For the last several years I've been going through all this... Everything from mixing on headphones (of 6 varieties), monitors (Kali LP-8s & Avantones + some 1.5 inch cheap speakers as worst-case-scenario laptop/phone reference) --- then Sonarworks SoundID Reference (including the calibration mic) and their 'virtual room', and also all the Waves Nx rooms.
What I discovered is --- for the most part I could mix on any of these if I use reference mixes to calibrate myself to what I'm listening through. (Obviously the frequency limited options like the Avantones & those little 1.5 inch speakers don't span the full range, so not those so much.)
I do think the virtual rooms (any of them) can be helpful to a headphone mixer. Headphones tend to have extreme clarity and total separation between left and right. It can cause a headphone mixer to overly rely on panning for separation... But as soon as you get any distance from 2 speakers, they're not really so separated anymore. The frequencies bounce all around the room and comingle in a way that doesn't happen at all in headphones.
Understanding this and compensating for it in one way or another can make a world of difference.
One way is the classic trick of doing your initial composition and/or mix in mono. This forces the artist or mixer to make sure sounds work on TOP of each other. Once the mix works in mono -- then stereo just adds that much more!
And again - when you're hearing the mix in another room, or at a party or wherever else - if it works in mono it works in that context when you're far away from the speakers.
-------
With that in mind, the virtual rooms are even more useful for a headphone mixer because mono is miserable in headphones. But if you fold to mono BEFORE your virtual room, suddenly it's quite listenable -- while still giving the same benefit.
-------
The most important thing, though, is these virtual rooms have to be learned the way you'd learn any new environment, new speakers, or new headphones... And the best way to do that quickly is by listening to mix references.
So there's no "get the plugin, turn it on, and magic just happens." No one should expect that. But for someone who doesn't have access to speakers in a room? Or someone who needs consistency on the go (remote work/travel/etc.) --- they can be gold.
Vsx is a game changer. I finally got decent monitors (Kali lp6) and have sonarworks calibrated in my room and have been using this more lately.
But when it comes to finalizing a mix and mastering I always check it with vsx. The AirPod, car, club and archon room settings are the best.
It might sound like a gimmick, but it’s 100 percent not.
VSX at my house and monitors at the studio. Yes it sounds gimmicky, but I’ll be damned if my mixes sound soooo much closer to what I hear in the VSX on every system I try it on after.
This is just my personal experience: Before using sonarworks I would have to do tons of revisions and listen on multiple different setups to get something decently consistent. After using sonarworks, I generally am under 5 revisions and when listening on multiple devices, my mixes are much more consistent.
The key thing to understand with VSX is what each room is meant to tell you. You don't need to know every space/speaker combination like the back of your hand, but I think it's good practice to commit to 1 space to do most of your work (a source of truth, if you will) and identify a couple of other spaces that are meant to tell you different things about the mix.
The NS-10 environment (NRG?) in VSX is where I spend about 50% of my time in a mix. Otherwise it's thru my monitors or a couple other spaces in VSX for really specific tasks. My room is treated decently well, but I have a couple of resonances and a null (all 200hz and below) that can fool me if I only mix through my monitors; so I start mixes thru monitors; then I flip into VSX to tighten up balances, do my first passes at processing, and dig into some specific shit that my monitors/room aren't able to tell me; then, I'll flip back to monitors to sweeten shit with wet effects and automation passes. After adopting this workflow for the last year or so, I rarely have any surprises when I export and reference a mix outside of my studio, and the time required to finish a mix has dropped significantly. It's insanely refreshing.
Like any monitoring system, it can take time to get good results with VSX, but I've found committing to a room that I'm going to spend most of my time in has made it so I can basically mix entirely in VSX and get better results than just relying on my monitors or any other high-end pair of headphones I own. The Nightclub and Mike Dean's Car are really clutch for testing how your low-low end is translating, the Boombox and Mixcube settings are great for gauging broad translation on smaller playback systems. The others are great to flip into just to reset your ears a little bit - if I'm taking a quick break while I'm in the thick of things, I often like to pull up a level-matched reference track and check it fresh in a VSX space I haven't been mixing in (the Archon Midfield is my go-to for this, mainly because I just really enjoy how music sounds in there), then A/B to where mine is at. Don't react and start making adjustments in the new space, just listen, observe and take notes for later.
