Dear Reality, part of the Sennheiser Group, has been at the forefront of immersive audio. Its DearVR Pro spatializer plug-in is a leading product for both binaural and Ambisonics mixing. DearVR Mix (Mac/Win), released this week, leverages the company’s binaural expertise to create a plug-in that lets you monitor through nine virtual environments.
Three of the choices are the primary mixing spaces: Mix Room A and Mix Room B are “reference-grade” rooms. “Analytic Position” is a dry feed with simulated speaker crosstalk and early reflections. The other six let you reference your mix in simulated acoustic environments, including Car, Club, Theater, Kitchen, Living Room and Stadium.
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The plug-in offers several adjustable parameters, including speaker configuration.
Stereo, the default, corresponds to the standard nearfield arrangement of two monitors and the mix position in an equilateral triangle. Wide Stereo simulates the monitors more widely angled. Mono Summed is useful for checking your mix in mono, and Mono Input lets you only hear channel one.
The Ambience slider lets you control the amount of diffusion, which affects the richness of virtual reflections. The Focus slider controls the ratio of overall coloration and localization.
Spatial Headphone Compensation allows you to turn on compensated curves for 44 different “professional studio headphones.” These include models from Audio-Technica, AKG, Audeze, beyerdynamic, Sennheiser, Fostex, Focal, Dan Clark, HEDD, HiFiMan, Koss, KRK and Sony.
The idea of the SHC is to adapt the response of the various headphones to match the virtual spaces. Dear Reality describes it as “enabling a model-independent and stable simulation of a perfect acoustic environment.” SHC features linear phase filters by default, but you can switch to minimum phase for lower latency.
DearVR Mix’s Output Section includes a Head Rotation knob, which simulates what it would sound like if you turned your head in either direction. You also get a Gain control.
Dear Reality says that the approach to DearVR Mix differs from other virtual mix room plug-ins that emulate the acoustics of specific control rooms. Instead, it creates mix environments that you can customize to taste.
In the manual, the developer states: “We believe that a good-sounding control room is a very subjective thing and should therefore be flexible within certain limits. It becomes a perfect control room for you when you feel comfortable with the room’s characteristics and perception and feel ‘at home’ in it, or, in other words, when the room seems plausible to you.”
Dear Reality is offering DearVR Mix for an introductory price of $79 until November 30, after which it will rise to $99. For more information or to download a free 14-day trial visit the DearVR Mix page.
