Great comparison! Both tools shine in their own way. Curious... did anyone notice a big difference in bass or stereo imaging? Those are key for us! 👏👏👏
Thanks so much for doing this! I was about to finally buy a Nova, but now I wonder if I would be better served upgrading my speakers. I have not had a chance to check out the update yet, but I have read many people saying the UA algorithm and filters that read the Sound ID curves sounds better than the Sonarworks Algorithm. Was this your experience? Would you prioritize new speakers over a Nova?
Surely the digital output on the uad would have still had sonarworks going into the nova. I have been thinking about room correction and treatment recently. Dark side of the moon was mixed on an imperfect console in an imperfect room with equipment that wouldn’t even come close to technology nowadays. It’s over 50 years old and to my ears is still one of the best sonic experiences I’ve ever heard. I use analog gear and still a lot of music nowadays sounds almost soulless. So have we lost something with technology moving forward so far?
The digital out doesn’t have the correction. I feel the same way - something changed over the years and not necessary in a good way. Maybe too much knowledge and technology is not always good for art.
Hey Mathias, I was surprised that for people that aren’t familiar with the entire room correction process etc. thr difference wasn’t that big and we had a split. I do believe Nova is better but I also thing the SoundID implementation done by UA is really nice.
Why are you calibrating to a flat target? Is it a studio standard? Because it’ll sound very bright and unpleasant. The natural sounding curve is a slowly descending line from the bass to the highs.
Ok, so here I have some questions, why do you say your measurements with Nova were not perfect(can you elaborate on this). Also don’t you think the phase correction in nova would make a considerable difference vs sound id? And if you say the difference between sound ID and Nova is pretty small maybe ARC Studio is even a better solution than sound ID? Many sound ID users say ARC studio is better.. I am considering Nova and wonder if is really way above the rest to pay 10 times more
I always can hear that added eq in a bad way (phase smearing, loss of details etc.) when I use some kind of room correction and it's so distracting that I can't mix like that at all. The differences between different plugins with the same settings etc. are almost completely lost when I listen through a calibration eq. Also it's always too light and very bright and I need to add 3-6dB of lows below 150Hz to make it sound "normal" in the room and to be able to judge bass correctly. I only liked room correction below 300Hz when testing Sonarworks because higher up in the freqency spectrum it gets easier and easier to hear how it's changing the sound in a bad way + it makes everything sound the same, you lose all of the details in the sound. That's my 4-year experience with Sonarworks on different speakers with some experimentation. Now I don't use it at all and I rely on my monitoring and AB with the references + 2 additional pairs of headphones (DT880s flat without any correction and Ananda Nano's corrected to Harman curve with a 4band Stock DAW EQ) and it's working amazingly for me
Good video. :) Iulian, since you have the Sonarworks measurement mic with its calibration profile, why don't you measure the result of both Nova and SoundID correction. REW is a free software, very easy to perform a measurement in the sweetspot , and one single sweep will tell us a lot (phase, THD, Group Delay, Freq, RT60, EDT, etc.). I'm pretty sure that you have a friend or two who are familiar with the software, but there are plenty of tutorial videos also on RUclips. And then you could cover the scientific side too. ;) Dropped a like. And nice studio!
