This seems a bit ridiculous at first glance, but I’ll try it for shits n’ giggles if I can. I’m interested to hear people’s thoughts…
They do do midrange exceptionally well, THIS COULD EASILY be just as good.
I just picked up the Nx Virtual Mix Room plugin on sale, and then they send me a special deal (supposedly) on this ARS3. I haven’t got to use the Nx yet, but I put it on my Reaper “Monitoring FX” and that Head Tracking thing keeps popping up every time I open Reaper. I don’t really plan on using that part, though I may play with it. I mainly wanted to see if the Nx helped with mixing on headphones with its basic features. The ARS3 says it is based on the Nx technology, so I’d have to be impressed by Nx first. TBD
I’ve had NX I think since it came out (or thereabouts). It’s been some time since I’ve used it so I don’t really recall much about it, so I think I’ll re-visit it. Definitely agree with you that NX needs to provide a clear benefit for me to even consider ARS3. I don’t recall being super impressed but that was like 2 or 3 years ago. Since I’ve gotten Sonarworks that’s been my go-to for headphones (as well as room correction).
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I just tried it now, and it does give a sense of space emulating a room, which is part of what it was intended to do as I understand it. Still new to the plugin though. I haven’t figured out about using Head Tracking or if any of it is supposed to translate to the mix, only that it might give a more realistic sense of space like mixing on monitors in a room.
From what I recall it’s a spatial thing, like if I were to move my head closer to one of the monitors it would emulate the volume/spatial shift.
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Just the ability to listen to 5.1 and 7.1 content on headphones is interesting! Might have to check it out.
Any update on this? I’m very curious as to whether this might possibly live up to the hype.
Here’s an interesting review by the white sea studio guy. Bottom line is that he thought it sounded impressive but that the concept i absolutely lame. I love that guy’s reviews. He’s got some substance and good skills. But he’s also hilarious to watch. He cracks me up. Very entertaining.
So, anyway, I’m longing to hear someone reply that this thing is so awesome that I don’t have to worry about treating my studio room. Yeah, baby! 
So if you’re up for a chuckle, go to this point in his video and watch him go off on this plugin. Makes me smile! Just for kicks. 
Too lazy to watch, but I actually WANT my studio monitors to sound like my headphones. So if I put this on my headphones, will that make it easier to transition between the two?
Maybe if you had one separate plugin for each, so you could match the TWO up. Maybe you select your headphones from one list and your monitors from another, or have a users website with presets… I dunno.
Somebody feel free to mention this to Waves, if you get the chance.
I’ve watched a lot of his stuff… he does some great review but sometimes he plays stupid when he’s reviewing something and it’s infuriating 
I’ll have to watch the whole thing, I just went to the point you called out in your later comment… I do partially agree with him, it’s a lot of marketing silliness for something that does a similar thing as say, Sonarworks: take the frequency response of a known entity (the headphone profile) and apply correction so that it sounds like something else. If someone was purely mixing on headphones (which obviously isn’t optimal but some people don’t have a choice), then it could be useful.
Isn’t that the idea behind Sonarworks? At least in theory anyways… I have my room corrected with Sonarworks to be as “flat” as possible, and I have the headphone profile for the cans I use. IN THEORY, these should be similar after correction, as it should be a flat response. Of course there’s a lot more factors to take into consideration like reflections etc…
I think that’s the problem with these programs/plugins, and the youtube review linked above does touch on it: that there’s way more to getting these sounds than just EQ correction. I’d be interested to know if there was any kind of mojo in the Abbey Road plug that simulates room reflections etc…
@Tesgin in the interests of science, I’m gonna buy this today and give it a whirl. I’ll report back!
I guess I posted before watching the videos, sorry… I have no clue what Sonarworks does either. But now Ive watched a little bit, why wouldn’t you want to just keep the Abbey Road 3 version of the mix?
Is the demo free for a few weeks? Its probably worth trying on every channel, just to see if thats cooler than using traditional ambience effects.
Don’t quote me on this, because I could be wrong here, but my understanding is that sonar works does EQ correction, whereas Abbey Road studio 3 more does correction based on impulse responses.They do list only a handful of headphones for which they also do EQ correction as well. Fortunately, my Sennheiser HD 600s happen to be on that shortlist! I’m very happy about this.
I’m not really sure that I understand how this would be different than just using an impulse loader that has impulse responses from Abbey Road studio. Maybe that’s all it is?
Nice. Looking forward to hearing your critique.
Yes it is.
You are correct… I think I was over-simplifying the comparison.
I think so… it would certainly be interesting to know exactly what’s under the hood, but at first glance I would assume that’s correct
It’s actually not a per-channel based effect like a console emulator… the idea is, you throw it just before your output so it affects the entire mix.
Ok so I threw AR3 on a mix I’m working on.
As I mentioned earlier, I use Sonarworks for my monitors and headphones… switching from that to Abbey Road (I have AT M50’s, which are “supported” by AR3) didn’t make a huge difference in the sound I was hearing, but it definitely was different. Now that was just a quick listen… I’m going to finish the mix (I had barely gotten started) with Abbey Road and see where I net out as opposed to doing what I normally do.
Now in theory, Sonarworks gives me a relatively flat response through my headphones, so I’m curious to see how using Abbey Road instead will change my decision-making, if at all. Science experiment!
For those interested in the nerdy side of this:
yes, I totally get that, what I want to know is, can I also creatively ABUSE what it does?