SIMULATE A PROFESSIONAL MIXING ROOM ON YOUR HEADPHONES, FOR FREE

The Sienna Rooms Free plugin is available free of charge until October 1st, 2021.

One of the most persistent myths in the audio world is that you shouldn't mix or master using headphones. Some argue that headphones can only offer a second opinion about your work or a different point of view regarding listening through reference monitors. I disagree with these statements because, in my opinion, there is the element called 'reference' that every audio engineer carries with him/her and it is personal, historical and subjective as well. If the professional is used to working with a certain reference (experience) of sound that it is provided to him/her through a pair of monitors, a pair of headphones, the sound of his/her car, an old boombox or even even a mono tube TV, such equipment is vital to his/her production process, as it was through that 'shabby pair of monitors' that he/she heard the great hits of Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, Daft Punk or any other artist that is taken by him/her as a sound reference. This phenomenon gave birth to 'technical marks' that scares us the first time we tested such as the Yamaha NS-10 and Auratone monitors, for example.

Here is the link to a sensational article where they traced the origin of the fame of the Yamaha NS-10, which gained notoriety among audio professionals by word-of-mouth and whose origin is remote to an unknown sound engineer from some studio in Tokyo, since Yamaha's NS line is to this day a line of bookshelf speakers!

The Yamaha NS-10 and the Auratone (aka 'Horrortone') are very popular monitors, but they have a limited frequency response and were introduced to the creative industry by professionals who brought their own personal home speaker to the studio or by some speaker that simulated the average consumer's home sound system. And they ended up staying in the studio and multiplied in this new habitat. It is a fact that these monitors with limited frequency response (weak bass response and aggressive hi-end) allow the engineer to focus their attention on the most important portion of a mix, the so-called midrange, a region where the voice inhabits and, for many, the voice is where the money is (laughs). Some also claim that if you can make a mix sound good on a pair of NS-10s, it will sound good on any other speaker. And there's a lot of truth to that.

Returning to the case of headphones: If a professional is used to listening to their musical references through some headphones, these becomes a valid and indispensable element for his/her work. Other pros to headphones is that they can offer a better intelligibility to the professional who seeks to hear clicks, pops, noises in the mix, besides that, currently, a large part of the music audience will listen to music through a pair headphones, then, this is a very valid argument for considering such a monitoring feature as relevant and essential for many.

The headphones bass dilemma

Current technology allows us to overcome a physical problem that hearing in headphones faces: Low frequency reproduction in an unnatural way, unlike how we get when listening to music through speakers. When listening through speakers, the bass from the left speaker will reach both the left and right ears, but with a difference in the arrival time of sound to each of the ears. The same will happen to the low frequencies reproduced through the right speaker and this difference in the arrival time of the sound creates a stereophonic (stereo) sensation. This phenomenon suffers a distortion when listening through headphones, as the bass of the left phone will not reach the right ear and vice-versa. This creates a distortion in the way we perceive the bass (low frequencies) through the headphones, as they should sound almost in an omnidirectional pattern, being hard to detect their origin in the mix panorama (the bass of a song, reproduced by a pair from monitors, will almost always sound in the center of the mix, in the so-called 'phantom position' between the speakers), such as when listening to the sound of acoustic musical instruments or music through speakers.

Illustration of the different arrival times of stereo playback. Credits: UCDavis

That's where the binaural experience comes in, whose mission is to recreate the natural listening experience, but through headphones. Our hearing is also classified by this term, as we have two omnidirectional microphones in our head and the sound arrival time difference to each of these microphones (ears) will be computed by the brain and will give us an indication of the positional origin of the sound source whose emission reaches us. Some plugins try to recreate this experience through a function called HRTF (Head-Related Transfer Function) which is a mathematical function that describes the human auditory experience, where (in some models) it is required by the plugin to have the measurements of the user's head circumference and also the distance between the user's ears. This is the case of the plugin Waves Abbey Road Studio 3, (which can be purchased at a discount using this link for an exclusive discount cupom)

The Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin recreates the listening experience of the famous studio of the same name.

Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 recreates on headphones the spatial feeling of listening to the mix through any of Abbey Road Studio 3's 3 monitoring sets: Near-field (a pair of monitors over the console's meter bridge), Mid -field (high definition hi-fi speakers) and Far-Field (large speakers with subs), plus it allows the application of a frequency response correction filter to some of the most popular studio headphones like the Audio- Technica ATH-M50X, Sennheiser HD 280, Sony MDR-7506 and others. An interesting feature is the possibility of tracking the listener's head position in real-time through a webcam and head sensor (optional, installed on the headphone) anchoring the position of studio monitors in virtual space, even if you move your head , they will remain there, around your computer screen. The experience is incredible and makes listening to music on headphones a pleasure. A demo version of the plugin can be downloaded and tested without limitations for 7 days, and if you want to buy it use this link for an exclusive discount coupon). Recently Waves also announced a new plugin that promises to simulate another famous studio, Ocean Way Nashville, through the plugin NX Ocean Way Nashville (which can also be tested for 7 days free of charge and purchased at a discount through this link for an exclusive discount coupon).

Another plugin that promises to offer a similar experience is Sienna Rooms, whose free version can be downloaded for free until October 1, 2021 on this link. Sienna Rooms was developed with the subjective experience of developers in mind with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) features and offers an extensive list of headphone models that have frequency response correction filters including even some in-ear models like the Shure SE 315 and Sennheiser IE40. In its PRO version, it offers several controls to adjust the spatiality and even control the room's acoustic gain..

Sienna Rooms in its glorious PRO version.

In practice, the FREE version of Sienna Rooms does very well in correcting the dilemma of reproducing bass through headphones, recreating a convincing binaural experience. The PRO version offers the possibility of purchasing several additional packages of rooms, reference monitors and even diverse music listening environments such as studios, cinema, supermarkets, clubs and various consumer devices. In my opinion, Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 offers a more realistic spatial feel than the FREE version of Sienna Rooms, but getting the binaural experience for free like Sienna Rooms FREE allows is much better than nothing, right?

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From Jerusalém,

Tairo Arrabal