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!
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[@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 !

[@malcomowenflood]

That's great! It definitely improved my workflow as well!

[@WriteJus]

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

[@malcomowenflood]

Cheers! Glad it helped!

[@nmdpa3]

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.

[@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

[@johnplainsong9769]

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.

[@malcomowenflood]

Haven't checked out Arc Studio yet, any key differences between Sonarworks/Reference ID?

[@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

[@malcomowenflood]

Great feature! Some of the new generation Neumanns now offer this as well and I’d love to move to that eventually!

[@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.

[@malcomowenflood]

The control room feature is definitely a plus 1 for Cubase and Prosonus Studio over Pro Tools in that category - would love that option! I can set up a monitoring bus in Pro Tools but it's not as elegant ;)

[@LambertDriveStudios]

@@malcomowenflood Pros and Cons of the audio life. Win some Lose some. Hope you have an awesome weekend Malcom!!

[@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?

[@malcomowenflood]

I don’t have much experience with REW currently, but I definitely may do a deep dive into properly measuring your room with Sonarworks Reference and SoundID!

[@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!

[@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.

[@malcomowenflood]

A good distinction.

[@BurningBushPedagogy]

Yes we all its not correcting the room itself, its not like it will add acoustic panels to your room, and bass traps, it corrects the room is just a way of words, words are many time cant explain things perfectly. in fact I have watched a video anyone really explain it well, we use our brain to figure out what they are saying. This is people should explain this, your room affect how your speaker presents the sound you hear from them. what you think you are hearing is mostly a lie, because the acounstics of rooms will add or room certain frequency in the audio spectrum, and give a very False presentation of whatever you are listenning, and all these without you even realizing. You might hear certain bass notes sound louder and shaking your room, you like it, you might hear certain frequency is much reduced. Meaning not true or not flat enough. So Room correction software will reveal the frequency response of what your room and speakers are doing and show you in graph. then correct it. if 10 more of 120 hz it will reduce it minus 10 decibels, it correct all in false and give you the truth. So that not you will hear from speakers the true sound with the right of volume for each or all the frequncies. So its basically just eq to compensate for where you speaker is adding or cutting certain frequency and literally add EQ. Some use Sonarworks free trial just to see the response curve of their system and see the correction required. t shows them all bands, the q factor how much cut or boost. and you can even use your choice of EQ at the end of your master buss effect space, and Eq using what Sonar work says. So you equing what your speakers soundlike. I think in future some clever company can make speakers with all these built it. its not impossible to add equalization to a speaker, and a kind effect and fix your room by eqing to compensate for the room. You see that it takes a dedicated person like me to take time and explain things well. i just watch videos and I see some people cant put words what they want to say.

[@BurningBushPedagogy]

Yes we all its not correcting the room itself, its not like it will add acoustic panels to your room, and bass traps, it corrects the room is just a way of words, words are many time cant explain things perfectly. in fact I have watched a video anyone really explain it well, we use our brain to figure out what they are saying. This is people should explain this, your room affect how your speaker presents the sound you hear from them. what you think you are hearing is mostly a lie, because the acounstics of rooms will add or room certain frequency in the audio spectrum, and give a very False presentation of whatever you are listenning, and all these without you even realizing. You might hear certain bass notes sound louder and shaking your room, you like it, you might hear certain frequency is much reduced. Meaning not true or not flat enough. So Room correction software will reveal the frequency response of what your room and speakers are doing and show you in graph. then correct it. if 10 more of 120 hz it will reduce it minus 10 decibels, it correct all in false and give you the truth. So that not you will hear from speakers the true sound with the right of volume for each or all the frequncies. So its basically just eq to compensate for where you speaker is adding or cutting certain frequency and literally add EQ. Some use Sonarworks free trial just to see the response curve of their system and see the correction required. t shows them all bands, the q factor how much cut or boost. and you can even use your choice of EQ at the end of your master buss effect space, and Eq using what Sonar work says. So you equing what your speakers soundlike. I think in future some clever company can make speakers with all these built it. its not impossible to add equalization to a speaker, and a kind effect and fix your room by eqing to compensate for the room. You see that it takes a dedicated person like me to take time and explain things well. i just watch videos and I see some people cant put words what they want to say.

[@donepearce]

@@BurningBushPedagogy Do note that a room does not have a frequency response. Every point in a room has a different frequency response because of modes and standing waves. If you room is not perfectly set up, a bass note which is loud at one spot may be inaudible a foot away.

[@malcomowenflood]

If you'd like to look into some studio monitors with calibration DSP built into them, have a look at the Neumann KH80 DSP. Haven't got to try them for myself yet, but a colleague recently moved to that system and is loving their built in correction tools. I can't speak to if it's better or worse than using Sonarworks, or doing it manually, but it seems like an interesting solution!

[@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 meters/phasescopes/wavescopes/VU's 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)

[@malcomowenflood]

Such a great feature of Cubase, and I certainly hope other DAWs implement it as well!

[@womagrid]

I did the same thing in Bitwig by unplugging the output of the master channel and creating an audio channel that monitors the master and outputs directly to my speakers.

[@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.

[@malcomowenflood]

The point of this video is to help people who already use Sonarworks to get an improved workflow - it's not trying to sell it to you or anyone else. That said, if you're curious about it, they do offer a free trial which I'd highly recommend. I used the trial to make the decision for myself and found that my mixes did in fact translate more accurately, and most importantly it increased the speed at which I was able to mix a song on average by a few hours.

[@ZacharyKibbeeofficial]

Sonarworks is the best kept secret in the producing world!

[@malcomowenflood]

I absolutely agree! Sonarworks rules!

[@teemakz1]

​@@malcomowenflood the best kept secret is that sonarworks don't fix your RT 60 :)