Headphone correction: which ones ? / Toneboosters Morphit ?

[Raksha]

Sorry if this is a stupid question. But for those that use Morphit: Are you supposed to mix with it, and then take it out of the chain when you render the master, or mix without it and then add it when you render the master?
And if this already has been answered, sorry, sorry, sorry...

You have to use it while mixing and disable it when rendering.
Some DAWs have a kind of monitoring FX rack that is used when mixing and automatically excluded from renderings (REAPER is one, I know others have something similar)

Thanx! Didn't know that about reaper. How do you set it up?

[chopra]

I've tried everything mentioned in this thread and more! For me the endgame was Sennheiser HD 490 Pro >>> DearReality Mix

[multree]

Morphit and Sonarworks just correct the frequency response of your headphones to something flat

Morphit doesn’t aim to reach a flat curve, it aims to achieve an idealized curve, it can also simulate other headphones.

The systemwide application of sonarworks is great.

I decided to go the Morphit route because it sounds good and the built-in limiter is an amazing feature.

I‘ve actually used this as my main masterbus limiter quite often.

[jamcat]

I've spent quite a bit of time looking for a headphone mixing setup for when I'm traveling. I've tried every combination of the following:

Headphone correction:
IK Multimedia ARC 4
Sonarworks SoundID Reference
ToneBoosters Morphit

Speaker simulation:
112db Redline Monitor
Dear Reality DearVR MIX
DOTEC-AUDIO DeeSpeaker
Goodhertz CanOpener Studio

All-In-One:
dSONIQ Realphones
HoRNet VHS
Waves Nx / Abbey Road Studio

For correcting the headphones' EQ profile, Realphones, ARC 4, and Morphit were the best, and performed fairly similarly. I was surprised by how much SoundID under-performed on my Sennheiser HD 650s. I thought it sounded muffled compared to Realphones and ARC. It also sets the output really low and won't let you turn it up. Really strange.

For ARC, you have to create your own measurement, by miking one side of the headphones. You can just leave the mic in one spot for all captures. I wrapped a head-sized ball of T-shirts around the ARC reference mic and placed the headphones over it. The advantage to this is you get a profile of the actual pair of headphones being corrected.

When it comes to speaker simulation, I found plugins that try to 'model' near field monitors in a studio generally all suck. They end up sounding honky and canned. The only thing they accomplish is degrading the sound quality to the point of being useless for critical listening and mixing.

This applies to Realphones, ARC (VIRTUAL MONITORING), DeeSpeaker, SoundID, and Waves. ARC 4 is really good for correcting the headphones, but you should leave "Virtual Monitoring" set to OFF, to skip the speaker simulation. Realphones is the least bad of these at this, and it lets you dial in the amount of Environment/Ambience. You may be able to get away with a little mixed in, so long as you keep it well below 50%. It's still pretty useless and gimmicky, though.

Dear Reality and Waves both sound like you're listening to a far away recording of studio monitors through much crappier speakers. DeeSpeaker is like a muffled mono version of that. And it crashed Studio One. VHS was actually slightly better than any of those 3, but it also crashed Studio One.

For speaker simulation, you really just want to narrow the stereo image of bass frequencies, and leave the sound quality as untouched as possible, because it can only be made worse, not better.

Realphones does this well, and Redline Monitor was OK at it, as was my own homebrew using Studio One's Splitter plugin set to frequency split at 240 Hz with a mono-maker on the low end. But CanOpener Studio really stood out as truly excellent. It was by far the most natural and transparent option, along with Realphones. Neither the sound quality nor the tonal balance were altered by it. It just sounded 'right'. Neither SoundID nor ARC have bass narrowing capabilities built-in.

So, for the absolute best results, I would recommend:

• CanOpener Studio + ARC 4 with your own profile.
  You can of course also correct your studio monitors+room with ARC.
• Next best would be CanOpener Studio + Morphit.
  Good choice to save a little bit of money and hassle if you have no use for ARC's room correction.
• Realphones is close behind these options.
  It has the benefit of being a complete solution on its own.
• None of the others are recommended.

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

i use Toneboosters Morphit then Isone. I have done this for years. My mixes translate better than in years past. I feel pretty confident when I mix something that it will sound reasonably the same across different systems.

[mabian]

DSoniq RealPhones

[mabian]

Sorry if this is a stupid question. But for those that use Morphit: Are you supposed to mix with it, and then take it out of the chain when you render the master, or mix without it and then add it when you render the master?
And if this already has been answered, sorry, sorry, sorry...

You have to use it while mixing and disable it when rendering.
Some DAWs have a kind of monitoring FX rack that is used when mixing and automatically excluded from renderings (REAPER is one, I know others have something similar)

Thanx! Didn't know that about reaper. How do you set it up?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Reaper/comment ... explained/

[jamcat]

Studio One has the Listen Bus. It is post Master Bus and therefore does not get rendered.

[MattLeschuck]

CanOpener into Morphit has been on my Mac's system output for years. Works really well.

[Igro]

Realphones gets new updates rapidly. Btw, I wish Morphit got a version 2 or something.

[satYatunes]

How about Hornet VHS? The curve it shows for ATH-50x headphone is same as Morphit. Sounds similar as well.
Are these devs using the measurement details that's available in GitHub? They can't possibly do this for all headphones out there by themselves.
What's the purpose of canopener before Morphit or VHS? Is there any alternative for that in free world?

[jamcat]

What's the purpose of canopener before Morphit or VHS? Is there any alternative for that in free world?

CanOpener emulates the natural stereo image of speakers by collapsing low frequencies to mono.

Dotec DeeSpeaker is free, but it pretty much sucks.
VHS has stereo imaging, so you don't need CanOpener or the like.

If you don't need Apple Silicon and don't care about VST3, ToneBoosters' legacy Isone plugin is free, and should be a decent alternative to CanOpener. I can't personally vouch for it because I need Apple Silicon and care about VST3.

ToneBoosters Legacy Mac
ToneBoosters Legacy Win

[HoRNet]

How about Hornet VHS? The curve it shows for ATH-50x headphone is same as Morphit. Sounds similar as well.
Are these devs using the measurement details that's available in GitHub? They can't possibly do this for all headphones out there by themselves.
What's the purpose of canopener before Morphit or VHS? Is there any alternative for that in free world?

We source headphones measurements whenever we find them. a great bunch comes from Oratory 1990 and the AutoEQ database, others are found on other measurement websites and digitalised by ourself. there is no standard rule.

Saverio

[satYatunes]

@jamcat - Thank you.
@Saverio - Thanks for clarification.

[zerocrossing]

i use Toneboosters Morphit then Isone. I have done this for years. My mixes translate better than in years past. I feel pretty confident when I mix something that it will sound reasonably the same across different systems.

I see Toneboosters don’t sell Isone anymore. What does it do that Morphit doesn’t?