and I will make no claims or use adjectives to point people in a certain direction good or bad. What I can say is that if you feel that a mono mixdown is causing recordings to feel flat or dead and a crossfeed not being a good enough solution to save your ears from Miles or Dexter or Tina....then I would recommend doing a demo of Waves NX. I'll keep listening throughout the week. I would've wanted to trial NX together with Sonarworks but since my trial has expired this will have to do for now. I've previously said that Sonarworks alone didn't ring my bells with HD800 except for using it as a mono mixdown plugin only.

    @atomicbob THANK YOU for recommending this!

    final edit : I'm now using a front speaker setting of 55-60 and no rotation. I've found that I needed some time to get used to these settings, but I'm pretty much done. Waves NX + Sonarworks@atomicbob IVS is my preferred way of playback in JRiver, even with hard panned albums. (Waves NX, DMGAudio E-quick, DDMF Metaplugin, Sonarworks)
    I will add the resonator mod back to the HD800 and see if I "need" it or not.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2017
  2. cskippy

    cskippy Creamy warmpoo

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    Has anyone used the NX head tracker? I'm curious how well it works.
     
  3. johnjen

    johnjen Doesn’t want to be here but keeps posting anyways

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    I have heard Atomic Bob's setup.

    It is interesting how well and seamlessly it works.

    But ultimately it’s a distraction away from really hearing into the music, so it tends to get disabled.

    And in a way it shows up the compliment to wearing headphones vs speakers.
    We don't have to position our heads in a particular position in order to be in the sweet spot.

    JJ
     
  4. cskippy

    cskippy Creamy warmpoo

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    I was just thinking about the possibilities for gaming.
     
  5. johnjen

    johnjen Doesn’t want to be here but keeps posting anyways

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    It might work out rather well, if, the location of the vocal/action sources, 'tracks' the on screen location.

    JJ
     
  6. Changeling

    Changeling Tube Slut

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    Fun to play with but not a very enjoyable tool for music playback.
     
  7. Changeling

    Changeling Tube Slut

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    To add to my previous notes I'm now using the same setup with modiMB, Vali2 and HD650 and the nolimits profile in Sonarworks.
    I can't distinguish between Sonarworks on/off, alone, no matter how hard I try. I just can't hear any difference.

    With Waves NX enabled however, Sonarworks on/off makes a very prominent difference from good (on) to worse (off).

    Happy to have purchased both, but it's a bit cumbersome to always transfer the NX Waves license between setups...

    Edit: it seems like having the waves license on a USB stick and just moving that between office/him rig works. Good. No need to transfer license.
     
    Last edited: Apr 3, 2017
  8. Jackork

    Jackork Acquaintance

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    Tried using sonarworks with my K701 and I think it sounded pretty good. It nicely tames uneveness in treble and boosts sub-bass.

    But.. compensation curve heavily favors sub-bass which is too much for me (there are options to change boost in bass, but I couldn't get it to right level), and a lot of air is lost as a result of EQ. I think it's worth checking out the trial, and you will see if it works for you.

    In the end, It's meant to be used by pros in mixing and they have different needs from us.
     
  9. Changeling

    Changeling Tube Slut

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    I somewhat agree and disagree with you. My findings with HD800 and HD650 is that it's hard for me to hear much difference at all with Sonarworks alone.

    But with (especially) HD800 I think Sonarworks is one of a couple of important pieces of the chain to make that headphone really work for me (Yggdrasil was one step, Mjolnir2 another one, going to AES instead USB a third, finding tubes that gave a small improvement to depth/stage helped a little bit, and finally @atomicbob provided insight on something he calls the IVS - or Immersion Virtualizer System). I'm not doing mixing or mastering but I find Sonarworks is a very important part of the puzzle.

    I think @Marvey has said that he only likes the HD800 under certain circumstances, and i think that's an important statement, not only true for HD800. To find the right system synergy is not always easy - but a lot of fun!

