New Music Gear Monday: HoRNet VHS Virtual Headphone System Plugin

Mixing on headphones has always been hit or miss (mostly miss), but recently we’ve seen some excellent room compensation plugins come on the market that make headphone mixing a viable alternative to speakers for the first time. Most of these are somewhat expensive and the setup can be a little more involved than plug and play however. This all changes with the new HoRNet VHS virtual headphone system that’s both simple to use and inexpensive as well.

VHS (which stands for virtual headphone system, if you haven’t worked that out already) provides both headphone EQ correction and room simulation in a simple, clean interface. The Headphone Correction section on the left allows you to select from a long list of headphone models (more than 100, in fact), then shows you a graph of the correction curve, which is pretty interesting.

The Room Simulation section on the right is as simple as it is unique. The Speakers control moves the speakers back from the virtual wall, while the Listener control moves you back from the speakers. A combination of the two gives you just the right virtual distance to feel comfortable. This is something that I always wished for personally, since sometimes you just want to crawl into the speakers to hear more detail. Backing further away is easy in real life if you want to blast, but now you can do either quickly and easily in the virtual world.

In/out selectors for both Headphone Correction and Room Simulation sections are also included, but other than that, there’s not much else, which is refreshing in a way. It just works.

Here’s the best part – VHS is priced at only 11 Euros or $11.70 USD. Yes, there’s a trial version available, but it’s inexpensive enough that you can take a fling without coming close to breaking the bank.

If you want to find out more about, or purchase, HoRNet VHS, go here, or watch the video below to see it in action.

---