Abbey Road Studio 3 - What is it? 

Thanks Cristian!

Glad it was helpful!

Thank you Pete!

Yes, you could be right re LV. Maybe because it is going to two busses. PT can be a bit of a pain with delay compensation at times.

Thanks Matt!

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad that you enjoyed it.

I think it's a good point about NX. And I extensively used this along with Sonarworks Reference and it made my mixes more plausible when in a bad acoustic room. In a way, you can still use Sonarworks and this together. This is only an a hobby to me and can definitely see the benefits of it. Nobody has come back to me and said my mixes are too boomy or treble is too much. Before I would add too much reverb or not enough. I can definitely hear a difference in quality. NX also gets used on Audeze gaming headphones which can also enhance gaming or watching movies. So credit where it's due and they're no confining themselves to one part of the market. Abbey Road studios aside I think it is a good way for you to tweak your mixes without splashing out for the hire of an expensive recording studio.

I can understand the frustration. However, this plug-in took 2-3 years to get right including a lot of R&D in studio 3 with both Abbey Roads technical staff and Waves. An Auratone would have been a nice touch!

@@audioproductiontips I understand the work and I would pay for it if it was an "expansion" of nx... but this new plugin, though it is a step forward, is far from being the best solution for monitoring (I would still need nx for "monitoring in mono" plus sonarworks).

Personally I don't have a problem just loading sonarworks and Studio 3 together but I can understand the desire for a complete monitoring solution in one plug-in.

I think if you look at this same point from another angle it might make more sense to why I liked it. Turning it on made me hear subtleties I didn't hear before even on an (almost) finished mix. Now mixing is made up of hundreds of subtle moves. Imagine each of these moves become better informed because of this tool. The result may well not be subtle then.

I was able to bring it down to $60 as an owner of both Nx and the other Abbey Road plugins. I actually contacted the Sales team there to get the voucher code for it. I just used this for a remix I did and it was incredibly helpful. I even had one of the headphones listed (Beyerdynamic DT990) as well as the Nx tracker and that really helped me in finalising the mix, especially since it involved a lot of mid-range layering (and ended up in mono too).

@@DerekPower That's great. I would be interested to know what parts of the remix came out better than usual?

The remix I made went for a "Wall of Sound" approach where I had layers of synths performing similar tasks yet had distinct sounds. Thus, the levels amongst those layers were important to get right. EQ was another one, plus having the ability to switch speakers really helped in hearing what was actually happening and thus making adjustments when needed. For the reverb, I was being way more artificial with them purposefully (and yes, I have compensated for this so clarity is maintained =] ). But there were some subtle reverbs applied to the different layers and it was good to have a better idea of how subtle those reverbs can be. I still have an untreated room with no proper monitors (it's my apartment after all) and thus I use headphones. The DT990 I use strictly for mixing and mastering purposes and I can use pretty much anything for tracking. Apart from making the best recordings I can with well-chosen sounds, being careful in the mixing/arrangement and doing things like the "road test", there was only so much I could do on my own prior to the AR3.

@@DerekPower That's really interesting. I have found it very useful when selecting reverbs too. The other thing is the balance of the low-end seems much easier.

the Nx is one imaginary room, the Abbey road is an IR measured room plus has 3 different speaker sets. which one did you get? I think I'll get Abbey

it does. purchased it today and it works for ableton

It is a tool to help make mixes made on headphones translate better to speakers and other real acoustic environments.

@@audioproductiontips So do you keep it on the mix all the time and you mix in to it?

@@tomix1970pl1 pretty much whenever you use the headphones to mix, then remove it when bouncing to file, or listening to real monitors or referencing the sound of headphones