New Music Gear Monday: Abbey Road Studio 3 Headphone Reference Plugin

Everyone knows how difficult it is to actually mix on headphones. Since the drivers are so close to your ears, you lose the sense of space that you get with speakers, which means that some of your balance, panning and low-end decisions can be out of wack with what you hear on a pair of monitors. Waves has tried to conquer that problem with its groundbreaking NX technology, and now they’ve taken it one step further with the help of the legendary Abbey Road Studios with the launch of their new Abbey Road Studio 3 headphone reference plugin.

Abbey Road Studio 3 simulates what the mixing environment is like in what is widely thought to be one of the best mix rooms in the world – all over headphones. By inserting the plugin in your mix buss signal path and routing the outputs to a set of headphones, you’ll get what the manufacturer claims to be a highly reliable and repeatable listening environment that solves many of the problems of headphone mixing.

All controls are on the bottom half of the plugin user interface. At the top is a display of your position in the Studio 3 control room, both input and output (headphone output) meters, and if you’re using NX head tracking, a head position indicator.

The plugin can be used in stereo, 5.1 or 7.1 modes, depending upon your DAW. In stereo mode, the big feature is the ability to switch to 3 different sets of speakers – a Far setting provides a simulation of the large soffit-mounted Quested monitors that have been a centerpiece of Studio 3 for 30 years; a Mid setting that simulates the B&W‘s in the control room (this is used for the 5.1 and 7.1 modes), and a Near setting that simulates nearfield monitors on top of the console meter bridge.

In the center of the plugin sits the Rotate Studio wheel that rotates the studio around your position at the mixing desk. What you see and what you hear are defined by your orientation. This is what you automatically experience if you’re using head tracking (it’s not necessary), except that Rotate Studio is controlled manually.

On the left bottom of the plugin are the Head Tracking controls, which provide On/Off, selection of the camera that’s used to track your head, the sensor used, the speed of the tracking, and a calibration control.

On the lower right of the plugin you’ll find the Headphone Modeling controls, where you can input the dimensions of your head or select a default set of measurements. There’s also a Headphone EQ control that allows you to select the model of the headphones that you’re using so a complimentary EQ curve can be applied.

The Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin carries a price of $199, but it’s now available for an introductory special of just $99 ($129 with the NX head tracker). There’s also a free demo so you give it a try to see if it works for you first.

Find out more about the plugin here, or check out the video below.

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