Unfortunately, even though most music today is heard on headphones, crossfeed is hard to come by in mainstream music listening apps. CanOpener makes working with headphones better, and it does it without creating more problems than it solves. Someday, it will likely be possible to accurately model the way you hear 3D sounds in space using headphones, but it will certainly require more than a simple measurement of your head’s circumference to do it convincingly. And is it worth a 25 dB frequency error in the wrong spot? Again, probably not. But will a 3D experience it make your stereo mixes better? Probably not. 2 Is the future 3D?Ī 3D listening experience is arguably very important for virtual reality, video games, and surround sound mixing over headphones.
A recent paper on the subject suggested a minimum of eight different anthropometric measurements to improve simulation accuracy. Unfortunately, head size alone doesn’t even come close to accounting for the myriad differences that make your ears sound like your ears. In Waves’ defense, Nx does make an effort to account for your ears’ variability by allowing you to input your own head dimensions. When Waves introduced Nx they put out a press release claiming that “Nx does all this without coloring your sound in any way.” But a 25 dB error in a critical frequency band is the very definition of coloring your sound. What does a 25 dB frequency error sound like? Like pretty massive hole in the frequency spectrum - far from natural. The response of several individual’s ears with a sound source at 30º azimuth compared to Nx (shown in thick red).įor almost every individual plotted above, the error compared to Nx is more than 25 dB. The problem is that these spectral cues differ greatly from person to person, so it’s very easy to get them wrong. In real life, spectral cues are the only way we’re able to distinguish between sounds that are in front or behind us. Attempting to create a 360º illusion means that Nx must drastically alter your signal’s frequency spectrum. At first glance this might seem like a positive enhancement, but after listening tests and deeper examination, it’s clear that the “Virtual Mix Room” comes at the expense of accuracy and fidelity to the source. Unlike CanOpener Studio, which incorporates broad characteristics of loudspeakers for better headphone monitoring, Nx wants to simulate a 3D virtual loudspeaker experience. Which is nice when listening to music, but essential when making critical panning and spatial decisions about sound. Using crossfeed, CanOpener models the most important spectral, timbral, and intensity modifications that you’d hear in our studio. Unless, after popping on a pair of headphones, you pop CanOpener Studio on the master bus. No chance for Ringo to make it from left to right. Headphones, by contrast, are loudspeakers strapped to your ears. The waves interacted with a large obstacle (you) on the way to your right ear, meaning your right ear hears those left-speaker sounds modified in a thousand ways - changes in phase, spectrum, and intensity.
So even when Ringo’s drums are coming only from the left speaker, those sound waves still make it to your right ear. In our lab, in the mixer’s chair, sounds from the left and right speakers hit both of your ears. Hearing music on headphones is a lot different from hearing music on speakers. Under the watchful gaze of a Waves technician, I put on their headphones and pressed play.įirst thought when trying out Nx? This doesn’t sound anything like the lab speakers or CanOpener Studio. CanOpener Studio had captured the spatial characteristics of a great loudspeaker setup incredibly well.įlash forward to this January, to the 2016 NAMM Conference, where Devin and I got the chance to try out Waves’ newest plugin, Nx - Virtual Mix over Headphones.
But a second thought followed the first one closely: This sounds a lot like CanOpener.
#WAVES NX FREE TRIAL PROFESSIONAL#
In August of 2012, after months of working on CanOpener Studio, and a lifetime of listening to music mostly on headphones, I got my first opportunity to visit the lab and hear music the way Devin does, at that desk, on a pair of professional-grade speakers - a highly controlled acoustical environment, tuned for his professional tasks (mixing, mastering, algorithm-designing). In the Goodhertz audio lab in California, Goodhertz founder Devin Kerr does the majority of his critical listening at the mixing desk.
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