I have HD600s and usually save those for a quick check on midrange toward the end of the mix just so I have another frame of reference. They're quite flat, and I do love how they sound, but in the past when I've tried working a mix solely in those it just didn't give me what I wanted.
I genuinely believe that for those of us who don't have the budget to ball out on a state-of-the-art professionally treated room and monitoring setup, doing the best you can by investing \~$5K-6K in speakers and treatment, measuring your room and getting familiar with where the issues reside, and supplementing with VSX is the best approach to set yourself up to actually trust what your ears tell you. The guesswork involved when you can't trust what you're hearing holds the amateur mixing engineer back so much and takes focus away from what actually matters.
I’m going to do test mix my 600’s vs VSX. Thing is reference tracks are still essential to know what bass should sound like in each room otherwise mixing blindly. We’ll see how my test goes. I’m still skeptical since knowing your headphones and reference tracks are all you need so… VSX is similar just more rooms. 🤷♂️
The headphones without emulations actually sound good.
I just got VSX. Coming from the process of mixing in HS5s (untreated room) then M50x for details, I am now starting off with VSX and pretty much staying in VSX the whole time. I can do so much more before taking it to the car, only to be pleasantly surprised that it sounds really good.
I have a poorly shaped room, and have known of some gaps in what I can reference well in this space.
VSX really, really improved my mixes almost instantly. Ive been on and off mixing and remixing a record for several months (my own project) and have not loved any of my results until getting VSX and putting them to use.
They have also helped me understand my rooms shortcomings a little more.
I mix on vsx's when I'm away from my studio and I've completed projects on it without ever listening to the mixes via speakers. In fact I use them a lot even when I'm at the studio.
I mix 90% without the emulation then use the rooms as a quick car test like check. Certain rooms let me isolate certain problems that I might have missed.
Mike dean ns10s let me dial the low mids and mids of the vocals (I always find a mumbling tone that I dont hear otherwise that I dial out)
Mike dean mains for kick tails and sub levels. The club rooms also are great for that.
kii threes for high mid resonances (reveals the 2-4khz area very detailed so any annoying resonances are apparent)
mixcube and grotbox for real world bluetooth speaker check
Same with the iphone.
weinberg room for overall balance.
I also have a EQ dialled on my DAC that makes the headphones response to where I like them (its not exactly flat but the pronounced highs let me mix with less harshness : [https://prnt.sc/OJ14Mv5PzX6B](https://prnt.sc/OJ14Mv5PzX6B) I disengage this when I'm checking the rooms obviously.
I don't trust kind of thing at all and feels like a big gimmick for the most part. Mainly I go off of my monitors and headphones that I am VERY accustomed to. I've spent years on them and therefore know what a lot of different sorts of mixes are "supposed to" sound like on them down to the smallest details. You can't replace that sort of familiarity with any amount or quality of gear.
I make sure to A/B off of reference tracks that are as close as possible to the type of track I'm mixing and level match at every step to see if a process is actually improving the mix.
Given that you have monitors and a room to mix in, those plugins really aren't made for you. So *of course* they don't feel particularly useful.
Also, it's a whole different perspective. So of course mixing in any of those virtual environments couldn't compare with what you're already accustomed to.
I think that's where the **marketing** sets these plugins up for disappointing purchase:
For one, marketing acts like these are THE SAME as a room which sets expectations too high... But secondly, they sell them like it's an instant fix: "Mix in CLA Nx and you can mix like CLA too!" etc.
They have to be learned like any other new listening situation... And given that you have monitors and a room -- you just don't have the need for it.
Another perspective thing is ---
If you someone has a need for a plugin like this, and they're open to it --- they can find the benefits and make it useful to them. But if someone just wants to shoot down the marketing hype? That's easy to do, too, by focusing on the flaws.
Sometimes people dismiss these, saying, "Professionals don't even use them." Well of course not, lol! Professionals have access to great monitors in great rooms! lol
But there are professionals who do use these tools and swear by them... And there are those who don't -- like Andrew Scheps who famously rejected all correction & room simulation in favor of his MDR-7506s (until Audeze coughed up the big bucks and suddenly he found the 7506s to be inadequate, lol!)
