Thanks for doing this video! I actually come from both a Sonarworks user and a Dirac Live user. I have licenses for both softwares and have used both extensively. My honest opinion and my personal one is I prefer Dirac Live way over Sonarworks. I do not have the luxury of a big room thus the room modes are a little wonky for my space. I noticed it immediately when I moved into my current space and even upgrading my speakers to Amphion One15s + a FlexBase25 stereo subwoofer, my room wasn't doing the speakers justice. So I had to resort to DRC to help me continue doing work. During my times using Sonarworks, I found the stereo imaging a little scattered. I can't explain it but it always felt that elements in a song mix tend to lose it's position, even when I'm mixing songs it felt it took me a long time to find a good spot for elements in my mix. I stumbled upon Dirac Live a little while back and it totally blew me away. I felt my Amphions were really what they should sound after going through correction, that was the reason why I switched over to Amphions after test driving it in a store. The imaging was extremely precise, centre image was spot on and even moving the pan knob by 1-2 notches in Protools was really obvious. The biggest thing i noticed was my transient response, it felt super tight and precise after the Dirac correction. What i understand is that Dirac also corrects for speaker timings so it hits your ears at the same time. You can actually customise a filter in the Dirac Room Correction app to your taste and I don't think it's supposed to be completely "flat" per se. I actually did my own filters to tweak the sound of the DRC to my ears and I'm really enjoying it. I hope this gives your viewers and also yourself a perspective of someone who has used both softwares as well. =)
Hi Wytse, thank you from Sonarworks for the video - we did know you are working on this :) just to clarify, Sonarworks is still the company name but with the latest software version that was released in March 2021 we did go through the re-branding and now the product name is SoundID Reference.
I’ve been using sonarworks and sound ID for a while and it allowed me to hear exactly what I was doing in the mix and made my music translate to other sources in a way that sounded almost perfectly outside of the studio environment. Trust me sonarworks really works.
I noticed you were using the Umik-1 in the 0° orientation. Dirac is designed to deal with the reflections and interactions with the room so they recommend you use it in the 90° orientation with the 90° calibration file loaded into Dirac for your Umik-1 of course. You may find you will get better end results with your sound that way. Cheers.
9:32 "Imagine that you have an 18 decibel gap coming from a standing wave at your listening position". In that case all you can do is move your listening position. The peaks and nulls of standing waves (aka room modes) depend on the geometry of your room. You can attenuate them by judiciously positioning the speakers and through acoustic treatment, but you can't move them. Also, you can't fill a gap, i.e. a null point of a room mode. If you boost the affected frequency, you increase the peaks surrounding the null, but at the position of the null, the sound waves (of the particular frequency) still cancel out.
All correct, except that you actually can fill the null of a room mode just by (physically, most likely with a resonator) attenuating the corresponding pressure boost, on the other hand, if it's not room mode but it's SBIR, then you cannot.
Sonarworks really needs to do some serious optimization and bug fixing on their software. Every update breaks something different. Serious bugs and optimization issues have gone unfixed since SoundID released. It works, but the user experience is just plain bad.
I’m in a treated room with experience monitors. I have been using sonarworks for many years I must say that Dirac sounds so much better. I use it together with a minidsp box going direct into my speakers. There are some latency but it let me listen to all my hardware through it. It’s great.
I recently made the switch from Sonarworks to Dirac. I had countless issues with sonarworks, issues locating the mic during measurement, extreme latency (500ms in some cases), and CPU hungry processing. Sonarworks linear phase EQ option I also found was absolutely unbearable with audible pre ringing artifacts on transient sounds like kick drums. With Dirac, I felt the tonal balance is spot on, but I also experienced a dramatic change in stereo imaging quality with the time alignment featured in Dirac on my Dynaudio Core 59 monitors. It was honestly a night and day difference from the first second I ran audio through it. The front to back depth and stereo imaging precision is vastly improved. Sonarworks did a fine job with the tonal balance IMO, but Dirac took the sound quality to new heights in a phase linear way with at least no "audible" ringing artifacts to my ear.
Same experience as I had, Dirac sounded way more natural and was easier to adjust to my liking. However, Dirac's time alignment introduces another kind of phase issue, try to run a sine sweep in mono to see if it affects you too. I'm switching to a Trinnov ST2 pro to address that.
@@johannesahlberg Hey Johannes. I found this anomaly as well, but it is related to the "delay compensation" check box. I sit directly between the speakers, and when I switch this off I have no phase issues. Let me know if this helps.
Interesting review! I did the same comparison about a year ago, and I found Dirac to sound better :). The installation hassle isn't really an argument for me, because it's set and forget. An hour or two more of my time for better sound are well worth it. As for the ringing, Dirac tries to correct the phase response as well, which as far as I know Sonar doesn't. Depending on what kind of speakers one has, this might make quite a difference and of course also cause ringing (have to test this now!). It's actually supposed to improve the impulse response. Measuring with REW I noticed that indeed the phase response was more linear, the impulse response however remained largely the same. Still can't get the Trinnov out of my head 😬...
How about bugs and bugs fixing? Quite some bad reviews on Sonarworks. I'm super sceptical about making my hole mixing system so vulnerably to only one software. If I get used to it I need it to be reliable. It's really not a nice place to be when it breaks down. I would choose stability over user-friendly any day... So what are your thoughts and experience with it so far? Thank you in advance. ☺️
@@lydfar2392 I didn't experience any difficulties with either, so I can't really give advice there. But I've been running Dirac for a year now and never had an issue. It just does it's thing.
I've tried Sonarworks in my studio, and even though I did like the corrected frequency response, I did not like some additional artifacts. The stereo field got a lot less precise, and it seemed to sound a bit more phasey. I have very nice speakers in an ok room; it's treated but not professionally. I decided to not use it in the studio. However, I do have a pair of shitty speakers in my home office, where I often check mixes. I've found Sonarworks to really does wonders here, and I like the sound a lot. In my opinion, if you have good speakers in a medium to good room, really listen carefully if the change it makes is really an improvement.
Tried that also, but that smears the low end a bit due to ringing. It would be nice to be able to apply the same filter to both speakers instead of processing both speakers individually. Then at least the phase and stereo imaging would remain in tact.
I disagree, you should try the DDRC-24 (that's the cheapest hardware) which uses Dirac, 14ms latency. To me sonar works sounds like just slapping a cheap eq on your mix, where as the dirac also corrects for phase and power level. ua-cam.com/video/22yznnaNN5I/v-deo.html
100% Couldn’t even get close to a good sound with Sonarworks. It’s not even about the flatness it’s about the sound of the EQ. Dirac sounds so tight in the lows. Sonarworks bass sounds flabby.
@@joelabramson7901 Yeah that''s because it adjusts for power level and phase as well as EQ. I just set up my DDRC-24 with a sub on output 3. I use PMC TB2's and removing stuff below 80Hz really makes them sound more open and the stereo image is insane!
Dirac Live also correct the phase of your system. As there is a lot of treatment in your monitoring path, it could explain the ringing problem you had. Because with a lot of speaker in less then ideal room, this phase correction really improve the sound quality. But it’s a real problem that you forgot this point in your review. Please try to prepare your video more to make fair vs content.
That ringing is a phase issue, and there are different settings for the type of filter that you want to apply, Linear Phase, etc. You would only know this if you read about and understood the software and it's likely that you could have solved the issue with a touch of a button. Between the incorrect results in Sonarworks and the lack of understanding about filter choices with different phase characteristics, it seems that you really don't understand this software or how to use it properly. Which is fine, it's not for everyone, but it's unfortunate that you are giving advice based on your lack of knowledge and improper use of very good and very powerful software....
I honestly can't recommend the monitor correction from Soundworks. They make things far, far harsher. Both my friend and I experienced the same thing with different systems, massively heavy highs. Far as I know for Dirac, the measurement positioning does not need to be perfect. It determines the mics position automatically, just doesn't imply what it's doing during setup. Takes less time, too. For the latency and ringing, Dirac does some phase correction, which as a matter of course will require the sound to be delayed. Perhaps, when you measured the room, your measurement length was too large to get an accurate grasp of the stereo spread. I've always had better centering with Dirac, though it's used on a pair of $2k monitors. I don't have any idea why it rings so much, though. You'd need some very high Q factors to get that kind of ringing, and honestly, I doubt Dirac would leave that problem in without good reason. Everything else about the processing seems very well thought out. This is purely speculation. Just a really dumb guess about what it could possibly be. Say your room has resonances, what if, in your impulse response for the room correction, you added your own ringing with 180 degree phase that matched that room's resonances. Theoretically, you could cancel out that room's resonance. On a price vs results review. In my experience, both Sonarworks and Dirac far outstrip equivalently priced room treatment. For new artists, I honestly recommend they use household materials to treat the room, then get Dirac, then invest in more treatment. In that order. Eventually the room will sound better than what the correction software can make up for, but that's already after they invested thousands of dollars in treatment, at which point the treatment software's cost is relatively negligible. I am curious since I never got the chance: how well would Earthwork's measurement microphones work for these mics? Would they offer more for rooms already treated well?
