Whenever I listen on headphones I have difficult placing the sound source anywhere other than inside my head, and I know there are others who experience headphone listening in a similar way. The effectiveness of speaker simulation over headphones depends to some extent on the individual. Your own settings can be saved as user presets. If you adjust these to correspond to your own actual measurements the positional effect will be more convincing. Importantly, the head-modelling section at the lower left makes some assumptions by using average head measurements. An XYZ lock switch disables all but the rotational elements of the processing, to allow movement away from the mixing position. The angles of these virtual speakers can be changed, as can the level of room reflections, with a Centre Trim control to reduce the level of ambience in the mid channel. With the tracker active, a virtual on-screen head moves to follow your own head position. For example, if your mix is set up for stereo, you’ll see two speakers, whereas if you have a 5.1 mix set up, you’ll see five speakers positioned around the head as well as a subwoofer.
#WAVES NX HEADPHONESWAVES NX HEADPHONES PRO#
The Nx Head Tracker is an inexpensive device that attaches to your headphones and communicates with the computer using Bluetooth.When working with a DAW - I tested it with Logic Pro - launching the Nx Virtual Mix Room plug-in automatically launches the separate Nx Head Tracker software and causes the plug-in to open in a format corresponding to the output channel format of the project. If you leave the headphones on the desk for a while the tracker will go to sleep to save battery power, necessitating a push of its button to bring it back to life. Pairing the tracker with the software is straightforward, and a blue status LED on the unit lets you know when it’s successfully connected. Powered by a single AAA battery and activated by a rubbery button, the tiny Head Tracker can follow head movement in all three dimensions, and there’s a Sweet Spot button in the plug-in window so that you can optimise listening for your preferred position.
#WAVES NX HEADPHONESWAVES NX HEADPHONES BLUETOOTH#
The Nx Head Tracker only works with the newer Bluetooth low-power systems (Bluetooth 4.0 BLE), so some older computers may not support it directly, though adding an inexpensive USB-BT4.0 BLE dongle should get you working. For the greatest precision and speed, it is possible to combine input from both the Head Tracker and camera. The Nx Head Tracker works in low light conditions and when you’re not directly in front of the computer it also responds rather more quickly to head movements than the camera. This can follow the movement of the user’s head, either using the computer’s built-in camera or, better still, the dedicated Waves Nx Head Tracker unit, which clips on top of your headphones using a thick rubber band and communicates with the computer using Bluetooth. That’s where Waves’ Nx head-tracking technology comes in. On headphones, the soundstage follows every movement of our heads not so with speakers, where the change in what we hear as our heads move is key to locating the direction from which the sound is coming. There have been other attempts to reproduce the loudspeaker listening experience on headphones, but many have failed to compensate for head position and movement. This includes simulating the reflective qualities of a well-designed control room and applying binaural processing to create a convincingly real listening experience, to the extent that Nx can present surround mixes in 7.1, 5.1 or 5.0 formats as well as mono and stereo, all using conventional stereo headphones. In an effort to narrow that gap, Waves have developed Nx: a monitoring plug-in that slots into a DAW’s master stereo out insert point with the aim of emulating a control room/loudspeaker environment when listening on conventional headphones.
We all know that listening on headphones provides a very different experience from listening on loudspeakers. Room simulation on headphones usually stops being convincing as soon as you move your head. The Nx Virtual Mix Room plug-in (left) is paired with a stand-alone program that sets up the head-tracking aspect of the product (right).
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