Waves Audio and Abbey Road Studios release the Abbey Road Studio 3 Plugin

Waves Audio has released the Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin, created in collaboration with Abbey Road Studios and powered by Waves' Nx immersive audio technology.

The Studio 3 control room is Abbey Road's flagship mix room was designed by some of the world's greatest acousticians. From modern classics by Radiohead, Amy Winehouse and Kanye West, to contemporary mixes of the Beatles and Pink Floyd, to number-one chart toppers by Frank Ocean, Brockhampton and Florence + the Machine: all were recorded, mixed and perfected at Abbey Road Studio 3.

The Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin brings the acoustics of the Studio 3 control room into your headphones – in three-dimensional sound, powered by Waves' Nx technology for immersive 3D audio. Now, you can produce and mix as if you were inside Abbey Road Studio 3 – and hear your music the way the world's greatest musicians and producers heard theirs, with:

• The same acoustic response that unveils every detail in your sessions.
• The same combination of room acoustics including near-field, mid-field and far-field speakers.
• The same well-balanced sustain across the entire frequency spectrum — the hallmark of expertly treated rooms.
• The same accurate low-end sustain — notoriously difficult to achieve on headphones.

Benefits:

• The Studio 3 reference environment for your headphone mixes.
• Better predict how your headphone productions will translate to speaker systems of all types.
• True-to-life spatial depth on your headphones, with the same detail and panoramic sound image you would hear sitting in the sweet spot of Studio 3.
• You can reliably mix the low end on headphones.
• If you're on the go, you can take Abbey Road Studio 3 with you.
• If you don't have a perfectly treated mix room.
• If you do have a great room – now you have access to one of the world's best room for reference.
• If you collaborate on music with others – now you all have the same acoustic environment to refer to when sending mixes back and forth.
• If you need to start a 5.1 or 7.1 mix workflow in your DAW without having access to a full set of surround speakers, or if you need to create a 5.1 or 7.1 premix before going into a surround sound mix studio for final tweaks – now you can do so on headphones.

Mirek Stiles, Head of Audio Products at Abbey Road says: "Abbey Road has historically been very protective of the acoustic properties of its studios for software emulations, and the Studio 3 control room is no exception. After speaking with Yoni Zlotkin (Waves Product Manager) and the Waves team at length over many months, I began to feel more confident these guys had some groundbreaking theories on how such a sensitive task could be realized. Not everything worked first time and we went back to the drawing board on a few occasions. Our breakthrough moment was when Giles Martin came into the Studio 3 control room with some Universal Music executives and we did a playback. The positive reaction from all in the room was immediate and confirmed our suspicions we had created something special and unique. This plugin was probably the most challenging yet and I'm extremely grateful to the Abbey Road engineers for their feedback and input, and to the talented, resilient and patient team at Waves Audio. I hope this plugin inspires music creators worldwide to realize their visions with more confidence than ever before."

Abbey Road Studio 3 features:

• The acoustics of Abbey Road Studio 3 – in immersive 3D audio over any set of headphones.
• Precision modeling of Abbey Road Studio 3's stereo and surround soundstage.
• Hear your music the way Pink Floyd, Amy Winehouse, Radiohead, Frank Ocean and Kanye West heard theirs.
• Choose from Studio 3's three sets of stereo speaker setups: near-field, mid-field, far-field.
• Mix 5.1 and 7.1 surround reliably on your stereo headphones.
• High-precision head tracking for enhanced realism.
• Personalized head anatomy calibration.
• Headphone EQ calibration for popular headphone models.
• SoundGrid-compatible; for SoundGrid-powered performance, you can offload the plugin's processing to a SoundGrid server.

Price: $99.

Videos

Abbey Road Studio 3 — Introducing the Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 Plugin

Inside the Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 Plugin

Producer Giles Martin (The Beatles, Rocketman) on the Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 Plugin

Alan Parsons – First Reaction to the Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 Plugin