KVR Audio

Chill Snowman · Post by **Chill Snowman** » Mon Nov 03, 2025 12:58 pm

I agree that version 5 is odd. With all of the tone calibration options it seems less accurate than version 4 for me.

Bmanic, what's your process for calibrating another pair of headphones to VSX?

legendCNCD · Post by **legendCNCD** » Mon Nov 03, 2025 7:57 pm

For me the V5 rooms are mostly better.

lfm · Post by **lfm** » Tue Nov 04, 2025 11:28 am

This video answered most of my questions

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Mon Dec 01, 2025 4:42 pm

Placed my preorder for my Immersion One headphone upgrade yesterday. ETA from Sweetwater says January.

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Fri Jan 02, 2026 8:25 pm

.. yeah I caved too. Put my order in a few days ago. Now I'm broke.

APERTURE · Post by **APERTURE** » Mon Jan 26, 2026 6:37 pm

All I can say is that if you loved using 4.0 and felt a bit lost with the 5.0 this update is for you.
Phantom center is waay better, low end controlled, no more weird phasiness feeeling that was more noticeable on certain speaker. Depth is improved for sure but its not overcooked like it felt on 5.0 imo, Its just natural and familiar to use.
This was tested on the closed back, can't wait to try on the planar now.

SiliconDeath · Post by **SiliconDeath** » Wed Jan 28, 2026 12:58 pm

Haven't some people already received the Slate IM1? Any reviews or impressions out yet?

I've only ever used dynamic driver headphones, never tried any other driver types, so I'm curious if this could be good.

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Wed Jan 28, 2026 10:56 pm

SiliconDeath wrote: Wed Jan 28, 2026 12:58 pm Haven't some people already received the Slate IM1? Any reviews or impressions out yet?

There's a very lengthy (and often OT) thread over on GS, where Steven has been posting updates and several beta testers have provided their reviews and impressions (pretty much unanimously very positive), but ordinary customers are just now starting to receive their orders.

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Fri Jan 30, 2026 1:22 am

Yeah, I received my Immersion One headphones about a week ago. They are absolutely superb. The only other planar headphones I've owned are Audeze LCD-X (and I have quite a bit of experience with LCD-2 as well) and compared to those, I actually much prefer the Slate Immersion One.

Only taken as a headphone by itself, this is supreme value for money. Build quality is super good, comfort is much better than the LCD-X due to the lower weight and the headband design also suits me better. Though I would caution people with small heads. I guess my head is on the smaller side of things and I'm at the absolute lowest possible clamp size but it fits perfectly. Earcups are very comfortable too and fits my average sized ears just fine. Only people with really big ears may find them too small.

Frequency response is exceptionally "neutral" in a very natural way. It just works right out of the box, unlike the dynamic VSX which I felt was quite a bit off in it's frequency response. And due to being a planar driver the immersion one headphones have superb transient response but that should be no surprise to anybody who has tried planar magnetic headphones before.

These do need quite a bit of power to get them loud though. For instance on my Roland digital piano I have to crank the volume all the way to full to get enough output. On the little Boss Katana Go guitar amp sim thing it's the same deal. On the MPC Live it's not an issue at all as that thing seems to have a really powerful headphone amp or just happens to match the impedance perfectly.

For music work I'm driving these through a Topping A90 headphone amplifier and naturally it works splendidly.

As for VSX6, yeah I don't know. I still don't like the new models nearly as much as the older VSX4 ones.. and there is one HUGE caveat. If you purchase the Immersion One and select them as the headphone model in VSX, you are NOT able to select any of the older models. And I don't buy the bullshit that they "aren't matched properly" so this is why they are disabled. So I simply selected Dynamic 19xxxx series, reverse engineered the compensation curve and added my own. Now I'm using Immersion One headphones with all the version 4 room models which to me are the best ones.

v6 however is a clear step up from v5 room models. A lot of the oddities in frequency response are gone but it still just feels like a static HRTF to my ears. It has absolutely none of the magic of v1,2,3 and 4 rooms which seem to use some completely different technique to do the room modeling.

Anyhow, on their own, completely ignoring VSX the plugin, these are absolutely amazing headphones and well worth the money. I'd even go as far as calling them a "bargain".

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Sat Jan 31, 2026 5:27 am

bmanic wrote: Fri Jan 30, 2026 1:22 am Yeah, I received my Immersion One headphones about a week ago. They are absolutely superb….

Interesting, I ordered mine well before you did and haven’t received mine yet, although it sounds like Sweetwater is just now starting to fill orders. I haven’t even had a chance to try the v6 software yet, so I’m not in a hurry, but thanks for the review!

APERTURE · Post by **APERTURE** » Sat Jan 31, 2026 11:40 am

bmanic wrote: Fri Jan 30, 2026 1:22 am Yeah, I received my Immersion One headphones about a week ago. They are absolutely superb. The only other planar headphones I've owned are Audeze LCD-X (and I have quite a bit of experience with LCD-2 as well) and compared to those, I actually much prefer the Slate Immersion One.

Interesting that you still prefers 4.0
Now im curious, what do you think Slate should do to improve from 4.0 instead of going in his new modelling capture he used for 5.0 and 6.0 ?
Actually I think you should be in contact with Steven and the beta tester team so we can make sure we have the absolute best product (been trusting your ears regarding plugins for several years, thats why im interested in you being involved).

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Sat Jan 31, 2026 12:09 pm

I am on the beta team, have been before VSX ever was even released. So many years now.. and as always I've spoken my mind but nobody cares or listens.. for good reason though, if it's true that I'm the absolute minority.

Seems everyone else likes the ordinary HRTF approach. I find that ironic as VSX got famous due to NOT being a simple HRTF thing.. and now it is (or at least sounds like it).

It's very possible that I really am a minority and that my ear/brain connection is not the norm. Slate has all the data to know if that is indeed the case. Also my own research on different forums seems to indicate that it's very rare to find people who use the older versions of the rooms. I'm just glad they are all still there and fully backwards compatible for the old headphones. What pisses me off a bit is that they are not available for the new Immersion One headphones and I'm not buying the excuse of why they aren't compatible. I had absolutely no problem getting them to work just fine.

legendCNCD · Post by **legendCNCD** » Thu Feb 05, 2026 9:28 am

For me the 4.0 was first real ear opener, 5.0 got some parts better, some worse, but I managed to do amazing lowend work with them for friends tracks anyway. 6.x seems to be updating still a bit, and I'm in process of moving, so lets see when I can still open my audio PC to check them out. Seems most like 6.x better already?

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Thu Feb 05, 2026 9:59 am

v6 is a definite improvement over v5. It's like 10000 times better... but to my ear/brain it still sounds like a simple HRTF. There's none of the room+phase intricacies of v1 to v4.

With Slate v4 I am successfully able to tell the difference between a track having an allpass filter engaged or not.. not with v5 or v6. I can hear absolutely tiny EQ or dynamics processes. Like ridiculously small changes. On a level I've never ever been able to before, even in my very well treated studio with full range high-end monitoring. Heck, I haven't experienced any room or location on this planet where I can hear such minute details as with the Immersion One headphones + v4 VSX rooms.

Of course this can be a blessing and a curse. It's not always a good idea to have superb monitoring when trying to be creative.

legendCNCD · Post by **legendCNCD** » Thu Feb 05, 2026 3:01 pm

Yep hearing the micro moves is just something else, especially the bass area. In some V5's could hear them better and some in V4's.

Steven Slate VSX Immersion One Headphones