“I needed a solution to help optimize my studio monitoring setup. I have a friend who uses SoundID with the measurement microphone, plus I've seen tons of professionals recommend it, so I gave it a shot. It worked incredibly well and once the process was completed, I was immediately off and running producing better sounding mixes.”
“Works really well but for my setup there were a few limitations. Since I have two different pairs of headphones and two different monitor setups it is just too cumbersome to use the SoundID Reference software -- I would need to use both the standalone for my computer audio and then the plugin on my master bus in all the DAWs I use. Then I would need to change those any time I changed my headphones or monitors (which is frequent). Luckily, you can export profiles and use them in DADMAN software. This works great... except... I have a 5.1 setup which I didn't pay the extra $$ for and more importantly, YOU CAN'T EXPORT HEADPHONE PROFILES! This was a surprise to me after buying the software and it seems like it would be possible to export the headphone profile -- it's no different than a speaker eq curve. I understand why they don't allow it -- someone could just post the profiles online and ANYONE could use them (whether they bought the Sonarworks software or not). At the same time, this means I really can't use the headphone profiles which is a huge part of why I bought this software. So overall, I'm pretty disappointed with the purchase.”
“It's too early to judge if the ultimate outcome, i.e., improving how mixes translate, is reached but so far so good. I like that you can store multiple profiles for speakers and headphones and switch between them.”
“After applying SoundID to my speakers, I gained so much more confidence in my mixes and noticed how they translated much better to other speakers. Worth it, in my opinion. BUT!!! There are issues in room acoustics that Sonarworks cannot solve, which is totally fine. But still treating the room a bit remains recommended. f you have no measurement microphone yet, you get a great deal to just buy it in the bundle. But if you already have one, then you don't need the one from Sonarworks.
The only annoying thing about SoundID Reference is that you tend to forget to switch it off before rendering the tracks in your DAW. They provide a message to remind you, but it would be great if that could be automated somehow in cooperation with the DAWs.
But overall great work! With Sonarworks bedroom producers gain some confidence in their mixes.”
“The measurement microphone comes with the individual calibration profile, you just need to key in the serial number into the calibration software. Everything in software is intuitive. The instruction is given in terms of words and video so you won't miss or misunderstand any step.
I am happy with the result, I compared it with the Behringer ECM8000 + SoundID Reference. I feel the Sonarwork measurement mic suit with the SoundID Reference the best.”
“I am satisfied with functionality and sound quality. I miss option for mono file measurement, could be useful since the mono sound coming out of a soundID measurement stereo file sounds fairly different when it is switched to mono.”
“The result is so much better then I expected. I have a sense of trust in my mixing decisions and I am so much more aware of everything that I do, amazing. Thank you for your great achievements!”
