room simulator on headphones
 

Hello all,

I am becoming a little skeptical. I have tried a few plug ins designed to simulate natural room acoustics for mixing in headphones (when the situation will not allow speakers). I have tried Redline Monitor, and the Waves plug ins (NX and CLA). I don't really see a TRUE listening experience that simulates accurately any better than the Air Stereo Width plug in when used to reduce the stereo field. Or even just simply listening to the mix in mono to get a different perspective on track levels in the mix. What am I missing??

Re: room simulator on headphones
 

I don't think you're missing anything. Like you said, its all about perspective.

I have two plugins on the last inserts on my master bus: Panipulator and Realphones. The former I use for checking the mix in mono; the latter I use to check lows and mids, especially sub lows. If the kick drum and bass guitar aren't gelling correctly, Realphones reveals that (and in headphones too...HD600s if you're curious!)

So yeah, again, its all about perspective and making sure the mixes translate well. Nothing takes the place of a set of great studio monitors in a finely tuned room, but for a few hundred bucks all-in you can get a decent set of cans and some software to help you along the way. I feel its just as valuable as the old car or boombox test (and probably more relevant these days too!)

Re: room simulator on headphones
 

I've tried a couple different ones, including the Waves NX.

It's certainly cool and makes working on headphone much easier (easier to listen to) if you have to spend lots of time on them. But I don't think it actually helps you make a better mix, it's just easier to listen to. But I usually turn the head tracking feature off since I don't want it to track all my head movements all the time.

Things might be different if you are working on a truly immersive mix, such as Atmos, or one of the live sound immersive formats like L-ISA Studio from L-Acoustics and use their binaural rendering option with their in-ear-monitors.