TL;DR:
Please add a crossfeed function and basic monitoring utilities in Sonarworks SoundID Reference for Headphones. More feature requests in the text below. Thank you! 🎧❤️
Background & Problem:
Following the current standards and trends of modern production styles, more and more audio work is being done on headphones. I am a daily user of Sonarworks SoundID Reference for Headphones and want to take the chance to improve on this software. Working and relying on headphones in professional audio has it's downsides that differ from working on a classic monitoring setup. In Stereo for example, it lacks the phenomenom of crossfeed, meaning the right ear hearing audio of the left monitor shortly after receiving the right monitors signal and vice versa. In headphones, the left and right channels are isolated and the right ear doesn't hear the left channel at all. This problem is well-known and typically results in wrong panning decisions, too loud mid-channel volumes (e.g. lead vocals) or reverb tails.
Solution:
To compensate for a missing crossfeed, other companies implement such feature in their software and hardware. Since this is the Sonarworks forum I will desist from naming specific brands or products, but will name specific features that I think are necessary:
- Dial for Crossfeed Amount (dialable 0-100 %)
- Dial for Crossfeed Angle (equals monitoring setup, dialable from at least 20° to 40°)
- Dial for Mid-Channel compensation (lower the mid-channel volume, standard is -1db)
To add to this function, which could be a small (maybe collapsable) monitoring section in SoundID RfH, basic monitoring toggles would be helpful:
- Mute
- Dim (by X db, changeable)
- Mono
- Flip L/R
- Flip Polarity
- Listen to Left/Mid-Channel only
- Listen to Ride/Side-Channel only
Edit: As stated by user Iñigo Egido before, MIDI compatability with these buttons would be great.
Conclusion:
Me (and I am sure many other users) need these features on a daily basis. While the ladder of these features are implemented in many DAWs, the main advantage with SoundID RfH is that it is also running stand-alone whereas other companies only produce software plugins that I cannot use to monitor any other audio source other than my DAW.
To be clear, having these features in SoundID RfH would not only prevent me from moving to another brands solution, it would also set your product apart from the competition due to being stand-alone, too.
Outlook:
Implementing said features paves the way of implementing room simulations as well as multi-channel (binaural Atmos) and other HRTF simulations, which is clearly more expensive but would surely acompany the Sonarworks portfolio in a great and sustainable way.
Feel free to contact me in case of any questions or tips leading to good benchmark products. I am happy to help.
Keep up your good work! 💪
Thanks
1 comment
Hi, thank you for your post and all of the feature details provided, it is really appreciated!
While some of the features and utilities you've noted are not available in SoundID Reference, I wanted to let you know that we have recently released a new feature in SoundID Reference which could be beneficial to try out in your case as well: Virtual Monitoring Add-On for SoundID Reference
Thanks again for your feedback, we've taken note of it :)