Changing the EQ with materials ? Maybe a basstrap, but i think most basstraps are just symbolic items to show others that you have understanding about .....hahaha. Room EQ is a must by the way, but its not about the room but about your speakers ! Most people are adjusting eq towards the sound of their speakers and thats a big mistake. Just look at your own measurement, the bumps are more then 3db and thats adjustable for ears with ease.
dirac live is a best value software, the only one who cares about real room issues and corrects phase and impulse responce which is huge because of TRANSIENTS improvement
I've used Sonorworks and IK Arc and hated the results from both the same way. Monitors felt phasey and over hyped. All the mixes I tried with them activated were problematic. IMO I think it is better to just get to know your monitors and maybe use a very light parametric eq to tune known problem areas. Maybe get a look at it all with Room EQ Wizard or even SMAART and adjust by ear. IF you are making adjustments over a dB or two, you have other problems like room treatment, like he said.
I don't know whether Dirac improved quite a bit or not... but... I'm a user of Sonarworks for more than a year almost, and I'm just testing Dirac live (14-day trial). I'm also an advanced user of REW and I understand it, as well as most of the acoustics in physics... I even can do my own impulse responses now with minimum phase. My room is fairly treated with DIY walls, panels. SW is good, helps a lot for beginners, or those who are artists rather tan geeks. It removes the first blanket off your monitor. However SW never managed to get my bass right (the first nasty mode of my room at 34Hz). Even I struggled with this a lot in my IR files, and in SW I had to have tricky user IQs, which messes up phase quite a bit. And phase... very important factor. SW does not do phase correction, not even with IIR filters. I just gave Dirac a go, a couple of minutes ago. It is straightforward too. Measured those 9 locations instead of SW's 37, I setup the target curve (just around 3dB boost below 100 and 0,5dB / octave decline from 4000 Hz to meet EBU criteria, and guess what, according to REW measurements it simply perfected the bass (no mod, no dips etc) and even aligned the phase where it could. At least I'm sitting in an absolute phase coherent 60cm spot from 90 Hz till 20k Hz. Impressive. If you have not heard anything in a good place, you won't know the difference. The bass is tighter, the transients are there, depth of sound field improved. It's like... yeah you enjoy the music on a good studio monitor, even the soundstage can be improved with a lot of things, but when the two monitor are really working together in terms of amplitude, phase and time, you'll hear it. With Dirac I could hear the drum in DP Get lucky properly... like you can touch it and you hear it's real drum, not just a bass tone. And all this with 512 buffer and 8ms latency. UA-cam video required 1024 samples latency, all this pretty much in par with Sonarworks. Actually both are good company, I like both. They enhanced quite a bit in the past 1-2 years and they are reliable, but it seems Dirac's algorithm is really advanced and calculates and corrects phase without using too much FIR, so it can operate with 8-20ms latency and avoids ringing. I have not heard despite I pushed it hard. I'll try Neumann MA1 with my main Neumanns, and probably it will stay. Proprietary systems can hardly fail. I just need money money money. : )))
Sonarworks is just too slow..also the systemwide extension is intrusive and cumbersome...and don't ask me how often i accidentally rendered the correction curve into the bounce. A dedicated DSP box is by far the better solution if you decide to go down the room correction route. Merging Anubis is such a product that utilizes the correction curve perfectly. But even UAD and a curve EQ with an approximation will do. My perfect solution would be a UAD plugin that can load the calibration file though.
IK Multimedia Arc is far to superior to both of these. Extensively demoed ALL and Arc is by far the most practical (easy plugin) on system out and natural sounding.
I tried to optimize my studio as far as possible and then added SoundID/Sonarworks to get those few extra % and I am really impressed how much better my own or my clients' music sounds now on all devices, I can only recommend it :-)
Exactly my same experience. Now its so much easier to deliver awesome mixtes I almost dont need to check t'hem outside. Best invesment ever, aside from acosutic treatment
I've been using Sonarworks for a few years now, and at first I couldn't hear any difference. But even after a couple of weeks of using it, it became very apparent how much easier it was for me to hear what was going on in my mixes. Particularly, the low-mids sounded much more precise, and I could much more accurately process my tracks and not get distracted by any resonances my room created. So overall, Sonarworks is super useful (at least in my bedroom setup)
lets be real. there is no flat. modes, flutter echos and first reflections suck and need to be treated but besides that it's always personal taste. 20 engineers will pick 20 different perceived "flat"s when asked which speaker in which room etc.
Neumann's DSP 750 subwoofer is the best I've tried! I own Sonarworks, IK Arc III and have torture tested Dirac and they all have strengths and weaknesses - my tipping point was when I used REW to create my own room correction and it was the one I ended up using! The Neumann DSP software was co-developed with Fraunhofer IIS (yes... the mp3 people) and doesn't try to just make your speakers flat but instead aims to make your monitors sound "as best as possible in your room"... so no gaining of 18dB going on here. As the DSP is in the subwoofer you set the monitors flat and the subwoofer controls the EQ, phase and time alignment. The good news is you don't specifically need Neumann monitors as the subwoofer is essentially in control of everything. Finally, the DSP is stored in the subwoofer DSP so no latency or need of a monitoring plugin - I had to disable Sonarworks when recording as the latency was huge.
Started 10 years ago with mini DSP DA22 with dirac live. The DA began to sound a bit less pristine so switched to dirac live ITB and that works even better. Sonarworks gave me a microphone and free upgrade from headphone calibration to speakers. The software improved but without impulse response correction sonarworks does not perform better. I don't understand Wietse dirac is better and quality should be key.
I know miniDSP have something they call “ears” its their headphone calibration device to fix frequency response. Im not sure if dirac is involved in that tho, but it might be.
Got no big Studio etc, but a pair of Speakers and different headphones. Sonarworks helped me a lot getting the right balance of frequencies. Before my music often sounded just bad on different devices like in the car. So maybe a person like me, without a big studio, is the right target. I am happy with it.
Great 👍 but why aren’t you showing us the complete correction curves of the measurement in Sound ID and DSP? Would have been interesting to see what was corrected in your room!
Had a weird experience with Sonarworks after using it for about a year, it seems to have a sound of its own and it didn't work for me( with my former setup at least). When I tried the Dirac I found it more natural to my ears, however I'm trying to get my room and monitor setup as best as I can before I consider adding any room eq corrections again..
Actually! AFAIK dirac corrects phase as well as frequency response. So the ”ringing” you’re seeing is probably ”anti-ringing”, in other words, ringing that’s trying to cancel the ringing of your room.
So it’s the opposite of what you said, the dirac should *sound* more accurate because of anti-ringing, even though it *looks* less accurate. This is of course, only if it succeeds in what it’s doing.
I don’t like sonarworks, it does this weird panning thing for my monitors output. So through the plugin it shows one monitor lower In volume than the other. It also has a weird panning issue. It takes away from the speakers natural tone and either adds too much bass or too much high frequencies which sounds inauthentic especially in the lows. I found myself just using sonarworks just to see the frequency response I’m getting in my room. And then mixing without it. Everything sounds better without sonarworks. Plug-ins like saturators and compressors and limiters are affected by the sonarworks plugin while engaged. At least I know my in room response 🤷🏻♂️
Im still yet to get a mix that Im happy with using Sonarworks. Having the visuals of seeing which frequencies are boosted/dipped is useful, but I always prefer how my mixes turn out when I don't use it. Im guessing its a lot to do with my room treatment and the reflections I'm getting.
Your ears have probably learn't to understand and trust what they are hearing. I think this is still the preferred option if your room isn't horrendous.
Are you shure that there is no mistake? The REW measuremtens are making no sense. Looks for me, that Dirac vs. Sonarworks are reversed. You show us, that Dirac makes no correction in the high frequenzy region - this fits exactly with the REW measurement from Sonarworks. On the other side, the REW Dirac Measurement fits excatly to the Filter you show in Sonarworks...
In general, I think your reviews are OK - but here I would like that you would have informed yourself more beforehand. Although IRR and FIR filter are complex topics ... . I would have liked to see the before/after of what the corrections are doing in your system. The monitoring system and the room are already highly optimized, there should not be too much to correct for? If done right, one can come approximately 80 to 95% of the way without software correction. (Ignoring the necessity of the huge pesky desk - this is a problem almost all production studios have to live with, but it messes up the sound significantly). Your "fear" of burning out the speakers. For all I know, neither Dirac nor Sonar Works correct deep notches in the modal region. So no amplification of holes a software can't fix anyway should be applied. But one should stay weary of corrections that add more than 6 dB in the whole audio band. Those should not be done in software. (the over all loudness can be reduced quite a bit). The curves presented as outcome are predictions, not measurements. Measuring the actual corrected response is a must, as you cannot possibly be sure that the predicted response matches the actual (and often it doesn't). The post ringing is a bit strange - if all I would expect pre-ringing? That might not be a sole problem of the software but may be specific in your application. You seem to have made an individual choice for a quite drastic high frequency roll off > 10 kHz in your monitoring system, Dirac seems to respect your freedom of choice. Sonar Works corrects it - what is not a fault of the program ;-) . IMHO with powerful tools like these, it is paramount to correct their correction at least for personal preferences.
You and Paul third the only people I trust on UA-cam I wasted so much money that I don’t have buying stuff I thought work because of you UA-cam anything you guys said work did
Super weird the 12db boost on the highs. Sonarworks almost never corrects highs that much. I think something on your monitors/system was messing this correction apps.
@@Whiteseastudio Great. If you find something, please update us. I've seen a good amount of SW corrections and they almost always corrects a lot on the bass, low-mid frequencies and almost nothing on the highest frequencies.
