Jarick
Rock Star
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- 5,364
Breaking this out into a separate thread.
I've struggled with monitoring guitar at home...I really prefer to play with headphones but it doesn't sound the best. It's often too dry and harsh sounding and really exaggerates any weirdness in the frequency response, especially with distorted guitar. It can be fun with a lot of effects but not very natural sounding. I really like the sound of an actual speaker in the place we don't talk about because it's focused but diffused, if that makes sense. But then you miss out on cool stereo effects. And studio monitors to me have always been a struggle, it's too bright or not enough body and then you have weird room response, etc.
So I was looking at maybe trying different speakers again, or getting another speaker cab, or something else...but I realized I always go back to headphones and I already have really great ones like Sennheiser HD 490's and 600's. I've tried Sonarworks EQ correction but that's really hit or miss and doesn't really make playing guitar more enjoyable.
Then I came across the IK ARC On Ear which is a headphone DAC/amp with EQ correction, headphone/speaker modeling, and virtual speaker simulation. The last part really intrigues me. The idea is probably similar to cross-feed features that are on some high end headphone amps, which feeds a bit of the left and right signal into each other with some type of short delay. There's a long description here.
Anyways, for $250 I figured I'd roll the dice, and that will be here tomorrow. But I couldn't leave well enough alone, and came across this Realphones plugin by a company called dSonic? It also does headphone correction with speaker and room modeling. The latter again does something with the stereo image that I think is similar to the cross-feed functionality?
They offer a 40 day free trial so I grabbed that and have been playing with it all day. I have to say it's a lot of fun! The headphone correction isn't as extreme or unnatural as Sonarworks, but I tend to keep it at or under 50% correction. However the speaker/room modeling is really interesting. Cranked way up it can sound a bit like a room reverb effect, but generally it's a really short ambience effect that changes up the EQ, smoothing out the high end, and creating a much more solid center image. It may be kind of like a binaural impulse response with some other stuff going on.
Regardless, while playing guitar it really made it sound a hell of a lot more like playing a virtual amp. It's much less like sound coming at you from the sides of your head and more like sound coming at you front in front of your head. Stereo effects are WILD, you would think they wound sound less intense as they are less wide, but they again sound more like something in front of your ears. Ambient effects like reverb are a bit more exaggerated but it all sounds a bit more natural. And generally the EQ is rolling off some harshness and some of the rumbly low end too. That makes it more forgiving.
It also works well for music and general audio like YouTube. You can dial in the amount of room simulation you want so can add in like 30-40% mix which gives you again what I'd call a pretty natural sounding effect like it's in front of you instead of in your ears. The plugin also has a system wide mode; on my Mac you can pick it as an audio output and then in the plugin you can have it run to your interface. So I can bypass it by going to the UAD Apollo or select the Realphones and it still plays through the Apollo but with the effect on. Of course that means it will go to monitors too...
EDIT: I forgot to mention latency! There's almost none with the plugin. I ran my Axe 3 into the Apollo, then opened up Logic, brought that in with input monitoring, then enabled the plugin. There's like 1ms of latency maybe. I can't really feel or hear the difference vs running direct.
I'll report back tomorrow once the ARC arrives and I can mess around with it, but I may have to buy the Realphones software regardless of what I do with the ARC. I think it's pretty reasonably too like $60?
I've struggled with monitoring guitar at home...I really prefer to play with headphones but it doesn't sound the best. It's often too dry and harsh sounding and really exaggerates any weirdness in the frequency response, especially with distorted guitar. It can be fun with a lot of effects but not very natural sounding. I really like the sound of an actual speaker in the place we don't talk about because it's focused but diffused, if that makes sense. But then you miss out on cool stereo effects. And studio monitors to me have always been a struggle, it's too bright or not enough body and then you have weird room response, etc.
So I was looking at maybe trying different speakers again, or getting another speaker cab, or something else...but I realized I always go back to headphones and I already have really great ones like Sennheiser HD 490's and 600's. I've tried Sonarworks EQ correction but that's really hit or miss and doesn't really make playing guitar more enjoyable.
Then I came across the IK ARC On Ear which is a headphone DAC/amp with EQ correction, headphone/speaker modeling, and virtual speaker simulation. The last part really intrigues me. The idea is probably similar to cross-feed features that are on some high end headphone amps, which feeds a bit of the left and right signal into each other with some type of short delay. There's a long description here.
Anyways, for $250 I figured I'd roll the dice, and that will be here tomorrow. But I couldn't leave well enough alone, and came across this Realphones plugin by a company called dSonic? It also does headphone correction with speaker and room modeling. The latter again does something with the stereo image that I think is similar to the cross-feed functionality?
They offer a 40 day free trial so I grabbed that and have been playing with it all day. I have to say it's a lot of fun! The headphone correction isn't as extreme or unnatural as Sonarworks, but I tend to keep it at or under 50% correction. However the speaker/room modeling is really interesting. Cranked way up it can sound a bit like a room reverb effect, but generally it's a really short ambience effect that changes up the EQ, smoothing out the high end, and creating a much more solid center image. It may be kind of like a binaural impulse response with some other stuff going on.
Regardless, while playing guitar it really made it sound a hell of a lot more like playing a virtual amp. It's much less like sound coming at you from the sides of your head and more like sound coming at you front in front of your head. Stereo effects are WILD, you would think they wound sound less intense as they are less wide, but they again sound more like something in front of your ears. Ambient effects like reverb are a bit more exaggerated but it all sounds a bit more natural. And generally the EQ is rolling off some harshness and some of the rumbly low end too. That makes it more forgiving.
It also works well for music and general audio like YouTube. You can dial in the amount of room simulation you want so can add in like 30-40% mix which gives you again what I'd call a pretty natural sounding effect like it's in front of you instead of in your ears. The plugin also has a system wide mode; on my Mac you can pick it as an audio output and then in the plugin you can have it run to your interface. So I can bypass it by going to the UAD Apollo or select the Realphones and it still plays through the Apollo but with the effect on. Of course that means it will go to monitors too...
EDIT: I forgot to mention latency! There's almost none with the plugin. I ran my Axe 3 into the Apollo, then opened up Logic, brought that in with input monitoring, then enabled the plugin. There's like 1ms of latency maybe. I can't really feel or hear the difference vs running direct.
I'll report back tomorrow once the ARC arrives and I can mess around with it, but I may have to buy the Realphones software regardless of what I do with the ARC. I think it's pretty reasonably too like $60?
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