Is Sonarworks necessary/worth it?

[istealhotelsoap]

Enough said.

[bmanic]

No. You can buy Toneboosters Morphit instead which is better, in my opinion. Though, to be fair, I don't know how good the sonarworks calibrated custom headphones are. I simply do not like the sonarworks calibration software or how it sounds. Not sure what is going on with their profiles or the filters but to me it all sounds worse than Toneboosters.

The best bang for the buck in my opinion is Toneboosters Morphit + Goodhertz CanOpener + some headphones that are supported by Morphit.

Also, you could simply buy Goodhertz CanOpener and manually calibrate your own headphones for you with some parametric EQs (then just make an impulse out of that EQ stack). It takes a lot of patience and trial and error though. Best test tone in my opinion is narrow band filtered noise. One tone for each note, all octaves.

[canadian_moose]

Enough said.

I like it. You have to give it time to get used to it because it really does take the colour out of your headphones which will sound weird at first. (Assuming you were going to use it for headphone correction. If monitors, please disregard my next bit)

I just paired Sonarworks Reference 4 with new Waves Nx Ocean Way and Im very happy with the results on my DT 880's.

I would really like the Slate VSX system but its a bit out of my price league for now.

[rotku60]

I have used Sonarworks for a few years with my Phillips and with my DT990's. I really think it helps for those times I can't use monitors. I also have Waves NX Abbey Road but don't use that often. Necessary - yes, to me. Worth it - yes. to me. Although I would not really rely on headphones alone to do a mix.

[dionenoid]

For speakers yes. For headphones no.

For headphones i recommend using Dsoniq Realphones.

[andymcbain]

I got Sonarworks to help with mixing low end with my Sennheiser HD650 and I would say it did a decent job. Since getting the Slate VSX, I haven't really used it.

[SparkySpark]

I've owned ToneBoosters, SonarWorks and now Abbey Road Studio 3. For my purposes, and using Sony MDR 7506, they're all telling the same story basically, and turning them on turns my listening experience off, so to speak.

As a previous poster mentioned, they make my music sound dull... that is, until I calibrate it. Calibration also indicates Ozone (and probably other auto-mixing plugins) is correct in its EQ decisions.

So, yes it works, and the three agree as well (overall anyway, haven't done any A/B testing).

Though TB is a great company, I honestly feel a bit uneasy with MorphIt. It's because it seems to over-compensate. When reading up on MorphIt here and on GS, others seem to agree, and most leave it at 40% correction. I've seen similar done with SonarWorks, but not to the same degree. With ARS3, there's not such an option, which may be why I haven't seen any such discussion regarding it.

I wonder if not ARS3 also includes the CanOpener feature. Also note that SonarWorks can be used as a VST plugin but also for your entire system, a feature you may or may not want. Last, MorphIt has a headphone comparison feature, but for me at least, that's more of a curiosity than a useful feature.

Oh - also note that ARS3 only include ten headphone profiles or so. That's a major drawback and truly lame of Waves, and I can't understand why, as they've just taken some profiles from somewhere (can't remember if it's the same as SonarWorks or not). So: my 7506 are supported, but not my good-looking AKG 712 Pro.

With all this said, I'd suggest getting one of them. If you're a student (any subject)/uni employee, you'll get SonarWorks for 50% off.

My list (all prices equal - which they're not really):
1. ARS3
2. SonarWorks
3. MorphIt

I'm pretty sure others would turn this list upsidedown. The bottom line is (I guess): they all do the trick (though unfortunately their headphone profiles don't always truly match).

[gondii]

I love it. The studio edition even more so than the headphones edition.

[NomadMonad]

I have it but I stopped using it with my Beyerdynamics 880. Sounds like a cheap multi band compressors on the high-end and I always end up over-boosting those frequencies it's trying to attenuate.

[martinjuenke]

I can not live without it.
I use Headphone and Speaker correction.
Works flawlessly for me.

[billcarroll]

If you are on a Mac, SoundSource by Rogue Amoeba is another alternative, which I use. Great company that has been around forever. It comes with all of the available headphones profiles built in from 6 different sources.

https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/

Also handles plugins so you can use an EQ like Pro-Q 3 to make your own correction.

[CanIEditThisLater]

I have recently found out about the free open-source software Equalizer APO. It's system-wide, which is cool because I'd like to use it inside and outside my DAW. It only works in Windows and I haven't tried it yet, but I have seen some headphone correction profiles/presets posted for it on reddit. Here's a quick overview with download links: https://helgeklein.com/blog/2019/01/fre ... indows-10/

[Spring Goose]

This question is more common than which is the best reverb.

[billcarroll]

This question is more common than which is the best reverb.

Well, which is the best reverb? I think we all want to know.

[Spring Goose]

This question is more common than which is the best reverb.

Well, which is the best reverb? I think we all want to know.

ah you think all threads should be a best reverb thread.