[MattTCG]

I was looking for someone who has tried SW with the hd700. Is it as revolutionary with the hd700 as it is with the hd800? 

 

[admbr]

Just turned Sonarworks off after a long stretch of use....

With my foobar setup where SW is the last in the DSP chain, I miss the neutrality. When using OOYH (which I use with JRiver for the superior channel upsampling), a surround sound speaker simulator, it sounds much better without--I am guessing this is because SW is being applied before OOYH "recolors" the sound.

Would anyone be able to venture a guess as to whether the "System-wide" version would allow me to apply SW after OOYH? The program works through a virtual device, and its important that I be able to use WASAPI output rather than DirectSound (SQ really suffers without exclusive output, in my ears).

 

[admbr]

I was looking for someone who has tried SW with the hd700. Is it as revolutionary with the hd700 as it is with the hd800? 

The degree of "improvement" should scale inversely with how "neutral" the headphones sound signature is to begin with.

Given that we're talking similar models of the same brand, I'd say you could expect similar results. My bet is the 800's would be more neutral, in which case you'd have slightly better returns with the 700's.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Wrong on the 800s, it makes a dramatic difference in their listenability, while not affecting their transparency.  It transforms the 800.

 

[514077]

@Rude Wolf
I tried to set up an account earlier to get help with getting my 5-day trial to work.  There's a visual capcha preventing this potential customer from establishing an account.  I realize the need to protect your site from bots, but, since it is a site dealing with audio products, it would be great if you could set up a sound capcha for those who need it.
Thanks.
Oh, by the way, my emailed code won't activate the trial.

 

[nvfan]

Does Sonarworks actually work in Windows and how would you get this to work with say Foobar, or is this mainly a Mac program?

 

[dukefx]

The VST works fine with Foobar (load it with its VST Wrapper). The new systemwide version is extremely unstable and therefore useless at this point. I've tested it for about a day and gave up. I don't even know how it was implemented but it doesn't seem to be an APO. You can turn the VST into a systemwide plugin using virtual soundcards for routing and a standalone VST host like VSTHost or SaviHost. It's stable.

 

[groovyd]

  The VST works fine with Foobar (load it with its VST Wrapper). The new systemwide version is extremely unstable and therefore useless at this point. I've tested it for about a day and gave up. I don't even know how it was implemented but it doesn't seem to be an APO. You can turn the VST into a systemwide plugin using virtual soundcards for routing and a standalone VST host like VSTHost or SaviHost. It's stable.

 
As far as I know they have not released a Windows version yet.  The Mac version which I have been running for about a month works great.  It has a couple small issues like having to reset it's output device following system sleep or powering off the output device but they are working on fixing it.  The fact that it handles both headphones and speakers all in one simple tray app is definitely worth using in my opinion it really improves the sound to all calibrated devices I have used it on.  t has impressed me so much I am packaging up all my headphones and shipping them to latvia for calibration next week.  I mean if I can get my T1 for example to sound like my LCD-X my neck will really thank me for that

 

[dukefx]

 

  The VST works fine with Foobar (load it with its VST Wrapper). The new systemwide version is extremely unstable and therefore useless at this point. I've tested it for about a day and gave up. I don't even know how it was implemented but it doesn't seem to be an APO. You can turn the VST into a systemwide plugin using virtual soundcards for routing and a standalone VST host like VSTHost or SaviHost. It's stable.

 
As far as I know they have not released a Windows version yet.  The Mac version which I have been running for about a month works great.  It has a couple small issues like having to reset it's output device following system sleep or powering off the output device but they are working on fixing it.  The fact that it handles both headphones and speakers all in one simple tray app is definitely worth using in my opinion it really improves the sound to all calibrated devices I have used it on.  t has impressed me so much I am packaging up all my headphones and shipping them to latvia for calibration next week.  I mean if I can get my T1 for example to sound like my LCD-X my neck will really thank me for that

They have, I got a notification on the 23rd along with a 5 day trial key. I'm not questioning its usefulness as it does a marvelous job compared to a few others I tried (by far my favorite).
 

