Sonarworks SoundID Reference Plug-in for Speakers & Headphones with Measurement Microphone Reviews

This is a room EQ. It is to EQ your room to a flat response. That is great but it's not a substitute for acoustic treatment. It is important to understand this is the final piece of the puzzle. Not the first. This will EQ your room as the final touch. It will not fix decay and diffusion which is what treatment is for. For the best results you need both. Real treatment, NOT foam! Spend a week read up on room acoustics before you make any move.

After taking the time to build out a studio and do the work of physically treating the space, this was the final step that made the difference for me. Even with a fairly good sounding room there still remained a good deal of subjectivity to my mixes. I was never sure how my mix was going to translate to another environment. I found myself exporting mixes and running them out to the car, the upstairs stereo, etc. and even waiting on friends for feedback on their speakers. While getting external feedback on my mixes is still something I value, that feedback is even more helpful when I can actually hear what they're talking about.

The speaker calibration was easy, and using it on headphones (though I still don't mix with them) was as simples as choosing the model I own. Love this product. It's not flashy, it just works, and it's given me confidence in my work. That's priceless.

I've been usiung IK Multimedia ARC3 for several years but wanted room correction outside of the DAW that ARC does not offer. Sound ID does, and despite the overly complicated and somewhat scattered documentation, the process is simple. In my case, I have a focusrite 18i20 that will accept a Windows desktop driver. I installed that driver for desktop apps, and ASIO for the DAW. I now have room corrected audio from any browser or desktop app and ASIO support from the DAW. They are seperate, and one does not have to be turned off to use the other.
Capturing the correction profile is easy. The microphone is solid and the sampling system is brilliant.
The difference is incredible. I can now listen to corrected audio without opening the DAW adding a whole new level of confidence to my listening.

If you're unhappy with your current monitoring environment, before even considering different monitors, start with this software and some measure of room treatment. You'll be astounded at the results. This truly is a completely worthwhile utility. Highly recommended.

I've been using SR ID for a month now with my new Kali Audio IN-8 wave2 + WS-12 subwoofer. After I took a look at the first calibration test of my mix room, I added some treatment around my desk in a u-shaped fashion with a makeshift ceiling cloud, did another 36–37-point analysis and man, I'm hearing stuff in mixes I've never been able to hear before. So, I'm sold on both the Kali Audio stuff and the SR ID measurement system. I did an actual car test on a mix I was working with today. It's bang on! The mix sounds good on all media. If you don't have it, you need it. GREAT STUFF!

I was pretty amazed to hear the difference once all the measurements and corrections were made. Combined with Room EQ Wizard (REW), this is pretty amazing in the sound quality difference.

I had a couple of issues setting it up initially; however, this was because of my own stubbornness. I have an output audio interface and an input audio interface. I didn't want to reconfigure my ASIO to use one for both input and output (even though the instructions told me that's what needed to be done). I ended up wasting several hours trying to make it work. As soon as I used one audio interface as my input and output, it worked flawlessly.

TL;DR follow the instructions, and it'll work great.

Awesome product to dial in your room.

"Game Changer" is such an overused term these days...but this seriously is just that. I've gotten great mixes without it, due to my extreme due-diligence in listening to my mixes and taking notes on tons of systems before committing to a "final"...but I'm having jump through those hoops WAY less now. In fact, I'm only doing it now to re-train my ears to flat across my array of available listening tools (studio monitors, headphone models, cars, TV). I can already tell that when I'm done re-calibrating my ears...I won't have to do that crap anymore. My mixes immediate translated better, but I'm on a quest to have "perfect" translation...where my mixes sound pretty much as intended across all types of systems. The initial install was a little quirky in how the software wanted to see my sound cards, but that was pretty minor and the rest of the process was super well thought out and precise. I highly recommend this for anyone that is producing music/sound for the masses.

I have a well treated mixing room at my home studio and after setting up a profile and running through the tests I was pretty blown away by the before and after. The frequency response was much flatter. I was aware of some of the trouble areas in the room. This fixed it.
Really should have gotten this sooner.

