Waves Audio's NX (virtual mix room for headphones) has caused a bit of a stir since it was released. Gary Hiebner checks it out, and quite frankly finds it very, very impressive.  

What is NX?

Waves NX

Setup

Add plugin

What is Head Tracking? 

Head Tracking

Tweaking the Virtual Room Settings

Room and Speaker

Surround Sound 

Conclusion

Gary Hiebner is an enthusiastic South African Sound Designer and Apple Tech Head! Gary has been involved in the South African music industry for the decade, and in this time has also been involved in the sound design and music production for many advertising agencies and media houses. Gary is a devoted Logic and Ableton user, but he al... Read More

Discussion

mikelava
I bought the NX plug-in when it first came out, thinking it was a pretty neat solution to mixing on headphones. While it does give you a different perspective than just using headphones alone, it's not quite what I was expecting. I don't mix in surround, so the surround mode made little difference to me. I ran some stereo mixes I'd done through the plug-in and wasn't sure what to make of it. Also, I turned off the head tracking, as that was more of a "look at that!" selling point than anything else. I'm always in the sweet spot. Anyway, the EQ changes when turning the plug-in on and off. The stereo image changes too, unexpectedly, but I'm not sure the change in EQ is a good thing. I'd be willing to bet more than half of listeners today are using ear buds or Beats headphones. That got me thinking that maybe using the NX isn't such a good idea for mixing a song with headphone playback in mind. The listener certainly won't have NX to use to hear what I hear. So, in my opinion, NX is a nice idea that just leaves something to be desired.

Want to join the discussion?

Create an account or login to get started!