It's also a question of the curve you set as goal, flat isn't always, i would say even at all, the best way, maybe, flat between certain frequencies is the way to go, while consider your room acoustic - it's really not an easy task
@@Whiteseastudio I have found that with Sonarworks, the distance from the speakers, as well as the height that you measure at can have a massive difference. If you move your listening position back 8-12 inches the measurement can be dramatically different. If you have it closer to tweeter height than cone height, and it can make a big difference too. I tend to do 2 or 3 measurements with slightly different listening spots and heights to see how it changes the results. I also take the arm off a mic stand and hold that at arms length so that my body isn't effecting the mic measurement as much.
@@Whiteseastudio Thanks for the video, very insightful. You have a very unusual speaker compared to standard 2 way. Which might have an impact on measurement or how the software processes. Also I was wondering if you have tried changing the dry wet amount? I set mine to 25% for casual listening and about 30% for critical listening. I can hear more detail without hearing the filter as much. There is also a Linear Phase setting which made a small improvement for me. I use headphones RME Babyface fs interface and LCD-X. I prefer playback without sonarworks on an everyday basis but I can hear improvement when used. Kind regards,
The correction don't have to be flat at the listening position. The flat curve only happen in an anechoic room. At the listening position the target need to be the normalised JBL room curve. It the reason you have so much treble.
on-off topic: What do you think should we find a proper way to tune the speakers accordingly to our hearing problems, rather than surgical room corrections. For example when i was 14 unfortunately i had a firework exploded right next to my left ear on new years eve. I turned 30 nov last year recently i made myself an audiogram and it seems my right ear is doing a perfect flat response to all spectrum, my left ear has some problems around 300-500 hz, -6 to -9 db and from 15k to 20k -6 db. ...I made experiment runing a eq on left channel to help my left ear, and it does help a little on studio monitors to my perception , the problem is the stereo imaging is going bad even with linear phase mode, seems impossible to make it work... however it's amazing when applied for headphones. This little handicap i learned to adapt with it even tough my brain is always aware, it's been 8 years since i work as a live sound engineer in the national theatre, and atm everybody is happy with my mixing. Neuroplasticity is a very interesting topic :)
You are totally correct about neuroplasticity. Our brains have the most advanced signal processing capabilities. It makes sense that the correction worked better for you with headphones.
I have tried Sonarworks for over a year with my Focal Solo6 be monitors but Sonarworks just couldn’t overcome the low end issues with my treated room. The answer for me since I haven’t been able to fix my room yet is the VSX headphones solution from Slate Digital. My mixes translate much better across the board and with much less guessing and quicker results. Can you do a review of the VSX headphones?
Hi and thanks for this video!. Have you test Psi Audio Avaa C20 active bass traps?. I heard good things about them, curious about what you think?. They are not cheap but seem to do a good job between 15 - 150hz and they do not take up as much space as passive good bass traps. Best/Mathias
You know how they have head trackers for emulating speakers in headphones? They should do that with speakers, so the correction changes depending on where you are sitting or standing in the room. Next level!
Noooo, I don't think so. Think what it would do to your room reflections and also your own perception (our brains automatically compensate for slight movements in relation to a sound source - and THAT's why the headphone simulations of speakers "work", they fake the sound source perception, and they ONLY work if there's not too much latency in the whole system, otherwise it's just a nuisance). AND it's simply impossible to properly correct for any position outside of your limited listening zone. If I stand up and got to one side of the room, no software could ever correct for that because I'm suddenly not even in the "line of sight" of my speaker cones, and reflections from the wall become closer than the sound source itself.
The whole point is to track where you are in the room. Granted this is future thinking, but you’d have to measure many or even all points in your room. There could be a couple intermediary technologies that morphed between a limited number of sample points, but I think the math is doable. Plus, I don't think we're talking about extreme situations. Let's compensate for logical listening positions first, not the extreme sides of the room. As a tangent, when I'm mixing, I like to walk around the place. Even out in the hall. In the can, etc. Moving around in a mixing space help your brain compensate for the space it's in.
I strongly advise against using plug-ins like this. I went trough the wohle sonarworks experience several times in a bad and in a decent sounding room. With sonarworks on I was able to get better sounding mixes faster, but translation was worse in every case. Upgrading to a better room and to very good speakers is the way to go. Speaker choice and placement still is the nr. one thing to get right. In my opinion good speakers for near field listening should feature: coaxial design or very low crossover point and therefore coherent off axis response, large membrane area for better judgement of the lower mids. no internal dsp. this shrinks the market down to, emes, amphion, tannoy and geithain (and the Mackie hr824 mk1 I should state). If you follow these guidelines you should not have issues delivering satisfying mixes to you clients despite NOT having a very flat Fq response in your room if you are used to your system. checking the low end on HPs given.
I had to move studio a few years back, the shape of the new room was as such that despite f*** loads of bass traps the bass response was errrr not great. I wasn't a believer in these things but out of pure desperation I tried sonarworks.... I'm now a believer. Saved my life
As a user of Sonarworks since 2019 I can honestly say it changed my whole home-studio experience and lifted my confidence immeasurably. It isn’t cheap, but it’s one of the best purchases I’ve made
My thought when first seeing this sort of thing was this: The issue is the room not the signal before it comes out into the room… a boost or cut doesn’t fix the reflection creating it… because once done there’ll be a whole new slightly off frequency response…. The concept I find a bit digital minded and not organic as a room is
I think when I get setup I might give it a go to check my doubts… but only if they create a monitor controller… it’s pointless if it’s only to be on the master bus in a DAW… I only really would see use for myself if I had a travelling setup
problem with all those dsp corrections is that if you move your head just 10cm it will do more harm then good… that said, I use GLM for my genelecs but its mostly just cutting some freqencies that are too loud.. most people have problem with bass reverb and no amount of dsp can fix that
The problem with this way of thinking is that acoustics cause artifacts in two axes: amplitude and time. You can correct the amplitude axis, but you still have the problems in the time axis. But here's the important thing: correcting one is way way better than correcting none! :)
@@MFKitten thats why its still much better to invest in some DIY panels and bass traps and treat the problem at its source… probably cheeper also… other thing, everybody keeps forgeting there is this thing called psychoacoustics and that its more important to get used to your hearing/room/monitors then a flat response curve
@@TomislavRupic this was the word missing from my point “psychoacoustics” and the point about reverb… because even if it made it flat it’ll be a flatter signal still with reverb… my other point would be how eq works also… if you boss a bass frequency it effects the rest of the mix… so if the eq changes it’ll just have a contrasting effect elsewhere in the frequencies… so many variables making this a hard one to grasp as a viable idea… it’s a good concept definitely but seems to fall short much like emulating the acoustics of a famous studio in headphones… good music was made in those rooms because the people in them have been in them for years and know the room and speakers… it’s more the people than the room… then also it’s all the other equipment in the room… it’ll be like trying to make your home kitchen better by emulating the acoustics of a famous kitchen… when I first saw the KRK ERGO when I had limited knowledge and a lot of learned misconceptions from nonsense passed around about music production I thought “this thing could be the key” lol… it was a key to profit for a company and that’s about it haha
I have no idea why Sonarworks would boost your highs AT ALL, let alone by 12db. Something obviously went wrong, because it is not supposed to do that - not even close. What it should have done was create a FLAT frequency response. The review is kind of invalid if the setup was done incorrectly or if there was some weird anomaly with the software, and it's misleading to the viewers, as the results are completely incorrect.
We never had ANY of these problems in the 80's and 90's and there were thousands if not millions of Multi-Platinum records that were created that have won many awards. So why today all of a sudden all these companies are coming out with these gimmicks? Learn your room and learn your monitors and stop being into these gimmicks people!!
Everytime I've tried to like sonarworks, I've always ended uninstalling it. It takes away too much life from sound, making it kind of phase and harsh. Guess if someone wants something professional, he should go to products like trinnov
Your review seems to be a bit hasty and incomplete and raises more questions and not presenting detailed results. I have recently purchased the Sonarworks for speakers optimization package and planning a review on my channel 🇸🇪
In the future, there will be smart amplifiers that gauge the pressure impulses of all speakers attached to them which then calculate and compensate for the most balanced 20hz-20khz response based solely upon a singular pressure capsule worn by the listener (engineer, dog, cat, etc). Stop and think for a second about how all of these modern digital hipsters are still completely b tch slaves to analog amps, 100% at the mercy of analog hardware even when it is ''digitally controlled''. Why should it be that way when we could be EQing via power control instead of filters? Still a lot of dumbness in this world.
sonarworks reference user, have not upgraded to SoundID. Near 8 min mark in video you mention that SoundID stopped doing its work at high end while other Dirac flattened it out to top of specturm. You said you killed the SoundID processing above 6k (wondering how you did that actually). That would mean that all that high end added to correct it (that bothered you) wouldn't be present. It seemed like SoundIDs push in high end above 10k (graphic shown earlier in video) looked amazing like the mirror to the dip above 10k in the REW comparison graph. Might have something to do with the diff. Not saying SoundID didn't have an issue in high end, but that dip in REW comparison without compensation from SoundID above 6k could probably be expected.