I moved to Nashville TN back in May of 2022 and had no choice at the time but to get a cheap crappy studio apartment to live in. I work in and out of beautiful studios all over the nation on a regular basis so I knew off the bat that trying to be able to do my daily duties in this crappy all in one living and work space wasn't going to be ideal. I tried treating the walls and maneuvering furniture around the the room and got it to just about as best as it could get and still be a place for me to live. I decided to give this a try after seeing the price as compared to a Trinov system and I had heard amazing things about it. I ordered it and as soon as it arrived I downloaded the software, plugged in the mic and did a frequency sweep of the room. It took about 30 min to measure everything but that 30min has saved me SOOO much time. I can accurately hear just about everything and with the reference function you can see roughly what it would sound like on some of the most popular ways for people to listen to music. If it sounds good on the flat mains, the mix cube setting, and the Car 2 setting, it really will translate to anything. Only problem I've found when mixing through it is my low end still kinda suffers but a car test helps with that immensely. My temporary monitors just don't go down that low. I'll update this in a few months when I finally have my dedicated mix room and full monitor system.

All in all, I am blown away at how much much of an impact this made even in such a crappy room. Highly recommend to EVERYONE! Good room or bad, it'll still help if it doesn't fix your problems

I just finished treatment in my control room.
I purchased this for the last step.

The room is good and now is trustworthy.
My mix's translates very well.

It's so easy to use and will save you hours of finding deadspots in the room.

Takes about 20 minutes of hold the mic in very specific locations, but once that is done, say good bye to drywall ring and desk reflections and hello to a perfectly balanced sound. Very easy from downloading the software to entering your serial number for your mic,(yes, they are individually calibrated) to running the setup and testing. You are prompted every step of the way and before you know it, you are listening to what sounds like new monitors. I did not realized just how much my room was changing the sound of my speakers.

Do not hesitate, this is a game changer for mixing down your music. I will never be without this important tool.

Worked as advertised. Flattened out of my old Alesis speakers.

I'm in a bedroom studio and while I do have acoustic treatment up I knew there were problems with the room still. I was skeptical at first but finally decided to buy this and give it a shot. I'm so glad I did. I have Focal Alpha 65 monitors which are great monitors but using this along with those and the acoustic treatment, I can accurately hear the mix now and they translate so much better! You know the saying, you can't mix what you don't hear. Using this gets you as close to a flat sounding room as you can get and allows you to really hear the mix!

I watched numerous youtube videos on this package and I really thought it was snake oil. I mix in an untreated room (insert humiliating comments here), but yes the struggle is real. For my setup this really helped me get "closer" to a good mix in a problematic space. Is it perfect? No, but I still give it 5 stars, because short of a renovation this really helped me improve my mixes more than anything else I have tried.

Even if I had a treated room, I'd probably still run this to take the "flavor" out of any studio monitors I use. Its good enough for me and my project work.

I'll put it like this, SoundID really helps your ears to "see" with clarity and depth.
Just like an ophthalmologist adjusting your lens prescription to get you as close to 20/20 as possible!

This is arguably the most important purchase I've ever made in my career. After two years of using this product with monitors in various home studios (and using it in expensive studios that allegedly are "tuned"), I can confidently say that this product has unlocked a level of hearing precision in me that I absolutely would not have had I not been using it. When you use this software, every pair of speakers or monitors (in any room) will sound pretty much the same - flat/accurate. A lot of the time, that means it makes it sound worse from a listening perspective, because most headphones/monitors hype low and high frequencies - but that's the point, because I want my mixes to be the thing with the pleasant lows and highs, I don't want my monitors/headphones adding that for me. I'm writing this review after booking time at a studio that had a terrible sounding control room; largely because of this app and the ear training I've attained from using it, I was confident enough to know that I wasn't crazy, and the room really did sound terrible.

Buy. This. App. (And microphone.) It's a gift to humanity that it's this affordable - Trinnov is the next option I know of and that's thousands of dollars and more tedious to use.

The only downside of this program is that when waking my computer from sleep or from being off, the program can be very glitchy at first, often causing clocking issues and insane digital distortion/sample rate mishaps - but quitting it and opening it again always seems to do the trick. Would be great if that was fixed, but it's something I can deal with pretty easily. I also wish the correction would default to "off" when switching output devices, rather than to the last used preset, because sometimes the correction will be on and I won't notice it at first. I've gotten used to it but someone who's picky about their workflow might be more bothered by it. Worth it to me.

Really great software. I can't believe we've made this long without it.

For the record, I haven't dabbled too much in the mixing/mastering aspect of music yet but I plan to. I have a pair of Mackie CR-5s that I really loved before I bought this software. Now that they've been measured and balanced for my room setup it's mind blowing to hear just how muddy the stock sound is compared to the software's EQ'd flat response.

They're not bad monitors at all for the price by any means but they're a little exaggerated in the lows and lacking around the 1kHz and 10kHz areas. Reference 4 essentially applies the exact opposite frequency response as an EQ to make your speakers as flat as possible. This doesn't replace a properly set up listening space, but if you're a casual or budget audiophile like myself it's a really great start.

