multimillion-dollar home studio" you've probably thought to yourself "hmm. I
wonder what my mixes would sound like if I was sitting in a professional studio
doing this..." Well with Abbey Road Studio 3, you finally can.
So the plugins based off of Waves NX technology, which is basically just fancy
talk for "put on some headphones and it'll sound like you're in a
professional room". Now the NX plugin was just a generic
room, but with Abbey Road Studio 3 they've actually gone and modelled the
control room at Abbey Road. Which is awesome!! So today we're not really gonna do a
review on the plugin we're gonna do more of a tutorial. And with NX and Abbey Road
this new plugin, there seems to be a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about
the purpose and how to actually use this. So we're gonna clear all that up in the
tutorial. So let's dive in! Alright gang, so first things first when you open up
an instance of the plugin you're gonna be presented with the Waves Head Tracker
application. So that's gonna allow you to set up using your camera for a tracker,
or if you happen to have the Bluetooth tracker, which I just don't have yet, this
is where you would set all this stuff up. Alright, so diving into the plug-in
interface, this is where you'd select your monitors. So you're near fields are here.
You click onto the mids you're gonna get these speakers, which are also the
surround speakers. So if you spin the room around... those are your surround
speakers. And you can reset that just by hitting that. And then your far fields
which are the large speakers that are built into the wall. So as I just showed
you a second ago, you can manually spin the room around if you want. And again to
reset it you can just hit the zero degree button. This is the level for the
plugin. And for some reason my CPU fans are kicking in so if you hear any fan
noise, I'm sorry. So this is the head tracking section, you can turn the head
tracking off and on. If the head tracking is off your heads always gonna be in the
sweet spot. But with that turned on the software is gonna follow your head
movements. Settings button opens up the Waves Head Tracker application that I
showed you not too long ago. Calibrate button simply resets your head position,
so if it seems a little bit off, you can just click this button and it'll
reset your, your center spot. This section here is where you would select your
tracking device. This is where you would turn the headphone EQ off and on. And
over here is the drop down for the list of headphones that happen to have their
frequency... frequency responses built in. So if you happen to have any of these
sets of headphones it's recommended that you pick it out of the list. If you don't
happen to have any of these sets of headphones it's recommended in the
manual just to leave this setting off. Now the head modelling section, this is
SUPER important. You're gonna want to measure your head because if you put
these numbers in it's gonna make this simulation that much more accurate. And
the way you would do that is shown right here in the manual. You would take the
measurement around your head and then you would take a second measurement from
the back of one ear to the back of the other ear. And then simply just punch
those numbers in here, and you can go over here and just click "set current
setting as default" and then whenever you load the plugin it's automatically gonna
default to your head measurements. Okay so before we take this bad boy for a
spin there's a couple of things I need to go over with you about the plugin
first. This also applies to the regular NX plugin if you happen to have it.
Number one, this plugin goes at the very end of your master buss. This is the last
thing in your chain. Number two. If you're not gonna be using it, you're gonna be
listening through your regular monitors, turn the plugin off or your mix is gonna
sound bonkers. And then number three, when you're gonna bounce your track out make
sure this plugin is off, or again, your mix is just gonna sound *tongue out sounds* and you don't
want that. Now the other thing I want to speak too, and I think this is where a lot
of the misunderstanding lies.. You can't just turn this thing on put, on your cans,
and expect to be magically, instantly whisked away to Abbey Road. Doesn't work
that way. So the trick to this and the NX plugin...
Put on your cans, and forget the plugin is even on. Just start mixing and don't
even think about it. The plugin is trying to fool your brain into thinking that
you're in this physical space, that you're actually in Abbey Road Studio
Three's control room. But it doesn't happen instantly. So just start mixing and give
it, I don't know for me it's about five to ten minutes and then you actually get
to the point where you actually think your monitors are on, and then you start
taking your headphones off and you're like "okay... no they're off" and then you're
like "holy crap!! this is like bonkers convincing!!" But again it takes five or
ten minutes, at least for me anyway it may vary for you. So just do your thing,
let the plug-in do its thing, and don't think about it. And guaranteed
in a short bit of time you'll start taking your cans off because you think your
monitors are still on. Yes, it's that good. All right, so who's ready to take this
thing for a rip? I strongly recommend putting on headphones though while we go
through this. Don't worry I'll wait.
*Silly Music*
You'' never beat me Dalek!! Cuz I'm the Doctor!!!
*More Silly Music*
EXTERMINATE!!!!!
*More Silly Music*
PEW PEW PEW!!!!
"I swear this part is almost finished..."
You guys back? Cool!! Road trip!!
All right so here's how this is gonna work. I've got a session up from song my buddy and I wrote a number of
years ago. Now this isn't at all mixed and I've got the vocals muted. I'm just
messing around with this session for some upcoming videos I'm mixing I'm
gonna do. So the first thing I want to demonstrate is the head modelling, because
remember before I said that was super important? I'll show you. So I'm just
gonna play a section back and I'm gonna mess around with the numbers here and
you'll be able to hear what's actually happening.
*Music Playback*
Heard that drastically changes everything? This is why you need to get
your measurements input into the plugin. It's super important. So now I'm just
gonna let this section play back and we're gonna audition the three sets of speakers here.
*Music Playback*
Now I'm gonna start turning my head
*Music Playback*
You can hear how that effects sound field.
*Music Playback*
We'll do the same thing with the mids.
*Music Playback*
And now we'll do the nears.
*Music Playback*
And you can do the same thing with the head tracking off. And turn the tracking
off. And then I'm going to rotate the studio around manually.
*Music Playback*
All right so there you have it. There's our little "Tour-Torial" See what I did
there? Yeah that was lame... Oh oh!! I almost forgot!!
There's this weird little, what I think is a glitch in the plugin. If you open up
a session and throw the plug-in on, or if you open up a session the plugins
already in the session, the tracker portion actually doesn't respond to your
head. I don't know why. To fix that just play the session for a second and then
the plugin basically wakes up going "oh oh, okay, yeah sorry!!"
And then it works just fine. So again that's probably just a little glitch. The
plugin just came out so I'm assuming there will probably be an update. And hopefully
that'll fix that weird little bug. Yeah so anyway, I hope you learned something
from this. I hope it cleared up some of the confusion around this plugin in the
NX plugin. Personally I really like them. They've made mixing a lot easier for me.
My mixes seem to translate a hell of a lot better when I use them. And the low
end, I don't seem to have to fight with the low end anymore. Which is great
because being in a home studio, trying to mix low end is always a big problem for
all of us. But don't take my word on any of this. Just head over to Waves website
you can grab a demo. I think it works for like 14 days or something like that. And
give it a run for yourself. At the end of the day, it's your studio, you need to use
what works for you. And that's it! That's all we got for this week. So don't forget
to "like", ninja kick the Bell icon so you know when I put a new video up. And as
always, have an awesome week and we'll see you guys next Tuesday!!