Steven Slate Audio VSX

The need for headphone calibration + speaker and room modelling system.

First problem – Studio Monitors in untreated rooms/home studios sound wonky.

The primary problem is that studio monitors, or speakers in general, placed randomly in a room don’t sound good at all because of the problems the untreated room introduces with the sound reflecting off the walls all over the room and the bass frequencies getting accentuated by the corners. In the end, what you hear aren’t just the speakers but the combination of the sound coming from the speakers along with all the reflections from all the walls around you. This creates all kinds of problems – phasing issues, bass boominess and a very wonky overall sound that isn’t at all authentic to how the speakers are tuned and it being miles away from flat response. Even though extreme importance of acoustic treatment is a fairly known fact in the pro-audio world, you’d be surprised to know how many people both in the amateur, hobbyist and consumer world still don’t give it as much weight when trying and using speakers.

So how do you go about setting up studio monitors in a room properly?

Very roughly, you first need to place the speakers in a good place, ideally a good safe distance from all the walls and yet placed far apart so that there is good stereo image and separation. You ideally need to form an equilateral triangle between the two monitors and your ideal listening spot, so the room needs to big enough to enable that. Then, you need strategically calculate acoustic treatment around the room using a combination of absorbers, diffusers and bass traps, so that you can limit the sound reflections, especially at the mirror points and corners, and clean up the effect of the room so that you only hear the sound of the monitors. How that is done is a whole different series of articles, a lot of them already written and available across the web.

But the problem doesn’t end there.

You can have very good monitors and very planned acoustic treatment around the room but even then there can still be dips and peaks in the frequency response after all of it and when casually listening to songs, you’ll still hear an unbalanced mix that isn’t indicative of the true mix. When it comes to mixing songs as a professional, it gets even worse as you unknowingly compensate for these dips and peaks, creating unbalanced mixes that do not translate well between devices.

This is how my home studio room measured even with decent acoustic treatment (measured using Sonarworks microphone and software). This then needs to corrected using software like Sonarworks Reference ID.

Second problem – Cross referencing mixes for translation.

Even though software like Sonarworks help you calibrate your speakers to flat response and compensate for placement problems, you’re still limited to mixing on your speakers in your room. Post that, comes the whole problem of cross-referencing your mixes with different headphone models and in different listening environments to check how your mixes are translating.

VSX fixes all of this for in the box as well as on the go use. It’s a headphone system that is a combination of hardware (Beryllium driver headphones) and accompanying VSX software that calibrates the headphones and offers speaker and room modelling, modelling several different speakers in different listening environments as well as some popular headphones, with the capability to switch between with a click of a button.

Third problem – Mixing on Studio Monitors vs Headphones (problems faced mixing on headphones).

This one can further complicate things and influence perception.

Regular headphones only offer discrete left and right isolated speakers that sit directly on your ears, which makes the auditory image appear to be inside your head. When you pan left and right, standard headphones deliver audio to the extreme left and right of your head. Speakers in real rooms operate much differently. Because both of your ears hear the left and right speakers simultaneously, you hear a natural crosstalk which creates a more lifelike phantom centre image.
Furthermore, the auditory image of speakers places the sound in front of you, making it more natural to identify mix elements. When panning left and right, the image stays in front of you, but on the left or right side.
The sound of audio coming out of the speaker drivers combined with the slight resonances of real rooms makes it easier to hear compression and equalisation.
But the problem with real speakers and real rooms is that if the speaker response is not flat, as well as full bandwidth from 20Hz to 20kHz, then what you hear from the speakers is not accurate and mixes will not translate properly to the outside world.

Slate VSX gives you perfect recreations of perfectly tuned, flat speakers in numerous environments. It provides a perfect flat headphone model (VSX headphone) and a couple of other models of popular industry headphones. This helps one not run around exporting the mix to check it in different cars and other environments as it allows you to reference the song mix in several listening environments, even a cellphone speaker, without leaving your DAW.

Here’s how Slate Audio VSX does it.

The Beryllium driver headphones are tuned a certain way that enables them to be calibrated to a reference target curve very precisely. It is done via a combination hardware headphone engineering and further calibration using the included VSX software. The headphones’ serial number is used to compensate for batch manufacturing changes/updates.
The VSX software uses Binaural Perception Modelling (BPM) to precisely reproduce the 3D sound of speakers in famous mixing studios, mastering rooms, cars, boomboxes, nightclubs, audiophile listening rooms, as well as models of industry-standard headphones. It does so by using Binaural Psychoacoustics, which helps present the same auditory cues to your ears that they would typically hear in a room with real speakers, with crosstalk between speakers like it happens in real life.
It models different Near Field, Mid Field and Far Field speakers in several listening environments like Steven Slate’s own studios, famous studio rooms around the world, clubs, speaker systems of a couple of popular cars as well as a cellphone speaker for you to cross check your mixes for all of those environments.

Software Control.

Speaker Version – Most rooms have multiple speaker selections. You can use these buttons to switch between the different speakers in that paritcular room.
Fave 5 – If you have a favourite room and speaker mode, you can save up to five of your favourite spaces to the dashboard for faster access. For instance, if the Archon Midfields are one of your favourites, you can save it to your Fave-5 for faster comparisons.
Browse Rooms – Click the “BROWSE ROOMS” button to view all of the mixing/listening environments included in VSX. Select the environment you want to mix in and hear the plugin instantly take you there. This lets you quickly move between all environments before deciding what speaker mode you want to use. Once you’ve found your ideal environment, just double-click or select “BACK TO HOME” to go back to the main room view.
Level Match Bypass/ HD-Linear Headphone Model (IMPORTANT) – When bypassing the VSX plugin, always use the level match bypass button to prevent a massive jump in gain when bypassing. VSX’s speaker models add dynamic range due to the natural room resonances, meaning the models will be lower RMS than the bypassed plugin. The level matched bypass allows you to compare the virtual spaces to the dry mix without a massive level jump. When you enable Level Match Bypass, the VSX HD-Linear emulation is automatically applied to provide the most neutral mixing environment possible for A/Bing. VSX HD-Linear gives you a perfectly flat headphone that allows you to hear your mix in it’s truest, most authentic form. To gain or attenuate the level of your level match bypassed audio, use the knob to the left of the level match bypass button. To reset the knob to its default value, double-click or Alt + Left Click.
Output EQ – Customise the output with a five-band shelving EQ. This is an optional feature if you want to customise your overall room tone with adjusted frequencies. For instance, if you prefer brighter speakers overall, you can add some top end to all the models. Or, if you’re doing club music and really want to exaggerate the lows, you can add more lows with the output room EQ low shelf. Adjustable bands include two custom shape bells at 45 Hz and 280 Hz as well as bells at 850 Hz and 3.5kHz. For the top, we added a custom shape hi-shelf at 8.8kHz. All bands provide +/- 8dB.
VSX Logo – Clicking the Slate VSX logo will show the latest plugin version so you can easily see when an update is available as well as the development credits.
Settings – By default, VSX is automatically bypassed on export. Click the cogwheel to reveal the enable/disable button to change the auto-bypass on export setting.
Output Level – This is your output gain. This knob lets you change the VSX processed level. On export, your mix will stay at its pre-VSX processed levels, whether or not you bypass before exporting. This knob allows for -18dB to +12 dB adjustments.
Room Name Display – This displays the environment currently selected.
Depth Control – This controls the amount of the 3D psychoacoustic binaural effect. Turning it to the left makes the audio slightly more dry, and also appear closer to your virtual mix position. Turning it to the right will push the audio further back, and will also increase the room tone.