Correction plugins like Morphit or Sonar Works???

[ATN69]

No monitor or headphone will be 100% flat. The laws of massproduction prevents that. For monitors your room will also come into play. Here in my acoustic lab in my office I have this equipment,

https://www.bksv.com/en/products/transd ... type-4128c

I bought both Reference 4 from Sonarworx and Morphit. I only tested my K701 with Morphit here at the acoustic lab. The result was not bad. The response was relatively flat. Every pair of earphones still have tolerances but in my case it was more than good enough.

I think I read somehwere that Sonarworx can even do individual calibration for your earphones if you send the earphones to them. I can't imagine what that would cost though. Or you can buy earphones from Sonarworx that comes with Reference 4, already calibrated. I have a home studio setup and music is mainly a hobby, so I think it would be over kill to go thru all that and pay a pile of dollars for this service.

I did actually calibrate Fab filter Q2 to give a reasonable flat response for my cheap USB headset that I have here in my office and it also worked just fine. I just did the calibration using noise and saved the FAB Q2 calibration as a preset.

[gort11112]

just works...

that peak at 20k is realy nasty

[bmanic]

Very happy with Morphit + GoodHertz CanOpener combination here for my AKG K701. I've gotten so used to this sound now that I can confidently mix on the go or at home, usually only requiring small corrections at the studio.

I'm seriously considering going 100% mobile at some point in the not so distant future and investing in some quality headphones + preamp. I'm holding out for the Audeeze Mobius headphones to see how they work. I'm quite sceptical though as their internal correction filters are used to make it sound like the LCD-X which while being a great headphone isn't "perfect", which seems a bit like a waste of processing in my opinion.

[s28]

Reference 4 Headphones version in use here with AKG K702 cans. Use them for just 10 minutes then switch the correction curve off, you'll be amazed at what you had to deal with before.

I guess they measure frequency response from as large a group as possible of each headphone type, then generate averages from that data. So if you have an average pair of X brand heapdhones, the default correction will likely be an improvement.

The thing that dawned on me though is... commercial mixes still sound Great without any correction - while my mix might sound slightly harsh with the correction off and great with it on. It's a "damn, how do they do that" moment that made me realise how much I still have to learn about mixing and balancing. It also makes me think that there is some merit in aiming for as good a mix even in compromised headphones with no correction - because if the pros can make their stuff translate even to factory stock K702s which are strident in the upper mids and severely lack low end, mine should too...

This is my train of thought as well. Also using AKG 702. I demoed sonarworks but didn't really get into and didn't feel like it helped. I also used Morphit for a while and have demoed canopener. All I use now is a free crossbreed plugin which doesn't change the frequency response.

I think it's all about what your used to. When you put these things on , when you go back to your headphone sound it can sound bad, or the other way round, depending on what your used to.

Some other peoples mixes sounds a bit harsher with morphit off than on, some mixes sound great both on and off, I am just going for as good a mixes as possible without any correction now and feel like it's best to just learn what your using. It's a very personal thing though, just have to experiment and see what works.

I feel like I can mix ok just with the crossfeed on, I wouldn't want to use them without that as it gets rid of the outside of your head feeling.

[yellowmix]

Using Sonarworks on a few different headphones (open and closed), bought their calibrated mic and using it with monitors, it's definitely an improvement. It's really interesting using the Systemwide to hear YouTube and video games. If you don't have equipment to measure how good it is, you can run pink noise through a narrow bandpass sweep and listen for differences. But honestly, unless your headphones and monitors are already perfectly flat (and nothing is), you'll probably notice the difference with whatever you're already putting through them.

Sure, you can still mix and master without it as long as you know what your gear sounds like, and it's not 100% perfect since it's working off averages, and even if you get headphones calibrated, they calibrate with a sweep so who knows how sympathetic vibrations work. That's why I say it's an improvement. The only way to know how much of an improvement it is if if you try it out and judge for yourself. No one has your exact gear and room.

[djscorb]

I use Sonarworx + Can Opener for HD600 and wouldn’t go back. It really beefs up and compensates for the lack of low end and reduces / smooths out the peaks in the upper mids, sounding far more “real” and more like my main speakers (PMC IB1S).

I can no longer listen to headphones in the studio without the correction, it’s night and day.