Trinnov is the best but it expensive as hell. The Smart Sam Genelc speakers have room correction built in. (second Best.. what i have,) nothing above 2k should be touched. i dont think any other software besides maybe manually doing it in REW can beat those. Let me rephrase. REW can maybe beat genelec sams, but not Trinnov
Hi , iv got sonarworks ,I have a question , I have a SSL6 mixing desk which will be in my mixing chain , when I’m setting up my speakers to sonarworks to calibrate should I plug my mic in to the mixing desk then from the desks to the soundcard. Or should I plug the mic straight into the sound card or interface , thanks
Heres one that sounds better than either option if youre willing to go the extra mile.. REW>Sweep>Generate EQ Filters>Soundsource>CraveEQ2+Input filters enjoy ring-free transient rich lows, and linear phase highs! Voila. If you're using a sub, here's another trick. Use audiohijack instead of soundsource. Create two outputs, 1 for sub, 1 for mains. Insert voxengo time delay before mains, after sub. Sweep in REW, and time align the mains to the sub. Once dips are resolved and crossover is filled in, then sweep and apply correction eq as stated above before both the sub and mains. It's a bit much to explain but if you're already elbows deep, you'll understand ;) Enjoy!
neat product, but imo if ur smart enough with REW, you can just export REW's EQ-filters impulse response into any IR-reverb processor that can import .wav files like ReaVerb. done, and for free... although you'll need a calibration mic....
Hi, thx the great video again! We could be happy, if we can see freq response in REW without any roomcorrection, we can compare these:-). Sometimes i beileve the "roomcorrection" is works, sometimes think about why not... and i hear something, but i am not sure. It's corrected the whole listening chain. And we don't need expensive loudspeaker, amp, room threatment. Too beautiful, that it be true. If you already corrected the room and flat the freq response, after the measurement, why not nearly flat? I cheked it also, several times:-). This is a product what we dreaming, but we can't get, still not exist. It give us a partly solution, but not replaced the "real" room planning, threatment and studio speakers, etc...
if you are using RME *like me then you have a choise to put 3band eq on the master fader, since i have treated my room a lot, i can live with only 3 bands, and the sound is more pleasant then sonarworks, i just dont like the sound of those filters..
IK ARC3 is much better than sonarworks,sonarworks has phase issue but in ARC3 you can use combined L/R Function to correct your phase shift really well
So if you had to buy one you would buy Sound ID, but in reality you wouldn't buy either? Surely if isn't producing a near flat response as your tests show all you're really doing is spending more money and time just to learn yet another variation of your own sound. Everytime I start to think about buying something like this I always end up deciding it's a better idea to get my room acoustics as good as I can and spend as much time as possible listening and learning the characteristics of the room using really good references that match the genre I'm recording/mixing at the time.
In couldn't get Sonarworks working for longer than five minutes without the pops and clicks showing up. Cool idea but garbage software. Added more sound reinforcement instead.
I have to disagree with you on this one! I've tried both Sonarworks and Dirac live on my Focal SM9's and the difference is huge... Sonarworks really seems to remove a lot of definition from the sound and somehow it sounds a bit plastic. Dirac on the other hand really improves the stereo field and clarity. But I agree on the Sonarworks design and usage, it's definitely great and their usage for headphones is awesome, use it on my HD 650's! Great vid and cheers from the Netherlands! ;)
Something about this creeps me out... like a " smart phone " or " smart thermostat" " smart car " .... kinda down the same road as " transhumanism" ...
I think you should have thrown up some nearfield monitors and you might have had more fun rather than trying to tune a pre tuned system !!! Sonarworks is awesome in my opinion you just need to understand it!!! great results for 12 months on KRK and Adam
Re:the cute emulations: they are not made to sound like the particular piece of hardware so for example you could hear what they sound like through a particular brand and model of cans, instead, they are made to give a generic starting point to correct that brand and model to give a flatter response than the original specs if you are actually wearing that set of cans.. This is because you can't mic cans but people still want them corrected. They don't even try on in-ear stuff because the shape of your ear canal is idiosyncratic and makes any correction that is consistent impossible. They don't supply any corrections for earbuds, which is why your model was not included. The correction on my Sennheiser cans is a subtle improvementthat bears out over long listening periods sometimes if forget to switch the correction back to my monitors when I use them, and the sound of the headphone correction coming out the speakers is an immediate horror show.
I expect that both Sonarworks and Dirac Live will significantly improve the listening results as the before correction measured response in this video looks really very weird but...measuring the filter response isn't appropriate since Dirac Live applies a "pre emphasis", you should measure the impulse response in your studio instead. Also, the removal of a high-frequency peak is being perceived as lack of details but that's not the case (it's just more neutral)
I use Dirac live profile stored on minidsp 22d hardware. Connected digitally to dynaudio core 7 speakers. Works great, completely sysyemwide "set & forget". very happy. 👍🏻
I had a KRK Ergo Room Correction for over 10 years. It was a great Monitor Controller but it has latency. Thhe Correction of the Room was always a great mess. It cleans up a bit the mid and highs but to be fair - turn it off was not such a great lose then you would suspekt to buy 500€ on it. Perhaps thats the thing KRK doesnt have the device listet anymore, not even for drivers or just product History. Seems to me they want to forget that part of their product history. Today i have a Drawmer MC3.1 Monitor Controler and it such a win. No Latency and such a rich funktionality. Mixing with or without my Ergo was something - i cant tell the difference even on other speakers. The biggest key for a better sound was to invest in professional Basstraps. THAT was a huge positve impakt in soundquality. But i do have some problems with high and Mid in that Room.. but it doesnt Matter for my mixing. My Adams A7x are great Monitor Speakers and they do such a great job in Nearfield that i can switch between my Speakers and Headphones and always have a close Sound. When it sounds good on the Adams it will do on all other speakers too. Mastering? I wont recomend it but it is possible to do some Quick and dirty Mastering. Thats good enough but not for Pro cases. The biggest + for KRK Ergo was, that it was DSP powerd that was realy nice. But it pay off with latency.. like always in the digital domain. And yes it comes with a Room Mic that is actualy realy a good mic. It could be a thing doing a messurement and just using an EQ on the masterbus to correct some dips or peaks save as room preset and good is.. way cheaper and works too. So nowdays i dont get the point paying for room correction. Correct a Room doenst mean that the result will sound better. Just have a flat response.
Thanks, Now I don’t regret my SoundID 😆 I like SoundID on headphones more than on speaker, I think their algorithm really like to emphasize on the highs which is not my preference cos I’m sensitive to it a lot
IIRC, the KRK Rokit series has an app that supposedly senses and helps calibrate your monitors as well, but I don't know if those are anything near these solutions. I assume it's better than doing nothing, though.
still playing with it but im worried it will increase ear fatigue if it has to be on all the time as mines been boosted a fair bit in the lows and hi's now to what ive been used to for years (to get it to how it seems to think would be flat), i know i can change that with a custom eq change (which seems to be defeating the object a little) and lowering volumes, but I feel like metric A/B is all i need, and get used to a few ref tracks in relation to the sort of mix i want to achieve. i sussed putting it on the control room mixer in cubase was a much better way of working also over having it on the master out, and i do like the translation check options. for me its more useful for headphones and im finding longterm that i prefer my speakers without the plugin on. like i say, my speakers sound suddenly really bassier and brighter with it on, but i guess thats how my setup and ears are working with it right now and may take some time to adjust for sure
Which changes, in the signal chain would make someone having to recalibrate their room/monitors? I guess a new audio interface changes the sound a bit, but how much and is there anything else? A change in cables, etc..?
What monitors are those ?
Good ones!
@@Whiteseastudio what's the name of them 😀??
@@kevinkatinas535 apparently those are one of a kind speakers, had something in memory
Sandstorm by Darude… or… wait 🤔
@@Hartweizengriesspudding They look Epic. Now I have to wonder about the sound...💫
Thanks for doing this video! I actually come from both a Sonarworks user and a Dirac Live user. I have licenses for both softwares and have used both extensively. My honest opinion and my personal one is I prefer Dirac Live way over Sonarworks. I do not have the luxury of a big room thus the room modes are a little wonky for my space. I noticed it immediately when I moved into my current space and even upgrading my speakers to Amphion One15s + a FlexBase25 stereo subwoofer, my room wasn't doing the speakers justice. So I had to resort to DRC to help me continue doing work.
During my times using Sonarworks, I found the stereo imaging a little scattered. I can't explain it but it always felt that elements in a song mix tend to lose it's position, even when I'm mixing songs it felt it took me a long time to find a good spot for elements in my mix. I stumbled upon Dirac Live a little while back and it totally blew me away. I felt my Amphions were really what they should sound after going through correction, that was the reason why I switched over to Amphions after test driving it in a store. The imaging was extremely precise, centre image was spot on and even moving the pan knob by 1-2 notches in Protools was really obvious. The biggest thing i noticed was my transient response, it felt super tight and precise after the Dirac correction. What i understand is that Dirac also corrects for speaker timings so it hits your ears at the same time.
You can actually customise a filter in the Dirac Room Correction app to your taste and I don't think it's supposed to be completely "flat" per se. I actually did my own filters to tweak the sound of the DRC to my ears and I'm really enjoying it. I hope this gives your viewers and also yourself a perspective of someone who has used both softwares as well. =)
Hi Wytse, thank you from Sonarworks for the video - we did know you are working on this :) just to clarify, Sonarworks is still the company name but with the latest software version that was released in March 2021 we did go through the re-branding and now the product name is SoundID Reference.
