You may prefer one over the other, but that's about it. In audio, in a bedroom production setting, it doesn't make a huge difference whether you listen to your monitoring as it sounds out of the box, or with some EQ curve applied to it. But that's a context where it makes sense to standardize everything: So that you can move from display to display without having to worry about different color balances being a thing. That's not because the makers don't care about color balance, that's just the nature of making different products with different components and materials: you get different results.Įven within a same graphic design studio, people need to calibrate their color balance despite everyone using the exact same brand and model of display. All displays, professional or not have slightly different color balances. Imagine if instead of audio monitoring, it was displays. What Sonarworks is trying to do is kind of 'standardize' all headphones/speakers. All the sounds we hear are shaped by imperfect acoustics.

And far more importantly, we don't listen to anything ever on perfect flatness, not even in the natural world.

No headphones or speakers can produce a perfectly flat curve. Go to Playback, DSP Manager and activate the Sonarworks plugin. Go to Components, VST plugins and add the Sonarworks plugin. (Or purchase it.) Download and install this VST adapter in foobar2000. In cases like the Beyerdynamics DT 770 or the Sony MDR-7056, they are indeed made to highlight certain parts because their original intent was for studio tracking.īut 'flat' is a myth. Download and install the free trial of Sonarworks Reference 3 Headphone.

Sonarworks trial