That is a good idea but the thing is that our ears/brain interpret sound so different than a measurement mic, the real difference is in a listening test and how it sounds to us. I am more interested in another listening test with a perfect nova calibration and see what the guys say… the test capturing both calibration in REW would only confirm some findings but don’t give the whole picture for how we hear and interpret sound
@ Allow me to disagree with that in name of science. If this was true, all speakers’ in-room response could be sufficient for critical listening, but that’s not reality. Person is not in the equations of EBU or ATSC, we’d just throw all those efforts to the bin that generations worked on and led to music you listen to as reference track. Room and speakers are one, with measurable objective results like EDT,RT60,Freq,THD,GD,phase coherence and so on. All that matters how you perceive the sound at listening position, regardless your ears physical limitations. If we follow these nowadays cozy and lazy aspect of life that avoids science here as well, we can throw DSP correction of speakers out of window. Since it calculates response measurements too and calibrates speaker response accordingly. Are we saying it is not good enough for us because human ears are different, but opinion is better? What will be the conclusion then for you? That subjectively the studio owner likes what he is hearing there only in that place? What are these videos there for then if we do not use industry standards per reliable physics? Let me get szraight to point: good speaker manufacturers will declare all data and independent labor measurement of speaker characteristics, otherwise serious studio builders cannot calculate with it to build/tune room. So does the dsp device achievement is measurable and comparable. Human ears: it is the weakest link in listening chain and test, as it is very easy to fail with wrong ears in general. If an ear is physically NOT capable for critical listening due to limitations (only proper clinical hearing test will reveal artifacts you may not even notice), and/or not properly trained ears are listening who is also aware of psychoacoustics, result will be very misleading. (Casual listening is a different story, so it is hifi rooms and movie theater rooms tuned to excitement.) So, please, if anyone is engineer out there, stay on science’s side and protect objectivity. Everything else is unintentionally deceitful and expensive marketing. Happy holidays!
UA is saying that once Sonarworks profile is loaded as DSP in Apollo console, you are hearing UA’s Algorithms and filters, not Sonarworks. Apollo is just applying the same curves with their algorithms. People have been reporting that UA’s algorithm sounds better. I’m going to test this myself, but if the differences between this and the Nova are minimal, I’m going to put my Nova budget elsewhere!
Great! Both tools deliver impressive results and highlight how far room correction technology has come.😮
looking forward to the UA system.
Great engineers came together to test for us! Thanks!
Great comparison! Both tools shine in their own way. Curious... did anyone notice a big difference in bass or stereo imaging? Those are key for us! 👏👏👏
Great video! Fresh in the music industry! Can't wait for more of this kind 😊😊
The phase alignment in Nova is great also.
This is a great experiment you did. I was considering the Nova but will hold off a bit.👏👏
I hope this Christmas I will have one in my studio. Apollo is perfect!
Thanks so much for doing this! I was about to finally buy a Nova, but now I wonder if I would be better served upgrading my speakers. I have not had a chance to check out the update yet, but I have read many people saying the UA algorithm and filters that read the Sound ID curves sounds better than the Sonarworks Algorithm. Was this your experience? Would you prioritize new speakers over a Nova?
Surely the digital output on the uad would have still had sonarworks going into the nova. I have been thinking about room correction and treatment recently. Dark side of the moon was mixed on an imperfect console in an imperfect room with equipment that wouldn’t even come close to technology nowadays. It’s over 50 years old and to my ears is still one of the best sonic experiences I’ve ever heard. I use analog gear and still a lot of music nowadays sounds almost soulless. So have we lost something with technology moving forward so far?
The digital out doesn’t have the correction.
I feel the same way - something changed over the years and not necessary in a good way. Maybe too much knowledge and technology is not always good for art.
Cool video, have you tried using the Nova curve in SoundID?
Hi! I got same setup here, SoundID/UA Apollo X Gen 2 is absolut ok, Trinnov Nova is even better but it is in an other price range. Best/Mathias
Hey Mathias, I was surprised that for people that aren’t familiar with the entire room correction process etc. thr difference wasn’t that big and we had a split. I do believe Nova is better but I also thing the SoundID implementation done by UA is really nice.
@@2probeats Yes, feel the same, both works good and with SoundID you can get your headphones calibrated and that you can not do on Nova.
That’s a great point!
Great video, thanks for the investment!
Glad you liked it!
Why are you calibrating to a flat target? Is it a studio standard? Because it’ll sound very bright and unpleasant.
The natural sounding curve is a slowly descending line from the bass to the highs.
Ok, so here I have some questions, why do you say your measurements with Nova were not perfect(can you elaborate on this). Also don’t you think the phase correction in nova would make a considerable difference vs sound id?