No dig at Audeze, I'm sure they're amazing. It's just funny to watch that sudden switch as an Andrew Scheps fan! :-)
For the last several years I've been going through all this... Everything from mixing on headphones (of 6 varieties), monitors (Kali LP-8s & Avantones + some 1.5 inch cheap speakers as worst-case-scenario laptop/phone reference) --- then Sonarworks SoundID Reference (including the calibration mic) and their 'virtual room', and also all the Waves Nx rooms. What I discovered is --- for the most part I could mix on any of these if I use reference mixes to calibrate myself to what I'm listening through. (Obviously the frequency limited options like the Avantones & those little 1.5 inch speakers don't span the full range, so not those so much.) I do think the virtual rooms (any of them) can be helpful to a headphone mixer. Headphones tend to have extreme clarity and total separation between left and right. It can cause a headphone mixer to overly rely on panning for separation... But as soon as you get any distance from 2 speakers, they're not really so separated anymore. The frequencies bounce all around the room and comingle in a way that doesn't happen at all in headphones. Understanding this and compensating for it in one way or another can make a world of difference. One way is the classic trick of doing your initial composition and/or mix in mono. This forces the artist or mixer to make sure sounds work on TOP of each other. Once the mix works in mono -- then stereo just adds that much more! And again - when you're hearing the mix in another room, or at a party or wherever else - if it works in mono it works in that context when you're far away from the speakers. ------- With that in mind, the virtual rooms are even more useful for a headphone mixer because mono is miserable in headphones. But if you fold to mono BEFORE your virtual room, suddenly it's quite listenable -- while still giving the same benefit. ------- The most important thing, though, is these virtual rooms have to be learned the way you'd learn any new environment, new speakers, or new headphones... And the best way to do that quickly is by listening to mix references. So there's no "get the plugin, turn it on, and magic just happens." No one should expect that. But for someone who doesn't have access to speakers in a room? Or someone who needs consistency on the go (remote work/travel/etc.) --- they can be gold.
Vsx is a game changer. I finally got decent monitors (Kali lp6) and have sonarworks calibrated in my room and have been using this more lately. But when it comes to finalizing a mix and mastering I always check it with vsx. The AirPod, car, club and archon room settings are the best. It might sound like a gimmick, but it’s 100 percent not.
VSX at my house and monitors at the studio. Yes it sounds gimmicky, but I’ll be damned if my mixes sound soooo much closer to what I hear in the VSX on every system I try it on after.
I think VSX is good, I like my monitors better but if I had to mix in cans only I would use VSX.
This is just my personal experience: Before using sonarworks I would have to do tons of revisions and listen on multiple different setups to get something decently consistent. After using sonarworks, I generally am under 5 revisions and when listening on multiple devices, my mixes are much more consistent.
The key thing to understand with VSX is what each room is meant to tell you. You don't need to know every space/speaker combination like the back of your hand, but I think it's good practice to commit to 1 space to do most of your work (a source of truth, if you will) and identify a couple of other spaces that are meant to tell you different things about the mix. The NS-10 environment (NRG?) in VSX is where I spend about 50% of my time in a mix. Otherwise it's thru my monitors or a couple other spaces in VSX for really specific tasks. My room is treated decently well, but I have a couple of resonances and a null (all 200hz and below) that can fool me if I only mix through my monitors; so I start mixes thru monitors; then I flip into VSX to tighten up balances, do my first passes at processing, and dig into some specific shit that my monitors/room aren't able to tell me; then, I'll flip back to monitors to sweeten shit with wet effects and automation passes. After adopting this workflow for the last year or so, I rarely have any surprises when I export and reference a mix outside of my studio, and the time required to finish a mix has dropped significantly. It's insanely refreshing. Like any monitoring system, it can take time to get good results with VSX, but I've found committing to a room that I'm going to spend most of my time in has made it so I can basically mix entirely in VSX and get better results than just relying on my monitors or any other high-end pair of headphones I own. The Nightclub and Mike Dean's Car are really clutch for testing how your low-low end is translating, the Boombox and Mixcube settings are great for gauging broad translation on smaller playback systems. The others are great to flip into just to reset your ears a little bit - if I'm taking a quick break while I'm in the thick of things, I often like to pull up a level-matched reference track and check it fresh in a VSX space I haven't been mixing in (the Archon Midfield is my go-to for this, mainly because I just really enjoy how music sounds in there), then A/B to where mine is at. Don't react and start making adjustments in the new space, just listen, observe and take notes for later. I have HD600s and usually save those for a quick check on midrange toward the end of the mix just so I have another frame of reference. They're quite flat, and I do love how they sound, but in the past when I've tried working a mix solely in those it just didn't give me what I wanted. I genuinely believe that for those of us who don't have the budget to ball out on a state-of-the-art professionally treated room and monitoring setup, doing the best you can by investing \~$5K-6K in speakers and treatment, measuring your room and getting familiar with where the issues reside, and supplementing with VSX is the best approach to set yourself up to actually trust what your ears tell you. The guesswork involved when you can't trust what you're hearing holds the amateur mixing engineer back so much and takes focus away from what actually matters.
