With so many of us working in less than ideal mixing environments, referencing on headphones or even producing mixes from scratch on headphones has become a fact of life. Does this have to be a compromise? Audeze doesn’t think so, and in this article and video, Luke Goddard looks at the Audeze Reveal+ plugin that transports you and your headphones to some of the best sounding spaces out there.
What Do Virtual Studio Plugins Do?
Using headphones takes a bad sounding room out of the equation, but we also lose the loudspeaker monitoring experience that most of us associate with “proper” mixing. You can read more about exactly what these differences are in Julian Rodgers' article here.
Virtual studio solutions provide a loudspeaker mixing experience over headphones, and they all use software to apply a compensated response to headphones to give us a more accurate loudspeaker-like environment to mix in.
How Does Audeze Reveal+ Do It?
Audeze’s Reveal+ system uses a stereo plugin with a known output device (Audeze’s own range of headphones). What sets Reveal+ apart is its ability to “know” some of the variables at the destination, ie, our ears.
To use the system, you need to use a pair of cans from Audeze’s Reference range. Their planar magnetic drivers produce flatter wavefronts that are closer to those experienced by someone listening at some distance from loudspeakers.
The way sounds wrap and reflects into our ears can be measured to create a Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF) which is unique to each of us. Audeze uses an AI technology developed by Embody to map personalized HRTFs. You follow a few simple steps to upload an image of your right ear for analysis upon the first launch, and that’s it. To learn more about this technology watch this video.
How Does Audeze Reveal + Sound?
I know the anomalies of my own room well, so not having to mix around there was a luxury in itself. In common with a lot of small rooms, my room dimensions conspire to make holes in the low end at certain frequencies. Audeze sent a pair of the incredible LCD-X headphones, and with those Reveal+ gave me everything you would want from a good room, that is predictable bass, controlled ambience and sharp imaging.
The different rooms and monitors also give you distinct flavours which I found were useful in finding a familiar-sounding space. To my ears, it sounds better than “just” listening on headphones and infinitely better than loudspeaker monitoring in a bad room. It is not the same as listening over speakers, but it’s not pretending to be either.
Final Thoughts
While the headphones themselves need to be factored into the cost of the system, Reveal+ itself only is $99 when you buy Reference range headphones as part of the Producer Bundle. If you already have an Audeze headset you can purchase Reveal+ for $199. That’s a lot cheaper than changing your space.
Accurate loudspeaker monitoring environments might be out of reach for many, but Audeze Reveal+ gives you access to some seriously high-end loudspeaker environments. There is no doubt that combined with a pair of Audeze headphones, Reveal+ can be a cure for anyone wrestling with bumpy rooms or hyped headphones. If that sounds like you, it should definitely be on your shortlist.
For further details on Reveal+ and to download a 14-day demo, head to Audeze’s website.