It feels a little bit like how I feel when I clean my eyeglasses.”įrom my personal experience with the software, I can personally vouch for its usefulness. I found it instantly easier to mix both on headphones and sitting in the studio, in that you hear far more consistency from one listening environment/device to another, and in that you get a clearer sense of the mix. When asked, “Does it work?” Kirn says, “Oh yeah, this one is easy. There are various headphone profiles included with the software, and when you buy Sonarwork’s calibration microphone, you can create a custom calibration profile for your studio speakers. To perhaps oversimplify things, Reference 4 essentially applies an EQ curve to your system’s output signal based on the information you provide it. You play a known test signal and record it inside the listening environment, then compare the recording to the original and compensate.” For studio speakers, you take some measurements. Headphones can use existing calibration data. The idea of calibration is to process the sound to cancel out those modifications. Put monitors in a room – even a relatively well-treated studio – and you combine the coloration of the speakers themselves as well as reflections and character of the environment around them. That’s with the sound source right next to your head. Even studio headphones will color sound – emphasizing certain frequencies, de-emphasizing others. “First, let’s understand what calibration is. From the article titled “What it’s like calibrating headphones and monitors with Sonarworks tools” that CDM published December 3, 2018, a perfect explanation is provided:
Before getting too far ahead of myself, let’s take a closer look at the problem Reference 4 aims to correct.
HOW TO USE SONARWORKS REFERENCE 3 SOFTWARE
Intrigued producers and engineers have every right to be skeptical of such a product, and they typically have a lot of questions about the software.Ĭreate Digital Music’s (CDM) Peter Kirn answered a number of questions about Sonarworks’ Reference 4 software this week that should hopefully satisfy the curiosity of many. It promises to remove unwanted coloration from studio speakers and headphones. Sonarwork’s Reference software seems almost too good to be true.