The mic itself has a super nice, heavy build quality to it. My main gripe is that an XLR cable wasn't included. Because I'm lazy, I had to put my interface on a long USB-C and wave the entire thing around my listening area instead of going out to buy one.

I know Sonarworks offers a paid service to custom-make a profile for your headphones, but I honestly wish they offered a product for measuring your own headphones since the frequency response information would come with it. I think my AKG 702's do sound marginally better, but there are headphones I own that Reference 4 doesn't have profiles for. As it stands right now it's hard for me to blindly trust their headphone profiles because I would much rather have a way to measure my own equipment.

In my eyes, this is an essential piece of software for people who don't want to completely break the bank buying their equipment. It offers a way to get tangible data for the speakers you already own, and allows you to get the most out of them. I'm very impressed and have a whole library of music I need to hear in a new way.

I have a small studio that is acoustically treated with two sets of monitors. After running the software using the Sonarworks reference mic it identified a major dip around 100 hz. Once the eq curve was adjusted for this it was like a blanket had been taken off the speakers. They also include settings for most headphones and other common reference speakers. I had an issue downloading the program but that was due to my internet providor. Once that was resolved the calibration process was simple. I can now compare my projects to professional releases with confidence.

Sonarworks Sound ID Reference is a huge difference maker. After spending 20 minutes or so going through the "diagnosis", all of the muddiness I could not remove with EQ disappeared. No matter the room or monitors you are using, this product will produce a noticeable difference. It will be the best investment you make in your mixing chain. Well worth the small amount of time and money invested.

I think it is a great tool! I give me a new point of view. understanding better my mixing room.
I work with 3 different monitor systems and 2 different pairs of headphones. in the beginning Ii was quite strange. I like the different presets...NS11, pc, smartphones....I am still in the "learning "understanding passage, but I think that in the future it will be a great tool. My speaker's sound much more precise and less "beautiful"

I use SoundID Reference to calibrate my home audio setup, as well as my acoustically treated studio. My mixes are drastically improved, and I also enjoy listening to music a lot more.
This is a must-have if you don't have a perfectly treated speaker setup or if you're working on audio with headphones only. I personally use Audio Technica M20x and M50x, both of which have some inherent translation issues, and the difference with SoundID Reference is night and day.
Seriously, try it out and hear the difference, it's a real MUST-HAVE!

The measurement process was easy and well-directed, and the correction made a big difference in my studio. One of the best studio purchases so far!

We are delighted with our purchase, along with the time it took to receive the product. While we still have a ton to learn, we feel that the first couple of mixes we did with Sonarworks are better. We have had two other folks listen, and they had positive feedback on the overall mix quality.

Sonarworks is brilliant. I had some experience in Free Trial and I was very happy with the result. The plugin helps me to get a better mix and master. I use an AKG 240 MKII and before Sonarworks it sounds muffled, but now my headphone have all the clarity. I didn't have any problems. Recommend to everyone. No regrets for having bought this.

I am blown away by all the new features. You guys rock. Keep doing what your doing.

It just works perfectly. Just what I needed for my home studio!

After the 21-day free trial couldn't live without it. Really useful product for every home or professional studio

Sonarworks has a very intuitive interface and well-laid out demo slides that support the new starters. I was able to understand all the features very quickly!

I'm set up in a moderately-sized room in my basement where I do a little bit of everything - I track instruments, mix, and master in the space. I've installed quite a bit of acoustic treatment and am working with Adam Audio T7Vs and the matching sub. While I've done my best to follow the best practices for monitor placement, treatment placement, etc., I felt that I couldn't dial in my space quite right.

This software has my monitoring setup firing on all cylinders now. The analysis was pretty easy and revealed a few flaws in my monitor volume levels (L/R discrepancies, sub too loud). I adjusted those things manually and did another analysis to save on processing. The resulting profile cleaned up my sound and greatly clarified the center image. It's taken my home studio into the semi-professional arena.

A few things to note: While the flat-frequency goal is useful (and I use this consistently), it's not the most exciting thing to listen to. You can create your own profile, though, where you can build back as you like. (You could also build a profile to compensate for hearing loss - pretty cool!)

Also, the routing can get somewhat complex. The standalone program is great while mixing and general listening; however, it introduces latency that would be undesirable when tracking. You can use the DAW plugin version in this case, and here is where it gets complicated. It's not crazy-difficult, but it would be tough to explain it quickly to a guest engineer or client in your space. You can get around this by always using the standalone app, which you disable when tracking.

