Waves Nx

[RuffiansFC]

Waves has a new plug-in that allows you to mix in a virtual room with headphones. It uses a webcam to track your head movements, to get you closer to the real deal. There is even support for 5.0 and 5.1 mixing.

Sounds great, but is it bad to be as skeptical as I am? They are giving a 14-day trial and the plug-in is about $50 right now. I have a few waves plug-ins and I have mixed feeling about them. They can make a job easy, but they can also create more work than necessary. I can't help but think this isn't the god send I see and read a lot of people make it out to be. To me, it seems like it would give more false security than anything.

[Telliot]

I'm having the same feelings! I'm super excited by the possibilities as I tend to primarily record and mix in headphones late at night while the family sleeps, but I'm very skeptical. That said, for $50 and a free 14-day trial it's hard to pass up.

[Larry Mal]

In the past, I've questioned Waves and been wrong. They do a well thought out job for the most part, and their products (I own a lot of them) are very good.

I'm deeply skeptical of this. I don't see how a simulated mixing room environment produced on headphones is going to lead to a mix that will translate automatically to the variety of speakers that a good mix needs to be played on, earbuds, car stereo speakers, mono clock radios, high end speakers and PA systems.

I can't say it won't help... but I don't think this product will do much more than give people false confidence in their mixes done on headphones. Because some of the limitations of headphones is their excess... they produce much deeper, and often tighter, bass sounds than you will encounter on speakers that are not an inch from your ear drums, and so on. That's why headphone mixes can be deceiving, not that headphones aren't wonderful. In some ways they are too good.

But, I've been wrong with Waves products before.

[øøøøøøø]

for me the biggest shortcomings of headphones is a bit different than what you're saying, Larry.

For me it has more to do with the fact that you cannot get a true stereophonic image in headphones. It's not a stereo experience-- it's a binaural one, and trying to make stereo mixes with binaural listening is a big guessing game. There's no "phantom center," or to the extent that there is, it's coming from INSIDE your head, not on a "soundstage" or "panorama" in front of you. This changes the perception of balances dramatically, so it's really hard to balance in cans.

[Telliot]

Makes sense.

[Larry Mal]

That's a good point, but I wasn't trying to make a thorough list of ways that headphone mixes don't translate to actual stereo speakers, I just picked the first thing that I can think of, and the bass was the first thing I could think of. I'm sure there's any number of ways.

And ways that this software won't be able to bridge over, but again, I have been wrong before.

[Larry Mal]

I remember that I spent a lot of time deriding Vocal Rider when it came out, as just another compressor (which it is not), and then actually shut my mouth and found out that it's very cool.

And the One Knob stuff I thought of as horrible, but they have their use, I guess.

Waves GTR is probably my favorite virtual amp, and I never hear anything about it.

So who knows? Waves doesn't usually make crap. But I just can't see what they are doing with this. I suppose it's designed for hobbyists and maybe EDM producers or something. I don't know.

If I was richer, I'd gamble the fifty big ones and tell us all about it. But I think you should, instead.

[mackerelmint]

There have been plugs and hardware gizmos for a few years that do this, or at least try to. I've never used any. Opinions on them differ. I'd be willing to bet that this is a refinement that works better than the others, but that's just a guess.

The webcam headtracking feature is a pretty cool idea that's probably terrible in practice. I'm curious to hear people's impressions, though.

[Dok]

I tried it for about five minutes. I couldn't figure out how it would be all that useful. Seems to just add a little ambience to your mix. And if your webcam is off-center like mine because I also use an external monitor, well, shit is gonna be lopsided right off the bat. Meh.