A Studio Must-Have? Audio Engineer Reviews Sonarworks SoundID Reference

Holy shite your FR is flat at 1/24 smoothing! That’s insane! I’m curious what the spectral decay and waterfall looks like also distortion and phase.

Great video and that’s for not making this into a cringy advertisement


Frequency response is only one component and in my experience, after I got my FR looking good, I went after other issues like even reverb times. As soon as I started taking care of that, my FR worsened… so having a flat frequency response could be colorations from your room evening things out but giving you a less accurate picture of the sound. I got my room 80% “there” but that last 20% is a huge suckout between 125 and 175 that cannot be corrected with eq because of inevitable phase cancellation

Amazing amazing video! Never really paid attention to this software til now. You explained so well. Also your room is SO impressive, really amazing job! Getting the small desk really showed your commitment to getting an awesome sounding room~

I am a professional music composer and a nerdy audio engineer too, and I was actually highly impressed by how well they manage to improve the sound with their algorithms they have under the hood. I have a half-professional studio at my home, which means that I made quite a decent acoustic treatment to fix quite a lot of problems, but cannot allow myself to go crazy and invest everything I want to make it perfect for now (the tendency in these cases usually becomes hyperbolic - for a small amount of improvement you require 2x, 3x, 4x more money than in the previous step, roughly speaking). And in this case, Sonarworks helps me to achieve professional-sounding mixes which I then deliver to my clients. And I totally agree that it should be considered more as "icing" rather than a primary solution, although in my case it ends up around 60%/40% ratio, where 60% is acoustic treatment and 40% is done by Sound ID, which works very well for me. As I also got to understand, that apart from treatment, room correction and speaker frequency response, there is also a factor of "getting used" to the room & sound you are mixing and adapting your hearing to it (and then of course checking it on other devices + using Tonal Balance Control as a rough landmark). But I think the latter comes only with experience.

Also, I was amazed by how it was able to correct not only constructive interference peaks but also destructive interference dips. After asking this question to Sonarworks support, I got an answer from Ivars: "While our software can correct the mutual phase cancelations between each speaker with phase correction, there's not so much the SoundID Reference can do about the frequency dips in the room itself. Simply put - our software can identify the problematic frequency dips, but it can't compensate for all of the extreme room frequency anomalies". And this makes sense to me, as they cannot change the laws of physics and remove destructive interference caused by your room, but they can address a lot of problems by applying different EQs to your L and R speakers, and here is where the game with the phase comes in (I hope I am understanding the idea correctly).

Anyway, it's an amazing software that improves the work of many sound engineers around the world, and the cool thing is that this team is based in Latvia. So, greetings from a Latvian here too :)

Great content, by the way, James! You helped me a lot with choosing the correct Macbook with your test videos :)

Your vid’s are so relaxed It can’t cope with my wanna have wanna know now fast mode…

Hi Please suggest me
Best 8inch studio monitors for untreated room

i really enjoy your videos about music production info. they are very helpful to me since I feel I havebeen given poor advice on buying my last 3 mac pros and am preparing to take the plinge on a new mac model.

Sonarworks has been an absolute game changer for me and I still use it all the time despite the app regularly crashing, and various bugs over the years which has made my experience using it not so smooth.

Would be interested to see you review Trinnov Nova.

Yes to everything, couldn’t agree more !

SoundID Reference will make your audio computer more unreliable, be it Windows or macOS. I've used the software for several years on both OS' and it is a mess, especially when switching between different sample rates. And every time there is an update, expect a bumpy ride. Either the software is really poorly written or maybe the task it is trying to perform on the Operating System is by nature too complex to work flawlessly.

Odd question but something I've been thinking about lately. With the advent of AI and the inevitable AI music generation thats coming, do we really need an acoustic treated room/accurate listening for mixing/mastering? If AI can spit out a fully rendered/mixed and mastered song ( not talking about AI mastering tools, but that is also a concern ) then what's the point of spending money on this software and acoustic treatment?

Truly excellent video and presentation! Neutral and convincingly unbiased, detailed without superfluous information, and very informative! Well done and much appreciated! The conclusions I drew about the software and the viability of their sound correction closely matched your conclusions as well.

@jameszhan nice videos! Question to you, I need to buy a new Mac for my studio.
I‘m doing mainly mixing and music production jobs with real instruments / audio tracks and also many plug ins / instruments.
I‘m using a lot Waves SSL-bundle and want to cut videos as well. I‘m not sure about the configuration and which MacBook I shall buy now. My DAW is Logic Studio. I want to buy the best value for money…thank you for your support upfront. Cheers, Fitch

Has been a Game Changer for me Being able to Export my Profile into my ADAM A7Vs and Close SoundID App completely, Great job Adam & Sonarworks. 😎

Thnx for ur informative video. I think you can use a mic stand for the 37 measurements, it will only take much longer. And looking at it from another angle, your head is always moving a bit while mixing, so maybe they calculated that bias.

Thank you, James!

Regarding the first point, you can use a mic stand if you like, but we suggest holding the microphone in your hand and minding the height of the microphone. Keep the microphone horizontal, aiming at the center point between speakers and if possible try to keep the mic at arm’s length from your body to avoid dips at certain frequencies. The measurement software is designed to provide accurate results without the use of a mic stand. Although, you have to make sure to follow the visual instructions in Measure carefully: keep the mic at ear level, horizontal to the floor and aim at the center point between the two speakers, also, extend your arm away from your body to avoid unwanted reflections. As long as you have that covered, there is no mic stand needed.

Regarding the last on - there is a possibility to customize the flat target curve for all of your presets. You can shape the target curve with a flexible parametric EQ to create your own house curves for all of your monitors and headphone presets. Save, rename, and delete as many custom target  EQ presets as you like. You can also easily control the frequency range that the software will calibrate under the Custom Target feature. This can be done separately for each Custom Target preset. For instance, apply SoundID Reference calibration only to the low and mid frequencies.