KVR Audio

Burillo · Post by **Burillo** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 8:59 am

i don't think head measurement is necessary. it will help if you're aiming to replicate how you would feel in an ideal room with ideal speakers in front of you. but if you don't take the measurements, you'll simply hear the same stuff, only as if you had smaller/larger head. so it will presumably sound less realistic for you, you'll just hear things through someone else's head.

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 1:54 pm

Isone sounds too small for me, tryed to like it but I couldn't. My own IR sounds much better

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 3:40 pm

Been demoing this for a while now and I have to say while it is an interesting concept, just like Isone and some other contenders, it just doesn't do it for me.

By far the best and most "natural" sounding crossfeed thing is Red Line Monitor. It just doesn't have that phasey weird frequency response smear that happens with Waves NX and all the other HRTF wannabe solutions.

Having said that, I still don't find a reason to purchase Red Line Monitor either. I've been practicing mixing on headphones for a while now and it's obvious that it's possible to re-train the brain to work with headphones so I might as well do that instead of having some plugin inbetween.

I do however recommend re-EQing headphones for the flattest response possible. Even relatively high-end headphones are far from flat.

blueman · Post by **blueman** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 3:47 pm

Burillo wrote:...you'll just hear things through someone else's head.

4damind · Post by **4damind** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 4:51 pm

Interesting for people mixing surround (5.0/5.1) and needing a tool to get an idea how it will sound without a surround setup with speakers.
I've tested it and it moves the sound more outside the head to give a feeling of sitting in front of speakers.
But this changes also the stereo image which is an important part this days where many (most?) users will use headphones/in-ears to listen to music.

Mixing with headphones is possible but it needs some experience and trained ears. Such tools are interesting but I have no usage for it.

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 5:21 pm

4damind wrote:Interesting for people mixing surround (5.0/5.1) and needing a tool to get an idea how it will sound without a surround setup with speakers.
I've tested it and it moves the sound more outside the head to give a feeling of sitting in front of speakers.
But this changes also the stereo image which is an important part this days where many (most?) users will use headphones/in-ears to listen to music.

Mixing with headphones is possible but it needs some experience and trained ears. Such tools are interesting but I have no usage for it.

That's because two speakers in a 60 degree triangle are narrower than two headphones 180 degrees.

mcbpete · Post by **mcbpete** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:34 pm

Wasn't going to buy this as I had TB Isone and that was meant to do what this is meant to do. But yesterday I was curious and downloaded the demo. I set everything up, pressed play on my DAW with a demo track and ..... hit purchase in under 10 minutes !

The psycho acoustics on this beast are just amazing - I've heard binaural tracks before and this completely trumps them, as well as being incredibly useful for mixing. This paired with my Sonarworks purchase earlier on in the week has completely changed my headphone experience. Sorry if this sounds like an advert - I'm not normally this gushing with praise but ... hats off to you Waves, this is smashing !

One thing I can't seem to get to work is the switching of webcams - I've one built in to my monitor and another (better quality) external USB one. It's actually a PS3 camera (the Playstation Eye) but some clever sausage made Windows drivers for it and seems to work with Skype and other applications a-ok. I tried pressing the left and right arrow keys (presumably that means the cursor keys on the keyboard) but it doesn't seem to switch it at all. I've tried disabling the internal camera using Device Manager but doing that Waves NX doesn't then seem to detect my USB webcam. Wonder if I should just invest in a 'proper' webcam rather the hack job I've done at the moment ....

EDIT: Have since bought a 'proper' webcam and NX finds it fine using the cursor keys to switch camera ! Anyone know if there's a way to access the webcam options from NX? I tend to have the camera zoomed in for Skype chats (done via the webcam settings in Skype) but for this I'll need to zoom back out again. At the moment the only way I can do that is go back into Skype and reset everything *and then* go back to NX to use it properly

Aleatoriac · Post by **Aleatoriac** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 3:00 pm

Demoing this, listened to one of the new "After The Burial" songs and tried the head tracking. I can't find my face.

mcbpete · Post by **mcbpete** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 4:00 pm

Codestation wrote:I can't find my face.

That sounds worrying

In all seriousness, how's the lighting in your room? - It needs a decent contrast between your face and the background. If you have settings on your webcam software see if you can change stuff to make the image clearer

barryfell · Post by **barryfell** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 4:18 pm

bmanic wrote:Been demoing this for a while now and I have to say while it is an interesting concept, just like Isone and some other contenders, it just doesn't do it for me.

By far the best and most "natural" sounding crossfeed thing is Red Line Monitor. It just doesn't have that phasey weird frequency response smear that happens with Waves NX and all the other HRTF wannabe solutions.

Having said that, I still don't find a reason to purchase Red Line Monitor either. I've been practicing mixing on headphones for a while now and it's obvious that it's possible to re-train the brain to work with headphones so I might as well do that instead of having some plugin inbetween.

Interesting. I've not tried NX yet but i've tried all the others (as far as I know) and Red Line Monitor was the best IMO. That was until I changed to a hardware option. (The Matrix function on certain SPL headphone amps)

It's the only one I can turn on and forget it's turned on, which is something I really like as I don't want the sound to be changed too much, yet still be worth using.

I'll see how it compares with NX for me.

rustman · Post by **rustman** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:02 am

I just installed it along with some other things and have not fired it up yet. I am interested in the rotate knob. If this sounds interesting, it might be a cool thing to abuse in a mix. I'll know shortly...

Harry_HH · Post by **Harry_HH** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 7:43 pm

To me it helps especially adjust the Eq in the mix (Eq per track), new ambience makes the frequencies more sort of distinctive versus the headphone listening.

rustman · Post by **rustman** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 8:48 pm

rustman wrote:I just installed it along with some other things and have not fired it up yet. I am interested in the rotate knob. If this sounds interesting, it might be a cool thing to abuse in a mix. I'll know shortly...

I do plan to spend some time with this product used as intended. I'm anxious to see how it will translate to my mixes. I'll still mix with monitors mostly, but there may be times when this has advantages. From a pure pleasure listening perspective, it will also be useful. I was able to dial some settings that sounded natural very quickly.

As for my prior comment- adding some sawtooth shaped automation to the rotate knob will spin you in your chair like a kid. Adding some automation to narrow the spread will make the effect more pronounced and you can spread it back out at the end of the spin. Worth the price just for that imho.

What I don't like is extremely jumpy knob movements (think very old 32 bit freeware behavior) using the mouse. It's almost better to just double-click and enter a number. There's also the whole waveshell crap. Let me put a simple .dll into a directory of MY choice, and I'd be happy. Try reinstalling The Rbass freebie using the unavoidable, no user choice, control center installer. I spent an hour and finally gave up. I dared change a harddrive years ago and have never been able to get it back, even though it's authorized on my account...but I digress.

dasdeck · Post by **dasdeck** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 1:00 am

I'd like to revise my opinion. I now prefer the waves plugin to Isone. I found the waves plugin-in to sound too harsh at first, but it actually only sounds (very!) harsh on harsh mixes! also adjusting(reducing) the second head size parameter helps a lot. And then the Isone has more build up in the lower mids, wich leads me to add too much bass to mixes! Bought!

2NDMOUSE · Post by **2NDMOUSE** » Mon Feb 15, 2016 10:23 pm

If this was JUST the $49 plugin, I'd be interested, but it seems it can't be used without the special webcam.
I don't have or want a webcam, especially a special $100 webcam.
Sonarworks may be a better option for me.
I really don't like the waves business model either ( ie, having to subscribe to get updates to plugins you've already built.....i'd call that "milking your existing customer-base for even more money )

Waves NX out - and its brilliant