This is a wonderful solution for those of us who can't quite afford top shelf monitors with built-in calibration profiles and DSP. The simulated environments are useful (cars, Avantone and Yamaha monitors, and even a movie theater snuck in there), and the headphone profiles are handy as well. I know I'll be re-calibrating as I modify the studio setup in order to ensure I'm always getting the best sound from my setup. This software isn't cheap, but it does include a reference microphone. I highly recommend that you give this a shot and nerd out a bit!

Muy buena herramienta y de gran ayuda para mezclar! Exelente!

I was sorely in need or software to correct my low-budget sound room. My research found 3 top contenders, one of which I nearly purchased, then upon a little more research decided on 'Sonarworks SoundID Reference for Speakers & Headphones with Measurement Microphone' and I haven't looked(listened?) back!

It's well worth the money and the effort to figure out!

I recommend this product!

I'm very happy with the results! It does what it says, makes mixing easier! It really makes the room flat! And it takes some getting use to so they recommend you listen to some commercially released music for a while to get used to the sound of it, but great product!

FYI:
- My studio is in my basement with no acoustic treatment
- I have a large rug in the middle of the floor and some furniture
- I use Yamaha HS5's and the HS8 sub.

great product. made a big difference in the sound of my monitors and headphones.

im not going to lie I did have a couple problems setting mine up the software wouldn't work but the Sweetwater team had me covered 100% and got me up in running in 2 days!!! definitely 100%

First off , this product really does work, and I could not live without it. Having said that, I would like to add, that it has been one of the only audio products that has been glitchy on my 2012 iMac. I only use it as a plugin in Logic Pro X, because when I used it system wide, it would freeze up my computer every other day, ("core audio went missing"message on my screen), and sometimes made it difficult to even shut the thing off, and reboot! ...Using it as the last plugin on my 2 bus in Logic has worked great, and without problems, so I only use it in the plugin form. I would have given it 5 stars, without the glitches. It works well on my studio monitors, and headphones, and I can finally get my mixes to translate using this software.. But keep in mind, room treatment is a MUST, and so is proper placement of your monitors.

I was a bit skeptical about buying this software, but after using it twice now, since my first attempt wasn't done correctly, I am very pleased with the result. My recording room had always had a low end problem, even though it is well treated acoustically. After using this software, the low end problem has virtually disappeared and even when I move from left to right and back away from the desk a bit, the bass problem doesn't return, which was always a continuing problem I had before. So my take is it is well worth trying. It is pretty user friendly and walks you through all the steps for measuring your room on the screen. I feel very comfortable recommending it.

Pretty nice change in speaker sounds using Sonarworks. Feel like I have a foundational target to shoot for in my mixes. Haven't translated the mix to other source yet but I like the concept. Don't know if I trust the calibration process as it relates to my room. Haven't used the HD 600 headphones yet .

It does what it says on the box!!! Has been a huge help for our smallish room for live church service broadcasts.

I was.. to say the least, skeptical of this. But I had read so many good things about it that i figured id downloaded the free trial for headphones. I was shocked at what I heard(or more-so what I hadn't heard before). First logical step would be to go listen to my mixes but no, I listed to all my favorite albums for a week straight. I can honestly say I learned an immense amount just listening to those albums. It was enlightening.
I have a decent selection of mics but oddly enough i did't have any omni. The included one is omni so I figured eh, what the heck, at the very least its a new mic lol. I've recorded with it a little bit and its fine. a little heavy in the low/mids but still fun to use.
Probably the coolest thing about this software is that even though it flattens out your frequency curve, your various monitors still retain their original unique characteristics.

I've always had weird base build-up in my room and I've never really been able to tame it. This takes the guesswork out. My mixes have never sounded better. I highly recommend it.

This room calibration software is excellent. It was so fun getting my ZenPro Modded HS8's to sound better in my space. The step by step set up was easily understandable and the amount of zones this software checks in order to calibrate your personalize results was just insane. I would say that this software improved the flat, natural response of my near to mid-field set up by 10-20% which is a lot. My reference monitors are just the little bit less muddy, more clear, and transiently more responsive. If you're willing to pay the $ for that subtle improvement and ease of mix translation, definitely do it!

I've got a rectangular room (converted home office about 10' x 12' with 9' ceiling) that due to its dimensions has some bass build-up in the rear of the room. I did some basic acoustic treatment - corner bass traps, two ceiling clouds, a rug and made sure there was space behind my monitors - and these things made it manageable.

