Sonarworks in Education

I was recently able to take Sonarworks for a test and found the results in one of our mixing suites at Capital University fairly astounding.  While great-sounding monitors in a well-treated room are always the goal, using Sonarworks may be an affordable solution to create mix translation outside of the control room with increased stereo imaging, and flattened frequency response.

I sat in my room for over an hour just enjoying the sound of the songs I know so well, analyzing how different genres translated. I was having such a good time just listening, that it made me want to start mixing music again! 

Being able to trust your monitors is a fundamental non-negotiable. My Berklee students, LinkedIn Learning viewers, and the folks who read my books frequently ask about how to make sure they’re hearing what they should be hearing. The Sonarworks Studio kit can be the answer they’ve been looking for.

It's important for students and engineers to focus on the music without worries. Sonarworks makes this possible on monitors or headphones in the classroom and the studio.

Recently, while working on various narrative mixes, the dialogue was notably clearer when the Sonarworks plug-in was enabled. The software does exactly what it claims to do. It’s amazing!

Since room calibration is an essential skill we made Sonarworks part of the curriculum. From an educator’s standpoint Reference 4 is a great teaching tool because the results can be so drastic that beginning students can hear them and the visual feedback supports what is taught in acoustics and recording classes.

A flat monitoring environment lets us instinctively balance the instruments in our mix and yield far more accurate results effortlessly. This set-up solves a lot of technical issues and frees our mind to focus more on creative work.

I require 100% of my mastering students to use Sonarworks, and if you are serious about your work, I recommend you do the same.

We have a couple of classes where students work mostly on headphones. Students are required to have a decent pro-level set of headphones, and adding Reference will make what they hear as accurate as possible.

No amount of plugins or listening skills help if you can't trust what you are hearing. With Sonarworks, I know I can trust what I hear. It gets me the best possible sound, in every environment, I work in.

I mention Sonarworks in all my classes since we can really help beginning musicians to make proper mixes on their headphones or in their home studio's using this software.

In the classroom, I had students call out their preferred brand of headphones. We pulled up the headphones’ calibration profiles on Sonarworks Reference 4 and compared them to each other. Students were honestly blown away by the vastly different equalization curves built into their favorite headphones. This was a real eye (and ear!) opening moment.
 

One of the big obstacles students face when they start their education is that they are experiencing their music on many different systems, oftentimes not knowing what to trust. Sonarworks Reference 4 really helps them to become much aware of the strengths and pitfalls of each of these systems, balance them out and eventually create music that translates much better.

Sonarworks starts students down the path of critical listening with a fun and engaging platform. With sonic consistency, students build trust in their listening environment. This allows for greater creative freedom and more inspired musical expression.

Sonarworks allows me to confidently work from anywhere. That makes my work more efficient and organic. I can make decisions now, not later. And, it puts me and my students on the same page. I can easily critique their work and know that they will be able to implement and hear my suggested changes.

Sonarworks Reference 4 software is a game-changer! It lets our student engineers compensate for flaws in the monitors and listening environments—even headphones. The end result is complete confidence in mixes that translate well on any system.

Not all of us have access to studio-quality headphones or loudspeakers. If you can’t hear it, how can you assess it? Reference 4 from Sonarworks is an invaluable tool for those of us working in different environments, on different speakers, and working in environments that are not purpose-built studios.

Sonarworks Reference 4 cleared up so much. After hearing my speakers properly calibrated for my room, I had to go back and re-check everything I had been working on. Now that I use it from the start, I spend less time running from speakers to speakers on different systems to see how my mixes sound. Now they just sound right. It is nice to trust my speakers and headphones.

Reference 4 is a game-changer. I teach critical listening to music production and engineering majors. Using these tools to watch and listen to headphones and room anomalies, before and after software treatment, firms up these acoustic principles.

Sonarworks provides consistency between various playback situations. This is especially important at the early stages of an audio engineer’s career. It is also a great educational tool for demonstrating the importance of monitoring systems and calibration.

Listening with confidence at home before going to the stage or studio will save a lot of time that can be used to focus on the creative aspect. Very useful for education purposes, students are able to design sounds and prepare their mix for the dub stage, knowing they are listening to flat speakers or headphones.

We can now focus much more on the music and aesthetics while teaching music mixing instead of discussing why are we listening to "this or that," guessing "what might have been the reason for such frequency unbalances."

Sonarworks 4 was a great addition to our recording curriculum! My students found it much easier to understand speaker calibration by seeing it in action and hearing the results.

Sonarworks Reference 4 provides a very important thing that the students need: consistency between various playback situations. Reference 4 is also invaluable for education in terms of understanding monitor calibration, and differences and deficiencies of monitoring systems. 

Reference 4 represents a paradigm shift for my students - whether working in a computer lab setting or in dorm rooms producing music on headphones - they now have access to a level of reliable and accurate monitoring that previously was unattainable.  I’m also using Reference 4 in the classroom to drive discussion on frequency response, phase, acoustics, and perception. As both a Producer/Engineer and Educator Sonarworks has been extraordinarily impactful for me.
 

In the past, our students worked around room frequency issues by trial and error. They adjusted their mixes for the dips and peaks encountered in a given control room and tested mixes on a variety of sound systems. With Sonarworks, there’s no more guesswork. Our students use the calibration system to achieve excellent and consistent audio clarity. Above all, it helps them create a better mix.​

Students often encounter the situation in which a mix produced in their home studio sounds noticeably different when presented in a different playback environment. Sonarworks helps students learn about how their monitor loudspeakers interact with the playback room in ways they might not previously have foreseen, leading to more consistent and predictable results.

My high school age students perform most of their mixing work from home on inexpensive headphones. Sonarworks has given them a fighting chance to make mixes that translate. They love it and it’s almost like hearing for the first time when you compare the before and after.

All of our main rooms at CRAS have Sonarworks Reference 4 Studio Edition installed.

An engineer's listening environment is their most valuable tool, and Reference 4 ensures that one can trust what they hear coming out of their monitors and in their room.

I like the quality of Reference 4 and the way it interfaces with the user. I enjoy the improvements in my “audiophile” listening room.

The Sonarworks setup process is straightforward enough that even a new student in the program can go through it with little difficulty, yet the results are powerful enough to serve even advanced or graduate students.

For my students, there is finally an environment correction option that allows them to effectively work with the gear they already have.

The software graphic interface, that guides the user to execute the calibration process does so in a very easy and interactive way, almost like a game, to get a more confident monitoring frequency response.

Being able to take room acoustics out of the equation and just focus on listening to your mixes with confidence is what makes Reference 4 a must-have in the classroom and in the studio.

I’ve spent several years trying to fix the problem of the sounds being modified by the environment I played them in, finally thanks to Sonarworks I found the ultimate solution! Reference4 really makes an impact!