    I hope you can find a system what works for you and your headphone...or you won't at which point SBAF will hold your hand for a bit :) :)
     
  10. Jackork

    Jackork Acquaintance

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    Thank you for your kindness :)

    For now I think that doing some simple, manual EQ works best for me, maybe someday I will try again Sonarworks, maybe with different headphones.

    I wonder how different headphones will sound after EQ-ing them to the same curve.
     
  11. DivineCurrent

    DivineCurrent New

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    A while ago out of curiosity, I took my individually calibrated HD650 EQ correction from Sonarworks and attempted to match it in Equalizer APO. After comparing the Sonarworks plugin and my manual copy of their EQ, I can safely say they sound pretty much identical, at least I can't tell the difference. Of course in order to do this, you actually need to have Sonarworks to see what the correction curve looks like.
     
  12. Jackork

    Jackork Acquaintance

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    I prefer not to do as much EQ-ing as it is in Sonarworks. For my ears there is too much bass, and heavily tamed treble makes sound stage all wierd (at least for me).

    If Sonarworks offered flat compensation in bass, or simply allowed users to customize compensation to their preferences, then it would be an amazing tool.
     
  13. johnjen

    johnjen Doesn’t want to be here but keeps posting anyways

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    Have you tried using the wet/dry control along with the tilt and bass controls?

    JJ
     
  14. Azteca

    Azteca Friend

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    I second this. Spend some quality time. 75 wet should make a clear difference without totally neutralizing the natural tilt of the headphone. Then play with bass and treble tilt. Of course you don't have to like or use Sonarworks but if anything I know @atomicbob and I have found ourselves using +2 bass, -2 treble with the HD6x0. If you have overwhelming sub bass where there was none before then something must be screwy. I don't mean to insult you but double check you have the right headphone profile selected. It can reset between uses sometimes.
     
  15. Jackork

    Jackork Acquaintance

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    I tried using wet/dry, I found it works best at around 40 wet, but I did achive very similar result with manual EQ.

    Also, I double checked the profile and I have the right one, but thanks for an advice :)

    Maybe I'm just not used to having this much sub-bass, or my K701 start distoring at too much EQ-ing.

    Later today, I'll try using different amps while checking out Sonarworks, maybe I will get some new results with it.
     
  16. Azteca

    Azteca Friend

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    This is possible. There should be a fader on the right that turns down the signal to prevent clipping. With you having wet/dry at only 40 I can't imagine you need more than the typical -6dB but you can experiment. And again, adjust the bass slider to -3 or -4 and any excessive sub bass should be gone.
     
  17. Jackork

    Jackork Acquaintance

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    After spending some additional time with it, I found that -3 bass and 60 wet works great for me. Basically everyone should check what works best for them, especially when Sonarworks offers so many options. Also different amps will have different synergies with it, so it's worth keeping in mind.
     
  18. Scubadude

    Scubadude Almost "Made"

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    Agree 40 - 60% is where I keep the wet / dry knob. Any higher and the sound becomes lifeless and dull. Only time when I use 100% is when I use the freaky simulate feature ... incredible to be able to switch between the fundamental character of HD650, K712 and others at the click of a mouse. Would love to have this feature expanded to allow simulation of all the headphones with calibration profiles ... like having a headphone shop at home ...
     
  19. groovyd

    groovyd New

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    I bought their full kit, including the calibration mic and speaker plugin with systemwide. In general it is a great tool once you get past all the licensing issues and setup struggles etc. After about 20 attempts and a number of amazon purchases I managed to get an audio interface that their calibration works with (still very difficult process due to their very strict measurement tolerances) and my mini maggies and maggie 20.7's sound much better now. I just shipped off 4 pair of headphones (X, XC, T1, MHP1000) for custom calibration but that package has now been 1 month lost in the mail office somewhere in Riga. The average profile for the X they gave away with the headphone plugin sounded good but I wanted perfect.
     
  20. groovyd

    groovyd New

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    I use linear phase and 100% wet with their B&K target and then add back the highs it cuts back on from 2k and up via JRiver EQ. Wish it was possible to define our own target better then just bass and treble settings so I wouldn't have to use JRiver but there is no combination of tilts that satisfies me.
     

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