[mgw38]

Does anybody have any experience with the new Waves TRACT plugin in connection with the Rational Acoustics’ Smaart Di v2 for speaker calibration?

[dangayle]

Very happy with Morphit + GoodHertz CanOpener combination here for my AKG K701. I've gotten so used to this sound now that I can confidently mix on the go or at home, usually only requiring small corrections at the studio.

I'm seriously considering going 100% mobile at some point in the not so distant future and investing in some quality headphones + preamp. I'm holding out for the Audeeze Mobius headphones to see how they work. I'm quite sceptical though as their internal correction filters are used to make it sound like the LCD-X which while being a great headphone isn't "perfect", which seems a bit like a waste of processing in my opinion.

This is me. Morphit + CanOpener make a HUGE difference, and I have the HD280s they were talking about. My plan is to go Apogee Groove + whatever upgraded headphones I can afford. I will say, the HD280s do sound a lot better when driven by my Apogee Quartet than the regular headphone jack on my MacBook, but I don’t know why. Great D/A conversion plus more power or something.

[bmanic]

Laptops have notoriously bad headphone outputs. The electronics of the computer, unless properly shielded, can cause all kinds of low level distortion.

It's like any preamp. High quality components, properly shielded and good D/A conversion makes a real difference.

[dumbledog]

Or you can buy earphones from Sonarworx that comes with Reference 4, already calibrated. I have a home studio setup and music is mainly a hobby, so I think it would be over kill to go thru all that and pay a pile of dollars for this service.

I did this, ordering a pair of HD600s. Total was $400 and the headphones are about $290 on Amazon so I suppose the markup for the calibration and shipping from friggin' Latvia was about $110. I already had a copy of Reference 3.

It definitely makes a huge difference, but I hate to say I tend to like the sound better when it's off. I guess that's the point tho. Just feels weird. It also drops the volume a good 6dB at least due to the boosts it needs to make.

They're comfy headphones at least!

[ATN69]

Thats the thing. Good enjoyable sound or good sound for mixing and mastering purposes are two different things. My mixes normally sound a bit crappy in my Adam A7 monitors (all though I got used to them now) but when I render the finished track and listen to it in various audio systems the result is quite okay. The goal is to accomplish a rendering that will sound fine in many different sound systems.

[pixel85]

If I demo these plugins with their standard calebration for these headphones, how do I know, that they are giving me a flat response in reality???

Well. Before I used room correction software for monitors (Room EQ Wizard then exported IR to plugin in DAW) I did it by ear while listening to pink noise. Result from the software was very close to what I did by ear which makes me believe that it does right job + much more precised + it showed even more problems that my ear could not process. First check in DAW makes me understood complains/feedback about my recent mix.

For headphones (Q701) I'm using Morphit. If not this plugin I would sell these headphones.

Simple turning correction off makes me hear and feel instantly how bad my room/headphones sound. It something that you can hear with certain amount of experience of working in different environments.

[TeddyBeer]

I have a pair of AKG 612 (+ CanOpener) and I'm testing Morphit and Sonarworks because I want to work with a relatively flat sound. The thing is that they sound completely different...opposite actually )
Sonarworks sounds flatter, warmer and without any harshness. When you bypass it, there's a huge difference.
But Morphit sounds hifi, with less low mid information and has a small boost on the high freqs.
I can't understand...am I doing something wrong with Morphit ? People seems to be happy with it.

[mgw38]

I recently bought a MiniDSP EARS measurement jig. I needed it for something else but its intended purpose is measuring headphones (albeit not particularly accurately) so I also did a couple of measurements on my headphones (one of them is Sonarworks calibrated). Even though I would not put too much trust into the measurement results, one thing I took away from that is that the perceived frequency response depends significantly on the way I you wear the headphones. And, by extension also things like if your pads are worn or new, how big your ears are, how the particular physiology of your ear canals look like, etc. In the end all these headphone correction systems need to be taken with a big pinch of salt.

Speaker correction is a completely different story altogether.

[Scoox]

Same dilemma as OP. Just wondering what these plugins actually do. Are the essentially EQ curve presets, or is there other trickery going on? I've copied the EQ curve from Morphit using my DAW's built-in EQ and it sounds close enough.

Then there's Sonarworks, which I've not tested yet. However, I've tested Morphit with three different headphones and they all sound very close with the 'correct' curve applied, which is great, and it costs much less than Sonarworks.