In general, they’re less fatiguing and sound more natural. What headphones should I use with CanOpener?Īny pair of headphones can be improved with CanOpener, but open-back headphones are usually the best for replicating the sound of loudspeakers. If you are looking for a plugin to control the stereo field for creative purposes, vinyl mastering, etc., check our great Midside plugin. Bypass CanOpener when printing your final mix. CanOpener is part of your monitoring chain, not your mix. Should I bounce/export my mix with CanOpener “On”? In that case, it is preferable to place Sonarworks last (provided you are not using CanOpener’s dithering).
That said, Sonarworks sometimes offers headphone calibration profiles that have asymmetrical equalization for the left and right channels. Yes, absolutely! CanOpener Studio works well in conjunction with Sonarworks Reference, and they are both linear processors that should not introduce distortion or other unwanted nonlinearities.Īlthough we recommend putting CanOpener last in the monitoring chain, it generally doesn’t matter which order you place them in (except when you use CanOpener’s dither feature, in which case you must place CanOpener last). You might be wondering: Why doesn’t the processing order matter that much? The answer: CanOpener is a linear processor - it’s the same reason why 2 + 3 = 5 and 3 + 2 = 5.)Ĭan I use CanOpener Studio with Sonarworks Reference? If so, in which order should I place them in the chain? If you are using a headphone EQ correction plugin that uses different profiles for the left & right channel, CanOpener should be placed in front of it. If you’re not using CanOpener’s built-in dither, the processing order matters less, but CanOpener should still be near the end. Ideally, CanOpener would be placed last in the processing chain on the master channel. What order should CanOpener be placed in the processing chain? It’s less true-to-life but can be useful in situations where realism is less important. If you want the flattest possible frequency response, setting the Crossfeed Angle to 0º will achieve that (see the Mix Engineer, Flat preset). It’s quite lifelike and perceptually matches a real-world set of studio monitors very closely.ġ50% crossfeed is technically more lifelike (see the Mix Engineer, Lifelike preset), but it can sound overly narrow on some headphones. Rather than emulate a specific studio control room or loudspeaker setup (along with all its flaws), the CanOpener crossfeed algorithm uses an idealized loudspeaker & room as its guide and gives you the control to use as much or as little of it as you need.īreaking down the details Some CanOpener Studio FAQsĬrossfeed 100%, 60º is a great place to start (the Mix Engineer preset). Crossfeed - Less is moreĬanOpener Studio takes a less-is-more approach: fix the bad things about headphones with as little coloration or alteration as possible. Similarly, headphones often have irregular, exaggerated, or unnatural frequency response curves, either because they were designed that way or because they lack the natural bass reinforcement that would occur in a real room with speakers. mono sounds typically appear to originate from inside the listener’s head as opposed to externally). Headphones also offer poor externalization (i.e. Compared to speakers, music often sounds overly “wide” when listened to on headphones, as if there were a section missing from the center of the stereo image. The main “problem” with headphones is that most music is still created (recorded, mixed, mastered) on speakers, with tools that were primarily designed for loudspeaker playback. In reality, though, these conditions are rarely met, and headphones often end up sounding unnatural, uninspiring, and fatiguing when listened to for long periods of time. Under the right conditions, headphones can be excellent, high-fidelity monitoring tools. “CanOpener conjures speakers from your headphones.”