I’ve been using sonarworks and sound ID for a while and it allowed me to hear exactly what I was doing in the mix and made my music translate to other sources in a way that sounded almost perfectly outside of the studio environment. Trust me sonarworks really works.
I noticed you were using the Umik-1 in the 0° orientation. Dirac is designed to deal with the reflections and interactions with the room so they recommend you use it in the 90° orientation with the 90° calibration file loaded into Dirac for your Umik-1 of course. You may find you will get better end results with your sound that way. Cheers.
9:32 "Imagine that you have an 18 decibel gap coming from a standing wave at your listening position". In that case all you can do is move your listening position. The peaks and nulls of standing waves (aka room modes) depend on the geometry of your room. You can attenuate them by judiciously positioning the speakers and through acoustic treatment, but you can't move them. Also, you can't fill a gap, i.e. a null point of a room mode. If you boost the affected frequency, you increase the peaks surrounding the null, but at the position of the null, the sound waves (of the particular frequency) still cancel out.
All correct, except that you actually can fill the null of a room mode just by (physically, most likely with a resonator) attenuating the corresponding pressure boost, on the other hand, if it's not room mode but it's SBIR, then you cannot.
Sonarworks is better when correcting rooms that aren’t as well built as your studio.
I think sonarworks says you can use a mic stand when making measurements. This helped me get more accurate results.
Ofc 🙏🏼
How do you know? lol
Sonarworks really needs to do some serious optimization and bug fixing on their software. Every update breaks something different. Serious bugs and optimization issues have gone unfixed since SoundID released. It works, but the user experience is just plain bad.
Absolutely. I really like Sonarworks - when it works. Stability is a disaster on my Mac mini M1.
I hated what it looked like so that's why I never upgraded
I’m in a treated room with experience monitors. I have been using sonarworks for many years I must say that Dirac sounds so much better. I use it together with a minidsp box going direct into my speakers. There are some latency but it let me listen to all my hardware through it. It’s great.
Mini DSP box? Sounds interesting, what kind more specific? Thanks. 😊
I recently made the switch from Sonarworks to Dirac. I had countless issues with sonarworks, issues locating the mic during measurement, extreme latency (500ms in some cases), and CPU hungry processing. Sonarworks linear phase EQ option I also found was absolutely unbearable with audible pre ringing artifacts on transient sounds like kick drums. With Dirac, I felt the tonal balance is spot on, but I also experienced a dramatic change in stereo imaging quality with the time alignment featured in Dirac on my Dynaudio Core 59 monitors. It was honestly a night and day difference from the first second I ran audio through it. The front to back depth and stereo imaging precision is vastly improved. Sonarworks did a fine job with the tonal balance IMO, but Dirac took the sound quality to new heights in a phase linear way with at least no "audible" ringing artifacts to my ear.
Same experience as I had, Dirac sounded way more natural and was easier to adjust to my liking. However, Dirac's time alignment introduces another kind of phase issue, try to run a sine sweep in mono to see if it affects you too. I'm switching to a Trinnov ST2 pro to address that.
@@johannesahlberg Hey Johannes. I found this anomaly as well, but it is related to the "delay compensation" check box. I sit directly between the speakers, and when I switch this off I have no phase issues. Let me know if this helps.
Interesting review! I did the same comparison about a year ago, and I found Dirac to sound better :). The installation hassle isn't really an argument for me, because it's set and forget. An hour or two more of my time for better sound are well worth it. As for the ringing, Dirac tries to correct the phase response as well, which as far as I know Sonar doesn't. Depending on what kind of speakers one has, this might make quite a difference and of course also cause ringing (have to test this now!). It's actually supposed to improve the impulse response. Measuring with REW I noticed that indeed the phase response was more linear, the impulse response however remained largely the same. Still can't get the Trinnov out of my head 😬...
How about bugs and bugs fixing? Quite some bad reviews on Sonarworks. I'm super sceptical about making my hole mixing system so vulnerably to only one software. If I get used to it I need it to be reliable. It's really not a nice place to be when it breaks down. I would choose stability over user-friendly any day... So what are your thoughts and experience with it so far? Thank you in advance. ☺️
@@lydfar2392 I didn't experience any difficulties with either, so I can't really give advice there. But I've been running Dirac for a year now and never had an issue. It just does it's thing.
I've tried Sonarworks in my studio, and even though I did like the corrected frequency response, I did not like some additional artifacts. The stereo field got a lot less precise, and it seemed to sound a bit more phasey. I have very nice speakers in an ok room; it's treated but not professionally. I decided to not use it in the studio. However, I do have a pair of shitty speakers in my home office, where I often check mixes. I've found Sonarworks to really does wonders here, and I like the sound a lot. In my opinion, if you have good speakers in a medium to good room, really listen carefully if the change it makes is really an improvement.
Using DSP on a referencing system kind of defeats the purpose of the reference imo
I find that sw works better in linear phase mode. Sounds much cleaner at the cost of more latency. But you wouldn’t track with sonarworks on
Tried that also, but that smears the low end a bit due to ringing. It would be nice to be able to apply the same filter to both speakers instead of processing both speakers individually. Then at least the phase and stereo imaging would remain in tact.
@@ralphverdult Disable listening spot adjustment.
I disagree, you should try the DDRC-24 (that's the cheapest hardware) which uses Dirac, 14ms latency. To me sonar works sounds like just slapping a cheap eq on your mix, where as the dirac also corrects for phase and power level.
ua-cam.com/video/22yznnaNN5I/v-deo.html
100% Couldn’t even get close to a good sound with Sonarworks. It’s not even about the flatness it’s about the sound of the EQ. Dirac sounds so tight in the lows. Sonarworks bass sounds flabby.
@@joelabramson7901 I have the same experience. Dirac sounds amazing in the low end
@@joelabramson7901 Yeah that''s because it adjusts for power level and phase as well as EQ. I just set up my DDRC-24 with a sub on output 3. I use PMC TB2's and removing stuff below 80Hz really makes them sound more open and the stereo image is insane!
ARC System 3 by IK multimedia did it for me. Most people sleep on IK stuff, but they are golden.
I already wanted to ask how they compare to it. The ARC System also seems to be more reasonably priced.
@@AnthonyMcBazooka He's being a fanboy. ARC is the worse than all of them. No systemwide capability.
Be great if you reviewed the IK Multimedia ARC III room analysis tool, and compare with Direc and Sonar.
Dirac Live also correct the phase of your system. As there is a lot of treatment in your monitoring path, it could explain the ringing problem you had. Because with a lot of speaker in less then ideal room, this phase correction really improve the sound quality. But it’s a real problem that you forgot this point in your review. Please try to prepare your video more to make fair vs content.
That ringing is a phase issue, and there are different settings for the type of filter that you want to apply, Linear Phase, etc. You would only know this if you read about and understood the software and it's likely that you could have solved the issue with a touch of a button. Between the incorrect results in Sonarworks and the lack of understanding about filter choices with different phase characteristics, it seems that you really don't understand this software or how to use it properly. Which is fine, it's not for everyone, but it's unfortunate that you are giving advice based on your lack of knowledge and improper use of very good and very powerful software....
I honestly can't recommend the monitor correction from Soundworks. They make things far, far harsher. Both my friend and I experienced the same thing with different systems, massively heavy highs. Far as I know for Dirac, the measurement positioning does not need to be perfect. It determines the mics position automatically, just doesn't imply what it's doing during setup. Takes less time, too.
For the latency and ringing, Dirac does some phase correction, which as a matter of course will require the sound to be delayed. Perhaps, when you measured the room, your measurement length was too large to get an accurate grasp of the stereo spread. I've always had better centering with Dirac, though it's used on a pair of $2k monitors. I don't have any idea why it rings so much, though. You'd need some very high Q factors to get that kind of ringing, and honestly, I doubt Dirac would leave that problem in without good reason. Everything else about the processing seems very well thought out.
This is purely speculation. Just a really dumb guess about what it could possibly be. Say your room has resonances, what if, in your impulse response for the room correction, you added your own ringing with 180 degree phase that matched that room's resonances. Theoretically, you could cancel out that room's resonance.
On a price vs results review. In my experience, both Sonarworks and Dirac far outstrip equivalently priced room treatment. For new artists, I honestly recommend they use household materials to treat the room, then get Dirac, then invest in more treatment. In that order. Eventually the room will sound better than what the correction software can make up for, but that's already after they invested thousands of dollars in treatment, at which point the treatment software's cost is relatively negligible.
I am curious since I never got the chance: how well would Earthwork's measurement microphones work for these mics? Would they offer more for rooms already treated well?
Changing the EQ with materials ? Maybe a basstrap, but i think most basstraps are just symbolic items to show others that you have understanding about .....hahaha. Room EQ is a must by the way, but its not about the room but about your speakers ! Most people are adjusting eq towards the sound of their speakers and thats a big mistake. Just look at your own measurement, the bumps are more then 3db and thats adjustable for ears with ease.
dirac live is a best value software, the only one who cares about real room issues and corrects phase and impulse responce which is huge because of TRANSIENTS improvement
I've used Sonorworks and IK Arc and hated the results from both the same way. Monitors felt phasey and over hyped. All the mixes I tried with them activated were problematic. IMO I think it is better to just get to know your monitors and maybe use a very light parametric eq to tune known problem areas. Maybe get a look at it all with Room EQ Wizard or even SMAART and adjust by ear. IF you are making adjustments over a dB or two, you have other problems like room treatment, like he said.