I decided to try Sonarworks SoundID after reading some reviews and watching some videos - even though I was still a skeptic.

Wow. It exceeded my expectations by quite a lot. The mids are clearer and the bass is more controlled. No EQ-based room correction is going to be perfect (giving this 4 out of 5 stars) but if your room has some inherit issues outside of your control which other treatment types struggle to solve - you should definitely consider trying this out. It takes a minute to get the hang of positioning the measurement mic.

The headphone correction for my AKG 701 cans seems like it's good as well but I'll need some more time listening.

Out of my monitors though (Focal Alpha Twin Evo) - the improvement is significant enough that I am already a full believer in this product.

I've never had more problems with software than I have with SoundID Ref. When working, it truly is amazing. With the software working, I usually only have to do 1 car test for my mix to be wrapped. Unfortunately I've been dealing with issues for years now & no one can seem to help with their support team (super nice people though).

I am using the soundID reference for over a month now. SoundID really provides a good virtual correction to my home studio room. I really liked the results and it brings good sound correction and an improved feel. However, it is crashing my Win10 to Blue screen every time I change to any sound software or open a project with a different sound Rate.
I also had some issues regarding the product installation, and the support team just answered me 2 weeks after I solved the problem. I will escalate now the Win10 blue screen issue. I hope their support team responds faster.

I have to update my review because this software has become so unstable and unusable on my Mac M1 that it will not even load and reaching out to the company has not been helpful. Just a thousand steps they want me to go through that have not helped, when any software company worth anything would have an update fix for me. I don't have time for it all and they just really don't seem to care.

Guess I will just copy the curve as best I can in Logic Pro EQ and hope for the best!

Well, this product is amazing in one way and disappointing in another. First, the good... it TRULY does tune your listening environment, I mean incredibly so- to the point where you can't imagine how you ever listened or worked without it... it's that good. BUT it completely sucks on Windows and crashes all the time on every PC I own, and my PCs are tweaked for performance and audio. This software just doesn't play very nicely with Windows. The plugin version works just great in Studio One but not for WDM drivers for computer audio. Sorry just is buggy and lame in that arena. But when it works it works! I still don't understand why companies just let there Windows versions of their applications suffer so much? Like UA hardware, and more. Do they just not like Windows users or care? Do they make enough money strictly on Mac users? I don't know but it is 2021 and this spitefulness should end lol. So if you are a Mac user buy SonarWorks. PC user... just lower your expectations.

I wrestled with this reference software for years. I finally gave up. It really doesn't flatten the eq of your speakers. It absolutely does change them, and they may sound flat, but not in positive way.

The other issue, and it's kind of big, is the reliability of the software itself. With almost every update I had to uninstall and reinstall. Why? It would continuously crash, lose settings, or just stop working. The worst software package I ever purchased.

Save your money and buy a good set of monitors, and treat your room with acoustics. There are no good shortcuts in music production.

I bought this several years ago, and at first it worked great. However, this is one of those purchases you'll end up regretting.

Save your money and buy a good set of speakers. This software is too unreliable. It actually worked once upon time, but with each "update" it got worse. Every update seems to require a full uninstall/reinstall just to sync up correctly. Support won't tell you, or admit it, but that's what will end up happening.

Support is only by email, and it's typical. You ask a question or post a problem, and they'll answer something you didn't ask that is unrelated, because they don't seem to have the time to actually read what you write. So if you need support, plan on the first couple of emails being a total waste of time.

This has been a very unhappy and costly experience.

I was never able to get the software to work consistently. Some days it works, other days it just sits there with no meter deflection for either input or output. A quick question to Sonarworks support team took four days for a response, which read "We haven't heard from you in a while so everything must be fixed, right?" In other words, support is basically non-existent.

I finally uninstalled the software and am using the microphone as a door stop.

Using Studio One 5 and a Focusrite 18i20 Gen 1? Save your money. It doesn't work.

Nice and fancy but two Major problems.
1. I had every day issues with my systems output, Sonarworks 4 wouldn't let me pick the Audio out I wanted. Every time I restarted my Mac it wouldn't let me override the out and I couldn't use my interface (ssl 2) , so I didn't have any audio.
Eventualy I would get it to work but then If I dare to restart the Mac,....the same again.
Had a hard time to Uninstall it, had to manually erase all files and Folders.
If it didn't do all that mess, yes, its nice practical and fancy. So I ll go old school with pink noise and 2x31 eq.
2. The mic it came with it was defected. Email Sonarworks, no response.