“Sonarworks fixed my Sennheiser HD650's. I bought a pair and was considering returning them until I tried them with Sonarworks Sound ID Reference headphone calibration and all the problems I was hearing virtually disappeared. The low end comes to life and the mid-range flattens out in a very natural-sounding way. The dry/wet slider is an excellent feature too, it sounds like it overshoots it a bit at 100% so I keep it at 97% and it sounds perfect there. I only took one star off because I tried Sonarworks with my HD 280's (new facelift) as well, and the calibration was much farther off target. I actually still use it with those cans too, but only at 37%. It helps reign in the overly present bass and midrange while brightening up the rather dull high end, but anything past 37% and it starts sounding wonky in a really unpleasant way. So even where it doesn't quite nail it, Sonarworks still offers an improvement over my untreated cans. The ability to save presets for the different headphones is extremely helpful too, so it's super easy to switch back and forth to check my mixes.”
“Sometimes I play guitar through headphones and sometimes through studio monitors. This software makes it a bit less painful to switch between the two, I don't need to have completely different guitar presets for both. Only downside is that I need to load everything up in a DAW because the software doesn't work if it's on at the same time with a standalone guitar amp simulation software so it's not completely a set and forget thing.
The software has glitched out a few times but it has been more stable than one free EQ software that I've used in the past. And also being able to load it up in a DAW is something that the free software didn't have. You could get the same results with some elbow grease and without spending any money but if you're lazy like myself, it's an alright purchase.
My main reason for purchasing was that the free software I used wasn't stable enough and required some tinkering occasionally to get it to work and I didn't want to mess with it that much. Also I had to use another EQ in my DAW and if I made a change to one EQ I had to make it to the other one too, so the SoundID Reference for headphones saves me a few clicks. It's a shortcut to a more neutral sound in and out of your DAW.”
“Not very accurate... I use Audeze LCD X headphones and your plugin modeling is not translating well to my car, my MacBook pro, Bluetooth speakers, or my AirPods. My mixes sound better across all these devices when I simply don't use your plugin, which is why I'm rating you so low... If I'm doing something wrong please reach out to me and let me know.”
