Attempting to create a 360º illusion means that Nx must drastically alter your signal’s frequency spectrum. At first glance this might seem like a positive enhancement, but after listening tests and deeper examination, it’s clear that the “Virtual Mix Room” comes at the expense of accuracy and fidelity to the source. Unlike CanOpener Studio, which incorporates broad characteristics of loudspeakers for better headphone monitoring, Nx wants to simulate a 3D virtual loudspeaker experience. Which is nice when listening to music, but essential when making critical panning and spatial decisions about sound. Using crossfeed, CanOpener models the most important spectral, timbral, and intensity modifications that you’d hear in our studio. Unless, after popping on a pair of headphones, you pop CanOpener Studio on the master bus. No chance for Ringo to make it from left to right. Headphones, by contrast, are loudspeakers strapped to your ears. The waves interacted with a large obstacle (you) on the way to your right ear, meaning your right ear hears those left-speaker sounds modified in a thousand ways - changes in phase, spectrum, and intensity. So even when Ringo’s drums are coming only from the left speaker, those sound waves still make it to your right ear. In our lab, in the mixer’s chair, sounds from the left and right speakers hit both of your ears. Hearing music on headphones is a lot different from hearing music on speakers. Under the watchful gaze of a Waves technician, I put on their headphones and pressed play.įirst thought when trying out Nx? This doesn’t sound anything like the lab speakers or CanOpener Studio. CanOpener Studio had captured the spatial characteristics of a great loudspeaker setup incredibly well.įlash forward to this January, to the 2016 NAMM Conference, where Devin and I got the chance to try out Waves’ newest plugin, Nx - Virtual Mix over Headphones. But a second thought followed the first one closely: This sounds a lot like CanOpener.
#Waves nx reviews professional#
In August of 2012, after months of working on CanOpener Studio, and a lifetime of listening to music mostly on headphones, I got my first opportunity to visit the lab and hear music the way Devin does, at that desk, on a pair of professional-grade speakers - a highly controlled acoustical environment, tuned for his professional tasks (mixing, mastering, algorithm-designing). The Nx Head Tracker and Nx app will retail for $99, but it’ s currently available for as low as $59 through a Kickstarter campaign Waves launched today. The company says it’s in the final stages of production and plans to ship the hardware and app by September.In the Goodhertz audio lab in California, Goodhertz founder Devin Kerr does the majority of his critical listening at the mixing desk.
#Waves nx reviews full#
Thanks to the “crosstalk” effect between your left and right ears, the ambient reflections, and the adjustment to your physical movement through space, what you hear is a full landscape of sound, a full 3D soundscape… But when you’re listening on headphones, all that feeling of real space is gone. Whatever comes out of the left side of your headphones, you hear only through your left ear… But that’s not the way you hear sound in the real world… When you hear sounds in the real world, you hear a full, rich, realistic sound environment. When you listen on headphones, left and right are completely separated.
#Waves nx reviews movie#
Your ordinary headphones become a surround sound system, even if the movie you’re watching or the game you’re playing were not originally mixed for surround.”īut why do you even want 3D audio? Waves explains: And that includes true 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound for regular stereo audio that wasn’t mixed for a surround experience: “ With Waves Nx, you can hear true 5.1 and 7.1 surround on your regular stereo headphones. It accomplishes much of the magic by using head tracking using either your computer’s built-in camera or a separate compact Nx Head Tracker that attaches to your headphones and connects over Bluetooth. Waves says the Nx 3D app for both desktop and mobile “recreates – on any set of headphones – the same three-dimensional experience as listening to sound in the real world.” The app builds on a product the company already has called Nx Virtual Mix Room that offers a similar experience for professionals in a mixing environment. The company’s latest venture, however, is more of a consumer experience aimed at listening rather than creating music with a new desktop and mobile app that wants to bring 3D audio to any headphones using head tracking.
Waves is a heavyweight in the digital audio world with its audio plugins for recording, mixing and live sound being a staple among many pros.
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