I don't know whether Dirac improved quite a bit or not... but... I'm a user of Sonarworks for more than a year almost, and I'm just testing Dirac live (14-day trial). I'm also an advanced user of REW and I understand it, as well as most of the acoustics in physics... I even can do my own impulse responses now with minimum phase. My room is fairly treated with DIY walls, panels. SW is good, helps a lot for beginners, or those who are artists rather tan geeks. It removes the first blanket off your monitor. However SW never managed to get my bass right (the first nasty mode of my room at 34Hz). Even I struggled with this a lot in my IR files, and in SW I had to have tricky user IQs, which messes up phase quite a bit. And phase... very important factor. SW does not do phase correction, not even with IIR filters.
I just gave Dirac a go, a couple of minutes ago. It is straightforward too. Measured those 9 locations instead of SW's 37, I setup the target curve (just around 3dB boost below 100 and 0,5dB / octave decline from 4000 Hz to meet EBU criteria, and guess what, according to REW measurements it simply perfected the bass (no mod, no dips etc) and even aligned the phase where it could. At least I'm sitting in an absolute phase coherent 60cm spot from 90 Hz till 20k Hz. Impressive. If you have not heard anything in a good place, you won't know the difference. The bass is tighter, the transients are there, depth of sound field improved. It's like... yeah you enjoy the music on a good studio monitor, even the soundstage can be improved with a lot of things, but when the two monitor are really working together in terms of amplitude, phase and time, you'll hear it. With Dirac I could hear the drum in DP Get lucky properly... like you can touch it and you hear it's real drum, not just a bass tone. And all this with 512 buffer and 8ms latency. UA-cam video required 1024 samples latency, all this pretty much in par with Sonarworks. Actually both are good company, I like both. They enhanced quite a bit in the past 1-2 years and they are reliable, but it seems Dirac's algorithm is really advanced and calculates and corrects phase without using too much FIR, so it can operate with 8-20ms latency and avoids ringing. I have not heard despite I pushed it hard.
I'll try Neumann MA1 with my main Neumanns, and probably it will stay. Proprietary systems can hardly fail. I just need money money money. : )))
Sonarworks is just too slow..also the systemwide extension is intrusive and cumbersome...and don't ask me how often i accidentally rendered the correction curve into the bounce.
A dedicated DSP box is by far the better solution if you decide to go down the room correction route.
Merging Anubis is such a product that utilizes the correction curve perfectly.
But even UAD and a curve EQ with an approximation will do.
My perfect solution would be a UAD plugin that can load the calibration file though.
IK Multimedia Arc is far to superior to both of these. Extensively demoed ALL and Arc is by far the most practical (easy plugin) on system out and natural sounding.
conclusion: practice a lot with your monitors, get used to their sound, know how your monitors behave.
Dirac is working is time domain. Sonarworks is NOT (only freq domain). End of story.
I tried to optimize my studio as far as possible and then added SoundID/Sonarworks to get those few extra % and I am really impressed how much better my own or my clients' music sounds now on all devices, I can only recommend it :-)
Totally agree. I had the same experience in my studio. My mixes transfer much better between different systems.
This was a very good review.
Exactly my same experience. Now its so much easier to deliver awesome mixtes I almost dont need to check t'hem outside. Best invesment ever, aside from acosutic treatment
@@miquelmarti6537 thank you form Sonarworks - we are more than delighted to hear that :)
I've been using Sonarworks for a few years now, and at first I couldn't hear any difference. But even after a couple of weeks of using it, it became very apparent how much easier it was for me to hear what was going on in my mixes. Particularly, the low-mids sounded much more precise, and I could much more accurately process my tracks and not get distracted by any resonances my room created.
So overall, Sonarworks is super useful (at least in my bedroom setup)
lets be real. there is no flat. modes, flutter echos and first reflections suck and need to be treated but besides that it's always personal taste. 20 engineers will pick 20 different perceived "flat"s when asked which speaker in which room etc.
Worth noting sonarworks doesn’t work with windows 11 ( for now at least)
Neumann's DSP 750 subwoofer is the best I've tried! I own Sonarworks, IK Arc III and have torture tested Dirac and they all have strengths and weaknesses - my tipping point was when I used REW to create my own room correction and it was the one I ended up using! The Neumann DSP software was co-developed with Fraunhofer IIS (yes... the mp3 people) and doesn't try to just make your speakers flat but instead aims to make your monitors sound "as best as possible in your room"... so no gaining of 18dB going on here. As the DSP is in the subwoofer you set the monitors flat and the subwoofer controls the EQ, phase and time alignment. The good news is you don't specifically need Neumann monitors as the subwoofer is essentially in control of everything. Finally, the DSP is stored in the subwoofer DSP so no latency or need of a monitoring plugin - I had to disable Sonarworks when recording as the latency was huge.
Sonarworks actually made me feel sick, something with phase. I do use the HEDD lineariser all the time now. Nice ridiculous speakers, what are they?
Sonarworx didnt propably affect so much after your manual tweaks. Did it or did it not ? How about you show the curves ?
Started 10 years ago with mini DSP DA22 with dirac live. The DA began to sound a bit less pristine so switched to dirac live ITB and that works even better. Sonarworks gave me a microphone and free upgrade from headphone calibration to speakers. The software improved but without impulse response correction sonarworks does not perform better. I don't understand Wietse dirac is better and quality should be key.
i have no doubt that you are a very good audio engineer , but if you ever get bored ..... i bet you could be a great stand up comedian !!
What happened with your Dutch&Dutch?
Does dirac also offer correction for headphones? That is a big pre for SoundID (or Reference 4 which is the previous version which I still use)
I know miniDSP have something they call “ears” its their headphone calibration device to fix frequency response. Im not sure if dirac is involved in that tho, but it might be.
Got no big Studio etc, but a pair of Speakers and different headphones. Sonarworks helped me a lot getting the right balance of frequencies. Before my music often sounded just bad on different devices like in the car. So maybe a person like me, without a big studio, is the right target. I am happy with it.
Does anyone else get clicks and pops with Sonarworks? Drives me crazy. It's been happening for years on multiple Mac OS versions.
Great 👍 but why aren’t you showing us the complete correction curves of the measurement in Sound ID and DSP? Would have been interesting to see what was corrected in your room!
Had a weird experience with Sonarworks after using it for about a year, it seems to have a sound of its own and it didn't work for me( with my former setup at least). When I tried the Dirac I found it more natural to my ears, however I'm trying to get my room and monitor setup as best as I can before I consider adding any room eq corrections again..
Actually! AFAIK dirac corrects phase as well as frequency response. So the ”ringing” you’re seeing is probably ”anti-ringing”, in other words, ringing that’s trying to cancel the ringing of your room.
So it’s the opposite of what you said, the dirac should *sound* more accurate because of anti-ringing, even though it *looks* less accurate. This is of course, only if it succeeds in what it’s doing.
I don’t like sonarworks, it does this weird panning thing for my monitors output. So through the plugin it shows one monitor lower In volume than the other. It also has a weird panning issue. It takes away from the speakers natural tone and either adds too much bass or too much high frequencies which sounds inauthentic especially in the lows. I found myself just using sonarworks just to see the frequency response I’m getting in my room. And then mixing without it. Everything sounds better without sonarworks. Plug-ins like saturators and compressors and limiters are affected by the sonarworks plugin while engaged. At least I know my in room response 🤷🏻♂️
Im still yet to get a mix that Im happy with using Sonarworks. Having the visuals of seeing which frequencies are boosted/dipped is useful, but I always prefer how my mixes turn out when I don't use it. Im guessing its a lot to do with my room treatment and the reflections I'm getting.
Your ears have probably learn't to understand and trust what they are hearing. I think this is still the preferred option if your room isn't horrendous.
Are you shure that there is no mistake? The REW measuremtens are making no sense. Looks for me, that Dirac vs. Sonarworks are reversed. You show us, that Dirac makes no correction in the high frequenzy region - this fits exactly with the REW measurement from Sonarworks. On the other side, the REW Dirac Measurement fits excatly to the Filter you show in Sonarworks...
In general, I think your reviews are OK - but here I would like that you would have informed yourself more beforehand. Although IRR and FIR filter are complex topics ... .
I would have liked to see the before/after of what the corrections are doing in your system. The monitoring system and the room are already highly optimized, there should not be too much to correct for? If done right, one can come approximately 80 to 95% of the way without software correction. (Ignoring the necessity of the huge pesky desk - this is a problem almost all production studios have to live with, but it messes up the sound significantly).
Your "fear" of burning out the speakers. For all I know, neither Dirac nor Sonar Works correct deep notches in the modal region. So no amplification of holes a software can't fix anyway should be applied. But one should stay weary of corrections that add more than 6 dB in the whole audio band. Those should not be done in software. (the over all loudness can be reduced quite a bit). The curves presented as outcome are predictions, not measurements. Measuring the actual corrected response is a must, as you cannot possibly be sure that the predicted response matches the actual (and often it doesn't).
The post ringing is a bit strange - if all I would expect pre-ringing? That might not be a sole problem of the software but may be specific in your application.
You seem to have made an individual choice for a quite drastic high frequency roll off > 10 kHz in your monitoring system, Dirac seems to respect your freedom of choice. Sonar Works corrects it - what is not a fault of the program ;-) .
