Oooohh! That’s a good question!
So I started a mix last night basically from scratch… I had only done prep work on it so far (basic balance, gating, gain staging blah blah blah). I did a first pass of the mix just on headphones with AR3. Came out sounding pretty decent, with the usual small balance tweaks and EQ carving that will be needed. One interesting thing to note, usually my first pass of a mix is pretty bass-heavy (room issues), but this one was a little bit light on the low end… not far off though which was cool. I probably needed to reference a bit more, but I did feel a little more confident in the accuracy of what I was hearing.
I’m going to finish this mix just on headphones with AR3 then I’ll share.
Early impressions: It’s actually pretty cool! I’ll need to use it a bit more to see if it’s actually a useful tool in the longer term… but hearing the mix this morning makes me a bit more confident in what I was hearing using it.
I think the lingering question I have though is: Is this doing anything more for me than straight headphone calibration a la Sonarworks?
1 Like
It’s a very different idea. headphone calibration is essentially trying to flatten out the headphones’ frequency response. AR3 is doing room/monitor emulation. The monitor emulation is definitely a useful idea. There are things you can hear in monitors that you can’t really hear in headphones. It also works the other way around.
With AR3, you can get the benefits (or at least some of the benefits) of listening on monitors without the need of actually having monitors, because in 95% of mixing rooms, the acoustics are so bad that the benefits of monitors are pretty well masked by the issues.
1 Like
I understand the concept of both… I think I didn’t word the question how I actually intended it.
I’m just wondering if at the end of the day, in a scenario where I’m mixing purely on headphones, that I would churn out a better mix using AR3.
So far I think the answer would probably be yes… to your point @bozmillar having room/monitor emulation in the headphones is certainly a more useful thing thank just a flat frequency response.
I think the ideal is to use both. Use sonarworks to flatten out the frequency response, then use AR3 to emulate the monitors and room.
I personally prefer doing most of my mixing in headphones and use monitors to check stuff. But I know others have the completely opposite opinion. I would imagine that I would feel less fatigue listening through AR3 for long periods of time than straight headphones though.
1 Like
I think I would really like this (AR3)… but probably couldn’t bear to turn it off afterwards.
So, not sure… My monitors cost 10x ($1500) what my headphones cost ($150), yet I trust my old AKG headphones maybe 30% more due to ‘life’ situations etc.
Shit, my life was far less complicated 20 years ago.
1 Like
Update on this…
I tried ARS3 a while ago, and liked it, but wasn’t sure I really needed it. I just tried the V11 demo and really didn’t care for it.
It’s weird, but I’m getting some strange kind of wobbly phase effect when I enable this plugin. It’s in the center of the stereo field. I don’t remember that from the V10 issue of this. I really want to like it, but it doesn’t sound natural. Also boosts the bass to high heaven.
On another post somewhere, @takka360 recommended Canopener. Tried that and it’s not as “fun” as ARS2, and is much more subtle, but I think is also more helpful. Doesn’t mess up the sound the way ARS2 does. I really do not recall reacting this way to the V10 of ARS2. Anyone else experiencing this with ARS3/V11?