Anyone tried the SoundID/Apollo integration yet?

wiz ?

I recently rebuilt my studio and added more acoustic treatments. Haven't used Trinnov or SoundID before, but was still struggling with low end build up affecting my mixes. I participated in the beta program for this and can say it really did fix the problems I was having. The sweet spot for me seems to be around 60% wet. Much more than that and I can hear the correction and not in a good way. The low end feels tight. I also found that my high-mids were registering slightly wider before - which was false. I'm now I'm able to actually mix wider because I'm hearing it right. This is uncluttering my mixes a bit from L to R when listening elsewhere. From talking to other users, it seems that the SoundID results are significantly better with filtering happening on the Apollo instead of software. Overall: I do believe this has saved me from going with a full Trinnov setup, which I really didn't want to pay for. Set up was really easy, too, which I wasn't expecting.

Here's my perspective and how things "evolved"... When I opened the studio here, I started with Adam A7's. Had to do a bunch of stuff for the buildout and buy a lot of stuff at once, I knew the A7's really well and knew I could mix well on them. Had them for a few years, finally upgraded to the Barefoot Footprint 01's when they were first announced. Ran those for about 6 months or so, noticed that I was not catching a lot of harshness issues on them. Broke down and reluctantly tried Sonarworks for the first time, I did not like how it sounded overall but it was definitely revealing the harshness issues clearly. I kind of "eased into things", and was able to get a balance I was comfortable with by running Sonarworks at around 75% or so. Dialed in there, the speakers still sounded familiar with the way I was used to them, and was showing me sibilance problems and other things up top that I wasn't getting before. 

At the suggestion of someone at Sonarworks, I slowly started turning up the blend about a percent or so every week. I basically turned the blend up until I could hear a big difference, and then backed it off a little. Over the next 6 month period, I gradually worked my way up to 100%. When I got to that point, turning off Sonarworks sounded like complete crap to me. That really surprised me. Even trying to turn it back down to around the 75% blend I started with sounded "off" and bad to me.

When I upgraded again to my the MM45's I have now, I started fresh. Shot out the room, went 100% in with the correction. It's been great. If you're getting a brand new pair of speakers and using sonarworks for the the first time, just set it to 100% right out of the gate and go through the normal learning process. If you've got a very familiar pair of speakers that you've mixed on a for a while, the initial "shock" of hearing what sonarworks does is probably going to be way too much. You'll need to start small and work your way in more than likely. 

That's my take on all of this, and I think it's what sonarworks recommends as well. Everyone's different, but my recommendation would be to treat the blend as a band aid and try to work your way into using it 100%.

Got it installed last night…Will give it a run today

cheers

Wiz

Yeah I was going to say phase…but I don’t know the right word to say.

The whole concept of this feature just reeks of something marketing guys who didn’t pay attention in high school physics came up with.

The same wouldn't apply with a high pass filter though right? If I'm only treating about 200 Hz or something like that.P

I don't do that, I just drag a little bar that determines which frequencies are affected.

Well that is good news. Finally some usable headphone outs on the Apollo platform.

All the early reports seem to indicate this is a clear step above other software monitor correction solutions.

Hope to hear how it compares with the Trinnov.

Wiz: Do you have the old original Extreme Isolation EX29 headphones? They really sound much better with the correction?

Like good enough to mix on not just a nice tracking tool?

X


I don’t ever mix on headphones……it is a significant improvement…and sort of feels like a bonus

Strange behavior?

So I just shot all my monitors, made profiles, etc...all good.

But now when I play a ruff mix I've been working on, and I thought was close to finished, any drum tracks that had samples underneath using Superior Drummer III are all going NUTS?

False triggering like crazy, which is making playback impossible?

Anyone have a clue as to why this is happening, everything was perfect till I loaded the SoundID thing with the speaker profiles?


Never ends!

Exactly ! ? !

That was my reaction...

I can't even play the track back without shutting all the triggers off?
And its a slow mid tempo tune, but with the triggers in place sounds like machine guns ?

I tried the 5 tunes from the same artist, as well as a few others, and it's the same with all of them?
Random triggering for some reason after I downloaded the Sound ID stuff, and ran the speaker setup, and loaded it up.

This really sucks!