IMHO with powerful tools like these, it is paramount to correct their correction at least for personal preferences.
You and Paul third the only people I trust on UA-cam I wasted so much money that I don’t have buying stuff I thought work because of you UA-cam anything you guys said work did
Super weird the 12db boost on the highs. Sonarworks almost never corrects highs that much. I think something on your monitors/system was messing this correction apps.
I’m still investigating this…
@@Whiteseastudio Great. If you find something, please update us. I've seen a good amount of SW corrections and they almost always corrects a lot on the bass, low-mid frequencies and almost nothing on the highest frequencies.
It's also a question of the curve you set as goal, flat isn't always, i would say even at all, the best way, maybe, flat between certain frequencies is the way to go, while consider your room acoustic - it's really not an easy task
@@Whiteseastudio I have found that with Sonarworks, the distance from the speakers, as well as the height that you measure at can have a massive difference. If you move your listening position back 8-12 inches the measurement can be dramatically different. If you have it closer to tweeter height than cone height, and it can make a big difference too.
I tend to do 2 or 3 measurements with slightly different listening spots and heights to see how it changes the results. I also take the arm off a mic stand and hold that at arms length so that my body isn't effecting the mic measurement as much.
@@Whiteseastudio Thanks for the video, very insightful. You have a very unusual speaker compared to standard 2 way. Which might have an impact on measurement or how the software processes. Also I was wondering if you have tried changing the dry wet amount? I set mine to 25% for casual listening and about 30% for critical listening. I can hear more detail without hearing the filter as much. There is also a Linear Phase setting which made a small improvement for me. I use headphones RME Babyface fs interface and LCD-X. I prefer playback without sonarworks on an everyday basis but I can hear improvement when used. Kind regards,
The correction don't have to be flat at the listening position. The flat curve only happen in an anechoic room. At the listening position the target need to be the normalised JBL room curve. It the reason you have so much treble.
I'm using an old KRK Ergo box. Helps a bit but sound panels made more difference for the same price.
on-off topic: What do you think should we find a proper way to tune the speakers accordingly to our hearing problems, rather than surgical room corrections. For example when i was 14 unfortunately i had a firework exploded right next to my left ear on new years eve. I turned 30 nov last year recently i made myself an audiogram and it seems my right ear is doing a perfect flat response to all spectrum, my left ear has some problems around 300-500 hz, -6 to -9 db and from 15k to 20k -6 db. ...I made experiment runing a eq on left channel to help my left ear, and it does help a little on studio monitors to my perception , the problem is the stereo imaging is going bad even with linear phase mode, seems impossible to make it work... however it's amazing when applied for headphones. This little handicap i learned to adapt with it even tough my brain is always aware, it's been 8 years since i work as a live sound engineer in the national theatre, and atm everybody is happy with my mixing. Neuroplasticity is a very interesting topic :)
You are totally correct about neuroplasticity. Our brains have the most advanced signal processing capabilities. It makes sense that the correction worked better for you with headphones.
I have tried Sonarworks for over a year with my Focal Solo6 be monitors but Sonarworks just couldn’t overcome the low end issues with my treated room. The answer for me since I haven’t been able to fix my room yet is the VSX headphones solution from Slate Digital. My mixes translate much better across the board and with much less guessing and quicker results. Can you do a review of the VSX headphones?
Hi and thanks for this video!. Have you test Psi Audio Avaa C20 active bass traps?. I heard good things about them, curious about what you think?. They are not cheap but seem to do a good job between 15 - 150hz and they do not take up as much space as passive good bass traps. Best/Mathias
WHat about ARC3 - I think is better than Sonarworks
You know how they have head trackers for emulating speakers in headphones? They should do that with speakers, so the correction changes depending on where you are sitting or standing in the room. Next level!
That’s genius. Get to work on that
Noooo, I don't think so. Think what it would do to your room reflections and also your own perception (our brains automatically compensate for slight movements in relation to a sound source - and THAT's why the headphone simulations of speakers "work", they fake the sound source perception, and they ONLY work if there's not too much latency in the whole system, otherwise it's just a nuisance). AND it's simply impossible to properly correct for any position outside of your limited listening zone. If I stand up and got to one side of the room, no software could ever correct for that because I'm suddenly not even in the "line of sight" of my speaker cones, and reflections from the wall become closer than the sound source itself.
The whole point is to track where you are in the room. Granted this is future thinking, but you’d have to measure many or even all points in your room. There could be a couple intermediary technologies that morphed between a limited number of sample points, but I think the math is doable. Plus, I don't think we're talking about extreme situations. Let's compensate for logical listening positions first, not the extreme sides of the room. As a tangent, when I'm mixing, I like to walk around the place. Even out in the hall. In the can, etc. Moving around in a mixing space help your brain compensate for the space it's in.
I strongly advise against using plug-ins like this. I went trough the wohle sonarworks experience several times in a bad and in a decent sounding room. With sonarworks on I was able to get better sounding mixes faster, but translation was worse in every case. Upgrading to a better room and to very good speakers is the way to go. Speaker choice and placement still is the nr. one thing to get right. In my opinion good speakers for near field listening should feature: coaxial design or very low crossover point and therefore coherent off axis response, large membrane area for better judgement of the lower mids. no internal dsp. this shrinks the market down to, emes, amphion, tannoy and geithain (and the Mackie hr824 mk1 I should state). If you follow these guidelines you should not have issues delivering satisfying mixes to you clients despite NOT having a very flat Fq response in your room if you are used to your system. checking the low end on HPs given.
plus, ns-10s and/or Auratones are still king
For non dsp I would add Focal and ATC.
I had to move studio a few years back, the shape of the new room was as such that despite f*** loads of bass traps the bass response was errrr not great. I wasn't a believer in these things but out of pure desperation I tried sonarworks.... I'm now a believer. Saved my life
As a user of Sonarworks since 2019 I can honestly say it changed my whole home-studio experience and lifted my confidence immeasurably. It isn’t cheap, but it’s one of the best purchases I’ve made
Great content as usual. Saving your viewers £££s with your honesty.
It must have a White sea preset ! Making my garage sounding like white sea studio !
Genelec GLM does this the right way.
HEADPHONES: Idk im addicted
yeah youtube is alright
Thanks for saving me money. 🙂
both way way overpriced
My thought when first seeing this sort of thing was this: The issue is the room not the signal before it comes out into the room… a boost or cut doesn’t fix the reflection creating it… because once done there’ll be a whole new slightly off frequency response…. The concept I find a bit digital minded and not organic as a room is
I think when I get setup I might give it a go to check my doubts… but only if they create a monitor controller… it’s pointless if it’s only to be on the master bus in a DAW… I only really would see use for myself if I had a travelling setup
problem with all those dsp corrections is that if you move your head just 10cm it will do more harm then good… that said, I use GLM for my genelecs but its mostly just cutting some freqencies that are too loud.. most people have problem with bass reverb and no amount of dsp can fix that
The problem with this way of thinking is that acoustics cause artifacts in two axes: amplitude and time. You can correct the amplitude axis, but you still have the problems in the time axis. But here's the important thing: correcting one is way way better than correcting none! :)
@@MFKitten thats why its still much better to invest in some DIY panels and bass traps and treat the problem at its source… probably cheeper also… other thing, everybody keeps forgeting there is this thing called psychoacoustics and that its more important to get used to your hearing/room/monitors then a flat response curve
@@TomislavRupic this was the word missing from my point “psychoacoustics” and the point about reverb… because even if it made it flat it’ll be a flatter signal still with reverb… my other point would be how eq works also… if you boss a bass frequency it effects the rest of the mix… so if the eq changes it’ll just have a contrasting effect elsewhere in the frequencies… so many variables making this a hard one to grasp as a viable idea… it’s a good concept definitely but seems to fall short much like emulating the acoustics of a famous studio in headphones… good music was made in those rooms because the people in them have been in them for years and know the room and speakers… it’s more the people than the room… then also it’s all the other equipment in the room… it’ll be like trying to make your home kitchen better by emulating the acoustics of a famous kitchen… when I first saw the KRK ERGO when I had limited knowledge and a lot of learned misconceptions from nonsense passed around about music production I thought “this thing could be the key” lol… it was a key to profit for a company and that’s about it haha
I have no idea why Sonarworks would boost your highs AT ALL, let alone by 12db. Something obviously went wrong, because it is not supposed to do that - not even close. What it should have done was create a FLAT frequency response. The review is kind of invalid if the setup was done incorrectly or if there was some weird anomaly with the software, and it's misleading to the viewers, as the results are completely incorrect.
We never had ANY of these problems in the 80's and 90's and there were thousands if not millions of Multi-Platinum records that were created that have won many awards.
So why today all of a sudden all these companies are coming out with these gimmicks?
Learn your room and learn your monitors and stop being into these gimmicks people!!
Everytime I've tried to like sonarworks, I've always ended uninstalling it. It takes away too much life from sound, making it kind of phase and harsh. Guess if someone wants something professional, he should go to products like trinnov
Wytse you didn't mention if you're gonna use either product in your new studio. I recall you were using Sonarworks in your old setup to flatten
My monitoring setup has processing built in already…
@@Whiteseastudio what is the processing chain in your rack?