 

[groovyd]

  They have, I got a notification on the 23rd along with a 5 day trial key. I'm not questioning its usefulness as it does a marvelous job compared to a few others I tried (by far my favorite).
 

so they released it already?  just last week they had said it was giving them troubles so they weren't going to release it yet.  i guess they were right. would be great once it works as i run windows at work.

 

[514077]

 

 

  The VST works fine with Foobar (load it with its VST Wrapper). The new systemwide version is extremely unstable and therefore useless at this point. I've tested it for about a day and gave up. I don't even know how it was implemented but it doesn't seem to be an APO. You can turn the VST into a systemwide plugin using virtual soundcards for routing and a standalone VST host like VSTHost or SaviHost. It's stable.

 
As far as I know they have not released a Windows version yet.  The Mac version which I have been running for about a month works great.  It has a couple small issues like having to reset it's output device following system sleep or powering off the output device but they are working on fixing it.  The fact that it handles both headphones and speakers all in one simple tray app is definitely worth using in my opinion it really improves the sound to all calibrated devices I have used it on.  t has impressed me so much I am packaging up all my headphones and shipping them to latvia for calibration next week.  I mean if I can get my T1 for example to sound like my LCD-X my neck will really thank me for that

They have, I got a notification on the 23rd along with a 5 day trial key. I'm not questioning its usefulness as it does a marvelous job compared to a few others I tried (by far

I got the same email.  If a regular guy can't get it to work, then I'm healicly twisted.

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

  I was looking for someone who has tried SW with the hd700. Is it as revolutionary with the hd700 as it is with the hd800? 

At the risk of self-aggrandizement, I quote myself from the HD800 thread:
 

  The HD800 does indeed have better bass than the HD700. With Sonarworks, its bass is exceptional for most genres.
 
I've tried a number of mods to get the best bass out of HD700, and so far my favorites are the "Blendtec®" mod and the "invisible cable" mod. For the first one, take the HD700, and put it in a Blendtec® (you can see this mod applied to an iPad here, and if you don't have a Blendtec®, a Vitamix is an acceptable alternative). Then, puree the HD700 until it is in pieces smaller than 1cm. This bass sounds better than any other configuration I've tried.
 
For the more reversible "invisible cable" mod, unplug your cable from your amp and from the HD700. Ask a friend or spouse to hide it somewhere in your home. Then, turn on your amp and listen as usual with an invisible cable.

 

[groovyd]

yeah even the mac version was hard to get going.  the breakthrough was realizing it requires purchased headphone and speaker plugin licenses.  In other words you cannot demo systemwide unless you already own their headphone and speaker plugins, the plugin demo licenses do not work with it.  once you buy the plugin licenses it works fine.  basically you are demoing systemwide, not the plugins.  if you want to demo the plugins alone then you would need a good VST player. but i would argue the value of this is in the systemwide app in that it doesnt require being a audio guru to setup (once you have the licenses). it just runs in the tray across all audio of the computer.

 

[514077]

  yeah even the mac version was hard to get going.  the breakthrough was realizing it requires purchased headphone and speaker plugin licenses.  In other words you cannot demo systemwide unless you already own their headphone and speaker plugins, the plugin demo licenses do not work with it.  once you buy the plugin licenses it works fine.  basically you are demoing systemwide, not the plugins.  if you want to demo the plugins alone then you would need a good VST player. but i would argue the value of this is in the systemwide app in that it doesnt require being a audio guru to setup (once you have the licenses). it just runs in the tray across all audio of the computer.

Problem is I couldn't get even the pluggin to work during the 21-day trial.  I'm not spending any money unless I can get to hear if it's worth it or not.  I even got an automatic mail asking where I was or what did I think.  I said, let me have one more trial period and a bit of assistance.  They said,  No...Next?
I'm beginning to think we don't matter like their professional engineering customers do.  That's RW's meal ticket.  
So, I give up.  Just another inadiquately constructed piece of expensive software.

 

[groovyd]

Systemwide is clearly an admission by them that they need to expand their market.