“This tool may simply be the best addition to your mixing setup. After running the program and creating a speaker profile I was hearing my mixes in a completely new way. The profile creation was very easy to do and took about 20 minutes. My only complaint is I wish I could route my headphone profiles and my speaker profile at the same time.”
“The Headphones section is pretty easy to understand. Applying the flat curve really eliminates the peaking frequencies. I still added a little bit of coloration so they sound more natural.
Measurement of speakers is very tricky sometimes. Especially the part when you have to hold the Microphones to the mid range speakers. The left side usually works fine but the right side is nearly impossible to get right. Even when you follow all the steps of the help section it's a lucky game. The software might get it right after some tries. Even though you don't change a thing just run this step 5 times. The 5th time the software finally gets it right so you can move on.”
“When it is up and running the improvement of the sound is impressive. However, I sometimes have the issue that the Program wont start, then i have to reboot my Pc and try again. SoundID dies show up in Taskmanager but it isn't enough to stop it there and try again, I have to reboot. It isn't too bad but it is annoying.
All in all I am really happy with Sonarworks, even though there are some small areas of improvement left.”
“I bought the Sonarworks software SoundID Reference for Speaker & Headphone with a microphone to calibrate my home hi-fi system.
I play music with Audirvana and the SoundID plugin works perfectly fine. I can now switch between my headphones (pre-calibrated) and my loudspeaker (self-calibrated) just with a click.”
“Honestly blown away by how polished and easy to use SoundID is. Yes it's pricey, but everything just works and gets you that neutral balance you need for music production!”
“Fast shipping - I ordered around 9 a.m. and the microphone was already shipped at noon. Arrived very quickly. The microphone is very solidly made and, together with the holder, packed in a nice package.
I work with mixes in an imperfect room, on LSR monitors from JBL. Above 1khz it's very ok, but below that I have a lot of problems with this room.
The measurement itself is efficient and the instructions are clear, you will definitely get it right. The measurement results are very repeatable. You can use a microphone stand, but the measurement is very, very similar even without it.
In my case, it was literally the effect of 'removing the blanket' from the speakers. I think it was mainly due to equalizing the 150-400 range, which was responsible for the boxy sound, and also tidying up the bass below 100 Hz. Now bass is more audible and I feel how it “works”. I didn't expect such an effect!
Cool feature - you can adjust the range of the band to be corrected using the area sliders in the Custom Target profile.
The advice I've seen is to gradually increase the amount of correction using the dry/wet dial, over a few weeks. The idea is to get used to the new sound. I chose to make it 100% from the beginning. It's like I had new monitors! And it's just the joy of listening. I recommend it this way, but you can try and modify it as you like.
I also really liked the headphone correction, which I had already tested (in the version without a microphone). I know well the sound of my headphones, but after calibration they do not have that difficult peak treble at 8kHz, which is the problem with this model, and the bass has also become even and it goes lower. This gives me a completely new listening perspective. Currently, I choose listening with calibration more and more often.
It's great that there is a systemwide driver available and I can listen to any application with calibration, YouTube, Tidal, etc. - a huge advantage and convenience. It is my default playback device in Windows now. And it works just flawless.
To sum up, I already feel much more confident doing the mix. I definitely recommend it, especially where you cannot afford extensive (and also more expensive) acoustic adaptation. Listening to music is now even more of a pleasure, so I recommend it not only to music creators. One of the best audio gear investments past last years.”