I don’t really know 😅. Its all actively crossed
Your review seems to be a bit hasty and incomplete and raises more questions and not presenting detailed results. I have recently purchased the Sonarworks for speakers optimization package and planning a review on my channel 🇸🇪
In the future, there will be smart amplifiers that gauge the pressure impulses of all speakers attached to them which then calculate and compensate for the most balanced 20hz-20khz response based solely upon a singular pressure capsule worn by the listener (engineer, dog, cat, etc). Stop and think for a second about how all of these modern digital hipsters are still completely b tch slaves to analog amps, 100% at the mercy of analog hardware even when it is ''digitally controlled''. Why should it be that way when we could be EQing via power control instead of filters? Still a lot of dumbness in this world.
sonarworks reference user, have not upgraded to SoundID. Near 8 min mark in video you mention that SoundID stopped doing its work at high end while other Dirac flattened it out to top of specturm. You said you killed the SoundID processing above 6k (wondering how you did that actually). That would mean that all that high end added to correct it (that bothered you) wouldn't be present. It seemed like SoundIDs push in high end above 10k (graphic shown earlier in video) looked amazing like the mirror to the dip above 10k in the REW comparison graph. Might have something to do with the diff. Not saying SoundID didn't have an issue in high end, but that dip in REW comparison without compensation from SoundID above 6k could probably be expected.
Trinnov is the best but it expensive as hell. The Smart Sam Genelc speakers have room correction built in. (second Best.. what i have,) nothing above 2k should be touched. i dont think any other software besides maybe manually doing it in REW can beat those. Let me rephrase. REW can maybe beat genelec sams, but not Trinnov
I noticed you're not a fan of high frequencies by the way you tune your voice. Still, +12 db of highs sounds like A LOT.
Hi , iv got sonarworks ,I have a question , I have a SSL6 mixing desk which will be in my mixing chain , when I’m setting up my speakers to sonarworks to calibrate should I plug my mic in to the mixing desk then from the desks to the soundcard. Or should I plug the mic straight into the sound card or interface , thanks
Heres one that sounds better than either option if youre willing to go the extra mile.. REW>Sweep>Generate EQ Filters>Soundsource>CraveEQ2+Input filters enjoy ring-free transient rich lows, and linear phase highs! Voila.
If you're using a sub, here's another trick. Use audiohijack instead of soundsource.
Create two outputs, 1 for sub, 1 for mains. Insert voxengo time delay before mains, after sub. Sweep in REW, and time align the mains to the sub. Once dips are resolved and crossover is filled in, then sweep and apply correction eq as stated above before both the sub and mains.
It's a bit much to explain but if you're already elbows deep, you'll understand ;)
Enjoy!
neat product, but imo if ur smart enough with REW, you can just export REW's EQ-filters impulse response into any IR-reverb processor that can import .wav files like ReaVerb. done, and for free... although you'll need a calibration mic....
Hi, thx the great video again!
We could be happy, if we can see freq response in REW without any roomcorrection, we can compare these:-).
Sometimes i beileve the "roomcorrection" is works, sometimes think about why not... and i hear something, but i am not sure.
It's corrected the whole listening chain. And we don't need expensive loudspeaker, amp, room threatment. Too beautiful, that it be true.
If you already corrected the room and flat the freq response, after the measurement, why not nearly flat? I cheked it also, several times:-).
This is a product what we dreaming, but we can't get, still not exist. It give us a partly solution, but not replaced the "real" room planning, threatment and studio speakers, etc...
if you are using RME *like me then you have a choise to put 3band eq on the master fader, since i have treated my room a lot, i can live with only 3 bands, and the sound is more pleasant then sonarworks, i just dont like the sound of those filters..
IK ARC3 is much better than sonarworks,sonarworks has phase issue but in ARC3 you can use combined L/R Function to correct your phase shift really well
Totally agree with that. After years of testing ARC 3 is definitely the best.
So if you had to buy one you would buy Sound ID, but in reality you wouldn't buy either? Surely if isn't producing a near flat response as your tests show all you're really doing is spending more money and time just to learn yet another variation of your own sound. Everytime I start to think about buying something like this I always end up deciding it's a better idea to get my room acoustics as good as I can and spend as much time as possible listening and learning the characteristics of the room using really good references that match the genre I'm recording/mixing at the time.
In couldn't get Sonarworks working for longer than five minutes without the pops and clicks showing up. Cool idea but garbage software. Added more sound reinforcement instead.
I have to disagree with you on this one! I've tried both Sonarworks and Dirac live on my Focal SM9's and the difference is huge... Sonarworks really seems to remove a lot of definition from the sound and somehow it sounds a bit plastic. Dirac on the other hand really improves the stereo field and clarity. But I agree on the Sonarworks design and usage, it's definitely great and their usage for headphones is awesome, use it on my HD 650's! Great vid and cheers from the Netherlands! ;)
Something about this creeps me out... like a " smart phone " or " smart thermostat" " smart car " .... kinda down the same road as " transhumanism" ...
Get your hand on a Trinnov ST.....This will be the ultimate snake oil test for you.....
I think you should have thrown up some nearfield monitors and you might have had more fun rather than trying to tune a pre tuned system !!! Sonarworks is awesome in my opinion you just need to understand it!!! great results for 12 months on KRK and Adam
Re:the cute emulations: they are not made to sound like the particular piece of hardware so for example you could hear what they sound like through a particular brand and model of cans, instead, they are made to give a generic starting point to correct that brand and model to give a flatter response than the original specs if you are actually wearing that set of cans.. This is because you can't mic cans but people still want them corrected. They don't even try on in-ear stuff because the shape of your ear canal is idiosyncratic and makes any correction that is consistent impossible. They don't supply any corrections for earbuds, which is why your model was not included. The correction on my Sennheiser cans is a subtle improvementthat bears out over long listening periods sometimes if forget to switch the correction back to my monitors when I use them, and the sound of the headphone correction coming out the speakers is an immediate horror show.
I expect that both Sonarworks and Dirac Live will significantly improve the listening results as the before correction measured response in this video looks really very weird but...measuring the filter response isn't appropriate since Dirac Live applies a "pre emphasis", you should measure the impulse response in your studio instead. Also, the removal of a high-frequency peak is being perceived as lack of details but that's not the case (it's just more neutral)
Would be interesting to compare it to Neumann's DSP system. Using a track by Darude of course.
I use Dirac live profile stored on minidsp 22d hardware. Connected digitally to dynaudio core 7 speakers. Works great, completely sysyemwide "set & forget". very happy. 👍🏻
These microphones really look like my cooker lighter. Not great for sound, but it's FIRE!! 😉
Do you guys think the measurement mic should be pointed upwards? It's an omnidirectional mic, isn't it?
@White Sea Studio: It would be great to see the video: Genelec GLM Calibration software vs SoundID
I had a KRK Ergo Room Correction for over 10 years. It was a great Monitor Controller but it has latency. Thhe Correction of the Room was always a great mess. It cleans up a bit the mid and highs but to be fair - turn it off was not such a great lose then you would suspekt to buy 500€ on it. Perhaps thats the thing KRK doesnt have the device listet anymore, not even for drivers or just product History. Seems to me they want to forget that part of their product history. Today i have a Drawmer MC3.1 Monitor Controler and it such a win. No Latency and such a rich funktionality. Mixing with or without my Ergo was something - i cant tell the difference even on other speakers. The biggest key for a better sound was to invest in professional Basstraps. THAT was a huge positve impakt in soundquality. But i do have some problems with high and Mid in that Room.. but it doesnt Matter for my mixing. My Adams A7x are great Monitor Speakers and they do such a great job in Nearfield that i can switch between my Speakers and Headphones and always have a close Sound. When it sounds good on the Adams it will do on all other speakers too. Mastering? I wont recomend it but it is possible to do some Quick and dirty Mastering. Thats good enough but not for Pro cases.
The biggest + for KRK Ergo was, that it was DSP powerd that was realy nice. But it pay off with latency.. like always in the digital domain. And yes it comes with a Room Mic that is actualy realy a good mic. It could be a thing doing a messurement and just using an EQ on the masterbus to correct some dips or peaks save as room preset and good is.. way cheaper and works too. So nowdays i dont get the point paying for room correction. Correct a Room doenst mean that the result will sound better. Just have a flat response.
Thanks, Now I don’t regret my SoundID 😆
I like SoundID on headphones more than on speaker, I think their algorithm really like to emphasize on the highs which is not my preference cos I’m sensitive to it a lot
IIRC, the KRK Rokit series has an app that supposedly senses and helps calibrate your monitors as well, but I don't know if those are anything near these solutions. I assume it's better than doing nothing, though.
still playing with it but im worried it will increase ear fatigue if it has to be on all the time as mines been boosted a fair bit in the lows and hi's now to what ive been used to for years (to get it to how it seems to think would be flat), i know i can change that with a custom eq change (which seems to be defeating the object a little) and lowering volumes, but I feel like metric A/B is all i need, and get used to a few ref tracks in relation to the sort of mix i want to achieve. i sussed putting it on the control room mixer in cubase was a much better way of working also over having it on the master out, and i do like the translation check options. for me its more useful for headphones and im finding longterm that i prefer my speakers without the plugin on. like i say, my speakers sound suddenly really bassier and brighter with it on, but i guess thats how my setup and ears are working with it right now and may take some time to adjust for sure
Which changes, in the signal chain would make someone having to recalibrate their room/monitors? I guess a new audio interface changes the sound a bit, but how much and is there anything else? A change in cables, etc..?