They all sound different (monitor dilemma) - Final verdict

marsonic said:
Jin beat me to it, and I agree with his answers.
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Thank you!

Luckily sonarworks has a trial period. What I want to understand, when I'll try it, is if the result I achieve with sonarwork equalization I can also achieve with the "room controls" on the back of the studio monitors. I mean, once I know what is the target, maybe I can approssimate that result. Surely not 100% accurate, but decent.
Jim DeSchamp said:
So after reading this I just shelled out $$$ for a pair of Focal Solo 6 BE's!

I'm still in shock
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I think this is one of the worst threads that drives people to invest more money. o_O
 
Gl4th said:
Thank you!

Luckily sonarworks has a trial period. What I want to understand when I'll try it is if the result I achieve with sonarwork equalization I can also achieve with the "room controls" on the back of the studio monitors. I mean, once I know what is the target, maybe I can approssimate that result.
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You can't.

The controls on the back of monitors are super-generalized. Some of them are for "taste", some of them compensate for how the speaker is loaded (by the space). They don't do anything really like room correction.

That being said, you have to re-do the calibration when you change those settings.
 
marsonic said:
You can't.

The controls on the back of monitors are super-generalized. Some of them are for "taste", some of them compensate for how the speaker is loaded (by the space). They don't do anything really like room correction.

That being said, you have to re-do the calibration when you change those settings.
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So they are totally useless? Better to keep them flat?
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Gl4th said:
Luckily sonarworks has a trial period. What I want to understand, when I'll try it, is if the result I achieve with sonarwork equalization I can also achieve with the "room controls" on the back of the studio monitors
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You're better off using the peq in global eq of axe fx for output block1 /2 or whatever you are using. Check the setup page if you want to approximate the correction yourself, but you wont get really accurate.

The controls at the back are pretty useless for room correction as Marsonic said but can offer some amount of control i got a dsp screen at back of my monitor allowing me peq changes but i have not tweaked it much. Regardless Sonarworks will pick what is being heard, so if you apply he - 6db low shelf SW will pick it up anyway and if it is over compensation it will add back some, so best leave it at flat , so you actually hear your room. so redo the calibration.

As others said SW correction is pretty detailed
For reference you see one of the curves attached below. More convenient to turn this into an ir and load into axe rather than do it yourself .
 

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Gl4th said:
So they are totally useless? Better to keep them flat?
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Not necessarily. They do different things.

Most people adjust those controls to what sounds good. What they're actually for is adjusting things like whether the speaker is closer to free field (e.g., on a stand out into the room) vs. half-loaded (very near a wall) vs. vaguely quarter-loaded (on a desk near a wall). All of those are very vague adjustments and not nearly the end of the story.

I'm honestly not sure what's best. When I have had speakers with those controls and room correction, I've always left the speakers set for free-field and let the room correction do its thing. But if, for example, you're hitting the limit of what the correction can do and still need more of a boost or cut, you can adjust those controls, re-do the calibration, and let them work together.

ETA: my speakers are passive. So, they don't have those controls. Neither do my amps. Room treatment + Room correction still works great.

luke said:
Or just do the whole damn wall. 😉
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https://media.tenor.com/images/83c14d73cc24727714c42f640d941883/tenor.gif
 
Just tried with my headphones, Audio Technica ATH-M50X.

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Honestly the difference is practically impossible to hear, with multiple genres of music or with guitar no difference honestly. Even the curves are not that far away from the flat one...I hope that with the monitors it will be more evident or I think I will return everything.
 
Dave Merrill said:
How much worse is IK's ARC than Sonarworks?

I've had ARC for years, bought on sale, but I've never done it completely right.
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Should not be worse, which version do you have, Both SW and ARC do the same thing more or less. You have more mic options with the arc and they make many different measurement mics.
 
Gl4th said:
Just tried with my headphones, Audio Technica ATH-M50X.

View attachment 95398

Honestly the difference is practically impossible to hear, with multiple genres of music or with guitar no difference honestly. Even the curves are not that far away from the flat one...I hope that with the monitors it will be more evident or I think I will return everything.
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These headphones are not pretty colored themselves as well apart from the higher end after 10k which is not really noticeable to alot of people. it will only correct what needs to be corrected. so if you use headphones that more or less arent colored it will not apply as much correction either.

To hear difference form guitar you need to check it in the daw setup a monitoring channel, turn input monitoring on and mute output 1. copy to output 2 to hear the difference, as the standalone app doesnt pick any audio from the guitar but only the system.

Also ensure you're choosing the sound id output on windows , instead of your standard user interface, if i pick axe 3 on windows output and not sound id , it doesnt apply corrections, sometimes windows chooses axe .over sound id.

click on translation check and selection some profiles, and see.

Look at the difference of correction for my headphones for example.
 

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jin1995x said:
as the standalone app doesnt pick any audio from the guitar but only the system
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So the standalone without a daw and the axe in the analog in of the interface won’t get any correction?

I would need it more for playing than for recording.
 
Gl4th said:
So the standalone without a daw and the axe in the analog in of the interface won’t get any correction?

I would need it more for playing than for recording.
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YEP you need to create a monitoring channel in the daw, turn input monitoring on and mute the axe analog out put audio, other than the usb one. to not hear double sound, as your guitar signal can be fed into the computer only via usb.

You just need it open with monitoring on no need to record.

To offset this very issue i make irs of the correction curve with and add it to axe , so then i never need to use daw unless i am recording.

TO hear a difference on headphones, you can choosetranslation check and look for some airpods or car stereo curves, that way while you dont need reference for flat headphones you can still use this for translation.
 
jin1995x said:
To offset this very issue i make irs of the correction curve with and add it to axe , so then i never need to use daw unless i am recording.
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This is a great idea that I will explore for sure. Thanks a lot for all of the info you are sharing.
 
IDK....that correction looks like it would sound significant to me.

Obviously, YMMV. But, that's why trials are awesome.

Dave Merrill said:
How much worse is IK's ARC than Sonarworks?

I've had ARC for years, bought on sale, but I've never done it completely right.
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I'm not convinced it is worse. I saw a review/comparison between Arc, SW, the Waves one, and DiracLive a little while ago that pretty much concluded that whichever measurement system/protocol makes sense to you is the one you should use.

I'm pretty sure most of the reason that Trinnov commands the price it does (apart from just seeming "high end") is the ability to interpret it's somewhat ridiculous "3D" measurement mic to "fix" errors inherent in taking measurements. I'm also pretty sure it's the only one that natively does things like Atmos (if you buy the correct, even more expensive, version). But, I also think Atmos is a bit ridiculous apart from the binaural fold-down.
 
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