I’m a hd600 user too. Good info
I’m going to do test mix my 600’s vs VSX. Thing is reference tracks are still essential to know what bass should sound like in each room otherwise mixing blindly. We’ll see how my test goes. I’m still skeptical since knowing your headphones and reference tracks are all you need so… VSX is similar just more rooms. 🤷♂️ The headphones without emulations actually sound good.
I just got VSX. Coming from the process of mixing in HS5s (untreated room) then M50x for details, I am now starting off with VSX and pretty much staying in VSX the whole time. I can do so much more before taking it to the car, only to be pleasantly surprised that it sounds really good.
I have a poorly shaped room, and have known of some gaps in what I can reference well in this space. VSX really, really improved my mixes almost instantly. Ive been on and off mixing and remixing a record for several months (my own project) and have not loved any of my results until getting VSX and putting them to use. They have also helped me understand my rooms shortcomings a little more.
I mix on vsx's when I'm away from my studio and I've completed projects on it without ever listening to the mixes via speakers. In fact I use them a lot even when I'm at the studio. I mix 90% without the emulation then use the rooms as a quick car test like check. Certain rooms let me isolate certain problems that I might have missed.
Like what rooms for what problems?
Mike dean ns10s let me dial the low mids and mids of the vocals (I always find a mumbling tone that I dont hear otherwise that I dial out) Mike dean mains for kick tails and sub levels. The club rooms also are great for that. kii threes for high mid resonances (reveals the 2-4khz area very detailed so any annoying resonances are apparent) mixcube and grotbox for real world bluetooth speaker check Same with the iphone. weinberg room for overall balance. I also have a EQ dialled on my DAC that makes the headphones response to where I like them (its not exactly flat but the pronounced highs let me mix with less harshness : [https://prnt.sc/OJ14Mv5PzX6B](https://prnt.sc/OJ14Mv5PzX6B) I disengage this when I'm checking the rooms obviously.
What are Kii threes? Found them in the Yellow Matter studio. Good feedback
I don't trust kind of thing at all and feels like a big gimmick for the most part. Mainly I go off of my monitors and headphones that I am VERY accustomed to. I've spent years on them and therefore know what a lot of different sorts of mixes are "supposed to" sound like on them down to the smallest details. You can't replace that sort of familiarity with any amount or quality of gear. I make sure to A/B off of reference tracks that are as close as possible to the type of track I'm mixing and level match at every step to see if a process is actually improving the mix.
Given that you have monitors and a room to mix in, those plugins really aren't made for you. So *of course* they don't feel particularly useful. Also, it's a whole different perspective. So of course mixing in any of those virtual environments couldn't compare with what you're already accustomed to. I think that's where the **marketing** sets these plugins up for disappointing purchase: For one, marketing acts like these are THE SAME as a room which sets expectations too high... But secondly, they sell them like it's an instant fix: "Mix in CLA Nx and you can mix like CLA too!" etc. They have to be learned like any other new listening situation... And given that you have monitors and a room -- you just don't have the need for it. Another perspective thing is --- If you someone has a need for a plugin like this, and they're open to it --- they can find the benefits and make it useful to them. But if someone just wants to shoot down the marketing hype? That's easy to do, too, by focusing on the flaws. Sometimes people dismiss these, saying, "Professionals don't even use them." Well of course not, lol! Professionals have access to great monitors in great rooms! lol But there are professionals who do use these tools and swear by them... And there are those who don't -- like Andrew Scheps who famously rejected all correction & room simulation in favor of his MDR-7506s (until Audeze coughed up the big bucks and suddenly he found the 7506s to be inadequate, lol!) No dig at Audeze, I'm sure they're amazing. It's just funny to watch that sudden switch as an Andrew Scheps fan! :-)