REVIEW: WAVES NX Virtual Mixroom

The WAVES NX Virtual Mixroom tries to bring the experience of having a treated control room to you, on your headphones. The marketing of this plugin is on point, but is the plugin on point as well?

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[rasyidsayyari]

You should do the mixing with and without the NX plugin and compare the result.

[scottspaulding]

Actually when used correctly it works very well. And yes you can mix just fine in headphones if you know what you are doing amd you know your headphones. If you don't have or cant have a acoustically treated room then you are better off mixing in the right set of open back headphones . This review is snake oil and was not reviewed fairly

[timocarliermusic]

Nice to see a review on this product. One thing: you needed to press the 'sweet spot' button to align your virtual head correctly. In the plugin, your virtual head was looking up to the side corner. It's probably a personal thing, but this plugin had a hugely positive effect on my mixing. I am someone who has to mix with headphones most of the the time, due to my living situation. I mixed on my headphones (Sennheiser DT 880 pro) for years but would always get an unpleasant surprise when listening back to my mixes on a hifi system (too much bass, strange levels, etc.). For some reason, when I use this plugin, I get a much better match to how I think it sounded when listening to the final mix on other systems or my speakers. I am not sure why that is. So whether or not the plugin can emulate a good studio space or not is irrelevant to me. What matters most is that I am now able to mix on headphones and get pretty accurate results. (I use the blue tooth device). A tip for Reaper users: instead of placing this plugin on your master buss output, place it on the monitor mix instead (View- FX Monitoring). This way you don't need to remember to switch the plugin off when rendering. I also find it useful to create a custom button at the top (see Reaperblog for how to) that will allow me to quickly switch FX Monitoring on and off. This is really useful when switching between headphones with Wave NX and your regular monitors.

[ProDoucher]

You could get really creative with this plugin, Put it on a track and then record it playing while swinging your head around for some crazy panning haha.

[GTSongwriter]

With the Nx Germano Studios New York, I was able to hear the low bass rumble in my mix and remove it from my mix! If I didn't have those plug-in, my head phones would have not detected the issue!

[hakonsoreide]

I think this plugin makes sense for stereo mixing because 2.0 speakers are placed in an equilateral triangle in front of you, not on each side like they would sound on headphones, and so the stereo spread is different, as well as crosstalk where you get sound from the right channel reaching the left ear (a bit later than sound from the left speaker) and vice versa. This is extra prominent on sounds panned hard right or hard left, but it will also affect other pannings.

But is it better than cheaper options already available? With the head modelling feature, it might just be. I think it's worth for everyone who does any headphone or surround mixing to test at least, to see how it works for them.

[RudeRecording]

I bought the plugin for the headphone frequency compensation function. I find that part valuable enough especially since I bought the plugin the last time it was on sale. I find that with my Sennheiser HD 280 Pro and my Sony 7506 that the compensation works VERY well. I find the headtracker function to be distracting and have it turned off but can see uses if I did more ambisonic recording or surround sound recording. It does make the headphones a good second reference and good for times when I can't use my main references. [such as mixing in the middle of the night] At least when it was on sale, it was way less expensive than Sonarworks calibration services but probably not quite as accurate. At least in my 4 decades of experience, there is no such thing as a "perfect" monitor...

[shaunlivingstonmusic]

The point is that you shouldn't be mixing on headphones and this plug in is supposed to help with that issue. You should have done a shoot out between a regular headphone mix and then a mix with this plug in

[joebobhenrybob]

I've used some plugins called Morphit (to flatten eq for various headphones) and TB Isone Pro, which simulates listening in a room. You can dial up various rooms, various speakers, and various anatomical features (large head, small head, etc) You can dial up, for instance, a Television, Laptop, Boom Box, Public Address System, home stereo, as well as some simulated studio setups. It's a bit more useful and convenient than, for instance, going out to my car. I've found it fairly valuable.

[ytnsanw]

The other - extremely important - aspect of the software that was egregiously missed in this very cursory review of this software was the headphone EQ section. A dozen or so of the most popular mixing headphones have been modeled so that there are compensatory EQ curves for those supported brands of headphone. This, to me, is one of the primary advantages that the plugin offers for mixing over headphones, but wasn't even mentioned in this rundown. I actually enjoy these 'snake-oil' reviews and this gentleman is hilarious to watch, but you really need to have at least a reasonable working knowledge of the product before damning it as snake-oil. Doe je niet?..

