Don't Make These Sonarworks Reference Mistakes! Do This Instead!

Sonarworks Reference 4 is a complete game changer of a tool that I simply don't mix or master without. When you're working as a professional mixing and mastering engineer, you NEED your speakers to be calibrated to your room so that you can know that what you're hearing will translate when you send those mixes out into the real world! But while I love this tool, it has a couple quirks, and even straight up treacherous situations it can cause - which is why I figured out how to fix it with Audio Hijack, so that you can get all of the good parts of Sonarworks Reference 4 (or SoundID) without any of the bad!

-- EQUIPMENT THAT I USE:

Links are affiliate that don't cost you anything extra, and may actually save you some money - but also support me!

Music In Intro Video by Daeodon. Song: Shapeshifter

#sonarworks #sonarworksreference #sonarworksreference4 #sonarworkssystemwide #sonarworkssoundID

[jacquesverremontagne]

I just purchased the "Sonarworks SoundID Reference for Speakers &
Headphones with mic" and used it to calibrate my old Genelec 1030A monitors. I am absolutely blown away with the results; I suddenly hear clarity, great bas, smooth highs and it even knows that my adjusted my right speaker 1.6BD louder because my right ear is a bit less sensitive than my left ear. My room is untreated and as mentioned by others, it calibrates the speakers and not the room. However listening from my sweetspot, I could not be happier with results. Amazing !

[LambertDriveStudios]

Presonus Studio one has A listen bus that you can put in after the master buss, so thankfully I've never had to worry about turning it off when printing mixes.

[gvybzii]

After listening to a lot of music on youtube with the software calibrating, I realised that the mixes were trying to be as identical as possible with calibration and without calibration, is that what were gonna aim for when using the software?

[donepearce]

Sonarworks DOES NOT correct room response. It corrects speaker inaccuracy. You have to fix the room yourself. The whole reason for the 37 measurements is so it can average away room inaccuracies and focus entirely on what is common to all the measurements - the speaker.

[whosrobertseed]

For anyone out there still discovering which DAW is gonna be theirs for the long haul, as well as wanting to check out SoundID Reference, Cubase allows you to monitor SoundID through a seperate channel called "Control Room" which is essentially a virtual, built in well.. control room. Imagine that

What's great about it, however is allows you to monitor your mix through SoundID Reference on the side, essentially in parallel to your full mix, but with no connection to your actual mix levels. Control room monitors ONLY how you hear it in the room you are in. If you forget to turn off sonarworks before you export, it is 100% fine because you literally don't have to! It comes AFTER your stereo out so if your mix sounds balanced through SoundID, loudness levels look good, because the end goal of SoundID is to make youor room sound as "flat" as possible, you can confidently assume that your mixes should translate pretty well on other devices, especially given the translation options that are built in. No chance of ruining an entire mix with it at the end of your mixbus chain haha (don't ask if i know from experience)

Fun fact, Control Room also is where you control built in talk back, cue mixes for artists, multiple sets of actual speakers if you have them, loudness meters, and some insanely good international and platform specific loudness all built in STOCK and completely customizable in the SuperVision plugin. It's EXTREMELY powerful and extremely sick.


Anyways, awesome video! It's not a perfect plugin, but it certainly helps! (I usually only set it to about 40-50% and trust my ears for the rest)

[darkmaer]

RME just added roomeq in their totalmix fx. Which allows for import of sonarworks. So that's what I'm using.

[PolymerJones]

it's worth spending the extra money so you don't have to put it on your mix bus because that shit will happen ALL the time especially when you've been working for hours and you're ready to be done for the day. I just did my calibration, I haven't mixed with it yet, I've had good results with using a cheap bluetooth speaker for mixing, I don't feel so great about spending all this money, I hope I do. It's sort of convoluted software with a few bugs I've had to contact support numerous times

[malcomowenflood]

Do you use any speaker or headphone correction / calibration tools in your own recording studio? Sonarworks Reference 4 has been the choice for me, but I've heard great things about the Neumann MA1 automatic speaker calibration system!

[EdgetoneStudios]

That Audio Hijack looks pretty cool.
I don't use room corrections software (you've heard my control room) and never mix on headphones (shocking I know). But I did try to analyze my room response using Room EQ Wizard (REW). I was shocked by the resulting curve. Eventually I decided to just ignore it, but I'm still fascinated by by that aspect of room response.
Any chance you'll do a deep dive into REW or any of the other room analysis tools?

[johnplainsong]

Or, get Arc Studio. I've used Sonarworks since it was introduced and recently made the switch. I still use Sonarworks for headphone correction, but Arc Studio for my monitors.

[BurningBushPedagogy]

Sonarworks is amazing you guys are saying but no one is saying, now my mixes sound professional or translate.
no one is giving us test of before after sonarworks.

[ZacharyKibbeeofficial]

Sonarworks is the best kept secret in the producing world!

[nmdpa]

There are also studio monitors, like some from Adam Audio, that accept the upload of a profile (a frequency response map made using SoundID Reference Measure and a reference mic) directly to the speakers. Once the profile is loaded to the monitors there is no need for the plugin, SoundID, or the old reference 4 when using monitors.

[Phat-Monkey]

If you have ADAM such as the A77H monitors they allow you to imprint sonaworks eq curve onto the monitors like a hard encode, this means you do not need to use the plugin that might sometimes sound phasey

[WriteJus]

OMG I've never thought of that... and I have everything you mention. Time to set that up! Thank you!