🎚️ Headphones mixing plugins.

All these things like Realphones, Waves Abbey Road, Acustica Audio Sienna etc.

Do they sound like real speakers? Hell no. It's impossible. Forget about it. Everyone's favorite Slate VSX doesn't sound just like the speakers either.

But, what it does, it helps to listen to the mix from different sides. And it does help to find mistakes in your mix that you normally don't hear in your headphones.

You just have to keep in mind that:

1. I recommend to use the calibration separately from studio emulations. You should either use the calibration all the time or not. Switching back and forth between calibrated sound and not will never give you accurate results because brain needs time to adapt.

2. Before using these as a tool, find presets that work for you and that actually show some problems that you SURELY know are there. Like if you heard some problem in your car, or through laptop speakers, or at some big speakers, try to find a preset that will show this problem in the plugin. I did that many times and it does work. If you randomly start turn on this plugin without knowing anything about how it sounds it's useless.

3. Don't try to use too many different presets. If I check mixes in Realphones I stick to 2 presets (Nick's home studio Far for vocal balance and Studio A Far for lows and low mids. Those 2 presets help to cover things that normally are very hard to do in headphones. If you will try to use too many presets you will be counter productive.

I also have crossfeed from Realphones always engaged for more natural stereo image during mixing if I work in headphones.

But most importantly, remember that no plugin can fix bad headphones. It's just physics. If they have weak materials and introduce distortion to sound they will always lack clarity, details, accurate soundstage etc and no EQ can fix it.

My take on VSX? Everyone asks all the time. It's a scam to say that it's million dollar studios on your head for $500. Not true. And I think it's not more effective than other good headphones + some software. In my opinion. I'd stick to headphones that I love and connect some third-party software to them. With ability to switch my headphones later and not depending on VSX.

@natemixing