[TheMusicRecordingNetwork]

lololol when that music first came on.... i thought someone behind me was playing loud music. I was like "put on some headphones on, so i can hear this
I am looking for a plugin in that will make things in your mix sound further in the back of you while others instruments are in front and strearo and all that good stuff. I think this may be the one.

[alixvandurand]

I love WSS's videos, really great guy to watch, knowledgeable and funny too but I feel like he had long passed his judgement on this before he even made the video or even tried it. He comes from a decent studio himself and could have really given some great insight into why this may or may not help someone that does not have access to a full studio, which is what this plugin is about. It's not there to replace a professionally sound treated studio (obviously), it's about emulating one so people who only have access to headphones can mix better than they would without. Plus, there seems to be a lot of people who say it's improved their mixing in this manner, so idk if I'd call that snake oil if it works?

[DavidPixleythemuzzlZ]

Please review some airwindows free plugins (most are open source)! In particular, NotJustAnotherDither, ADClip 7, FromTape, and ToVinyl are some of the tools that I've been trying out in my mastering work. Another one that is worth a shot (but, as with most airwindows tools, is mostly built for mixing work as opposed to mastering) is the new UnBox plugin. Please keep in mind that there is no GUI with all airwindows plugins and some DAW's don't provide sliders (or in some cases, some parameters are labeled differently from the ones in Logic, which is what Chris J uses in his introduction videos). If you are using a DAW that nerfs the plugins, then I suggest using Bluecat's Patchwork, as they built a really nice and simple GUI for the airwindows stuff (and they work closely with Chrs J to make sure the parameters are closely labeled). I also noticed that Patchwork allows for more extreme fine tuning of parameter values (with shift plus click & drag), as opposed to what Ableton and REAPER allowed me to do. One thing that I will mention, is that my opinion is that Chris J's method of giving out the plugins and source code (with the Patreon support) allows us to expand the rate of the rate of the improvements and advancements in the VST plugins world (generally speaking). It also pushes the industry towards the idea of developers sharing algorithms and allowing further alterations of them and improvements of them from other developers. This helps us get away from the whole monopolizing business aspect of the VST world, in which (for example), Waves has a patent on what goes on in MaxxBass, and so no one can come close to it... all though others would be capable of reproducing a similar code. That, in my eyes, is corruption; and it limits our ability (as a world) to expand our technologies. I am curious to find out what you think! Another thing that I find worthy of mentioning is that most people see the words "free VST plugins, " and they assume it is either garbage or not as good as paid ones.

[terrydoylemusic]

I was expecting you to leave it running a bit more and make a couple of mix decisions then check on speakers. You seemed to want to get the headphones off your head very quick!

[MartinKuek]

Totally agree with you. This should be pushed as a consumer product as a way to get over the in your head feeling of headphones and positional audio for movies not as a virtual mix room.

[itstommynutter]

its not that bad really, if ou dont take it too seriously. I use it as a way of checking my mix every now and again, just like i would use anotyher pair of speaklers or a laptop to check the mix. I dont use the tracking, its distracting and you really have to meditate lol to imagine yourself in this "mix room". so ye, good for an alternative speaker settup to ref from, and using it to ABB with a pair of headfones you know well can really make some reverbs present to you that you didnt realise were a little too loud.

[Goettel]

Looking at your screen it seems you're using your camera instead of the tracker for the head tracking.

[MarcNevali]

I am using the demo version of the waves abbey road studio 3 with this same technology.. I believe it's totally awesome, it can save the life of the home apartment musicians!
I have open headphones.. it happens that I have to check periodically that the sounds are not coming from my monitors but from the headphones... my brain is totally tricked

[jean-francoisremillard]

Interesting. I am starting to wonder if this could be a cheap alternative to the Boss Waza Air headphones that came out at the end of 2019 for guitar players, assuming you already have a good pair of headphones and a good guitar amp modeler. As he said, they should approach marketing differently and more generally. I am not so sure of the value of this plugin just as a mixing tool but it could also offer a great monitoring environment for musicians in the studio.

[iFFOGo]

Hi, what about dSONIQ Realphones for testing :) Thank's!