And if you say the difference between sound ID and Nova is pretty small maybe ARC Studio is even a better solution than sound ID? Many sound ID users say ARC studio is better.. I am considering Nova and wonder if is really way above the rest to pay 10 times more
I always can hear that added eq in a bad way (phase smearing, loss of details etc.) when I use some kind of room correction and it's so distracting that I can't mix like that at all. The differences between different plugins with the same settings etc. are almost completely lost when I listen through a calibration eq. Also it's always too light and very bright and I need to add 3-6dB of lows below 150Hz to make it sound "normal" in the room and to be able to judge bass correctly. I only liked room correction below 300Hz when testing Sonarworks because higher up in the freqency spectrum it gets easier and easier to hear how it's changing the sound in a bad way + it makes everything sound the same, you lose all of the details in the sound. That's my 4-year experience with Sonarworks on different speakers with some experimentation. Now I don't use it at all and I rely on my monitoring and AB with the references + 2 additional pairs of headphones (DT880s flat without any correction and Ananda Nano's corrected to Harman curve with a 4band Stock DAW EQ) and it's working amazingly for me
Nova is definitely better, I own both. I've heard rooms with Trinnov that sounded amazing after the calibration. Very room dependant.
Good video. :) Iulian, since you have the Sonarworks measurement mic with its calibration profile, why don't you measure the result of both Nova and SoundID correction. REW is a free software, very easy to perform a measurement in the sweetspot , and one single sweep will tell us a lot (phase, THD, Group Delay, Freq, RT60, EDT, etc.). I'm pretty sure that you have a friend or two who are familiar with the software, but there are plenty of tutorial videos also on RUclips. And then you could cover the scientific side too. ;) Dropped a like. And nice studio!
That’s a great idea! I have something like that in the works 😁
That is a good idea but the thing is that our ears/brain interpret sound so different than a measurement mic, the real difference is in a listening test and how it sounds to us. I am more interested in another listening test with a perfect nova calibration and see what the guys say… the test capturing both calibration in REW would only confirm some findings but don’t give the whole picture for how we hear and interpret sound
@ Allow me to disagree with that in name of science. If this was true, all speakers’ in-room response could be sufficient for critical listening, but that’s not reality. Person is not in the equations of EBU or ATSC, we’d just throw all those efforts to the bin that generations worked on and led to music you listen to as reference track.
Room and speakers are one, with measurable objective results like EDT,RT60,Freq,THD,GD,phase coherence and so on. All that matters how you perceive the sound at listening position, regardless your ears physical limitations.
If we follow these nowadays cozy and lazy aspect of life that avoids science here as well, we can throw DSP correction of speakers out of window. Since it calculates response measurements too and calibrates speaker response accordingly. Are we saying it is not good enough for us because human ears are different, but opinion is better? What will be the conclusion then for you? That subjectively the studio owner likes what he is hearing there only in that place? What are these videos there for then if we do not use industry standards per reliable physics?
Let me get szraight to point: good speaker manufacturers will declare all data and independent labor measurement of speaker characteristics, otherwise serious studio builders cannot calculate with it to build/tune room. So does the dsp device achievement is measurable and comparable.
Human ears: it is the weakest link in listening chain and test, as it is very easy to fail with wrong ears in general. If an ear is physically NOT capable for critical listening due to limitations (only proper clinical hearing test will reveal artifacts you may not even notice), and/or not properly trained ears are listening who is also aware of psychoacoustics, result will be very misleading. (Casual listening is a different story, so it is hifi rooms and movie theater rooms tuned to excitement.)
So, please, if anyone is engineer out there, stay on science’s side and protect objectivity. Everything else is unintentionally deceitful and expensive marketing.
Happy holidays!
Very good video
Apollo is craaaazy
Uuuuu ! I am a Sonarworks believer! Great video :D I look sexy :))
will the correction effect my alt monitors also?
Need a separate calibration for alt outs.
But inst it the same ? Apollo adds anything new apart from having the calibration profile inside the interface?
No they also have built the entire room correction system to work with SoundID. It’s not just a profile. 2 softwares running to accomplish this
UA is saying that once Sonarworks profile is loaded as DSP in Apollo console, you are hearing UA’s Algorithms and filters, not Sonarworks. Apollo is just applying the same curves with their algorithms. People have been reporting that UA’s algorithm sounds better. I’m going to test this myself, but if the differences between this and the Nova are minimal, I’m going to put my Nova budget elsewhere!
always got expensive taste 🤑
You got that right!