Not so long ago, mixing on headphones was an exercise that most engineers would only ever attempt as a last resort, when a set of monitor speakers in a properly configured room was unavailable for whatever reason. Today there are plenty of software solutions on the market that can not only neutralise the spectral colouration inherent in most headphones, making them much more suitable for critical listening, but also make your less-than-stellar set sound like a more premium model (or vice-versa, for mix translation checking), and even weave binaural sorcery to place you in all manner of virtual studio control rooms, complete with otherwise unattainable primo speakers. Here are some of our favourites…

Sonarworks SoundID Reference For Headphones

Sonarworks’ popular calibration and simulation software provides everything you need to flatten or transform the output of your headphones in the form of a plugin for in-DAW deployment and a standalone app for system-wide application. The fundamental purpose of the whole setup is to calibrate your cans (selected from a roster of over 400 supported models) for accurate, uncoloured referencing purposes, which it does remarkably well; but SoundID Reference also enables switching between 20 playback device simulations, from well-known speakers and headphones, to laptops, phones, TVs, cars and more, as well as all 400+ aforementioned headphones. For the utmost in precision, you can even send Sonarworks your specific headphones and pay to have the company generate a custom calibration curve for them, or buy a pre-calibrated set of Sennheisers (HD 400, 600 and 650) or Beyerdynamics (DT 880 Pro and 990 Pro) directly.

Although the UI could be a bit more intuitive in places, SoundID Reference constantly impresses with the quality of its simulations, and if you want to get your monitor speakers in on the action too, there’s a pricier version that calibrates and simulates those in the same way using a measurement app and optional measurement microphone.

Slate Digital VSX

The current darling of head-bound speaker/room simulation, Slate’s smash hit plugin-and-headphones combo claims to transport you to perfect psychoacoustic representations of numerous environments, from Sonoma, NRG and Zuma Studios (housing high-end speakers by PMC, DynAudio, ATC, Ocean Way and others, and the dirtier likes of NS10s and Mixcubes) to two cars, a club, various tasty headphones (‘LCD’, ‘650’, etc) and more, depending on which of the two packages (Essentials or Platinum) you plump for. Plug in the “perfectly linear” VSX headphones, fire up the plugin, select your desired monitoring environment, switch between the near-field, mid-field and far-field monitor options for your chosen room, and marvel at the staggeringly convincing spatial placement and speaker simulation achieved by Slate’s proprietary Binaural Perception Modelling technology.

VSX is the only entrant in our list that requires a dedicated, purpose-built set of headphones, but the clear advantage of this approach is the total governance it gives the developer over every element of the system, ultimately delivering a highly-tuned, quasi-magical virtual monitoring experience that we’ve yet to hear bettered. Read what Russ Hughes thought in his article Steven Slate Audio VSX Headphone Mixing System Tested.

Waves Nx Virtual Studio Collection

One of the key selling points of Waves’ control room simulation platform is its head tracking technology, which keeps the virtual speakers locked in place as your head moves around, receiving positioning data from your computer’s webcam or a separately available Bluetooth accelerometer that straps to the band of your headphones – clever stuff. Beyond that, the four plugins in Nx Virtual Studio Collectionn put you in the mixing hot seats of Germano (featuring Exigy S412G, Yamaha NS10 and Germano A2 monitors) and Ocean Way (Ocean Way HR1 and HR5) Studios, Chris Lord-Alge’s gaff (NS10 and Ocean Way HR1), and an unspecified mix room hosting unspecified monitors (the original Nx Virtual Mix Room). Any headphones can be used to realise these fabulous spaces and their installed monitors, and EQ correction curves are included for more than 270 models.

Nx Virtual Studio Collection’s 3D spatialisations and speaker simulations, although perhaps not quite up there with those of VSX, are excellent, and the head tracking only boosts the sense of immersion, albeit far more effectively with the Bluetooth tracker than via webcam. At its low ownership price, and being included with Waves’ Essential and Ultimate subscriptions, it’s also very affordable. Oh, and there’s an Abbey Road version available, too.

Genelec Aural ID

Aiming to make mixing on headphones sound and feel just like mixing on monitors, Genelec’s ambitious plugin passes the DAW output to your cans through a Personal Head-Related Transfer Function (PHRTF) profile generated by machine learning from phone-captured photos and 360-degree video of your ears, head and upper body. The effect that the shapes of these anatomical features have on sound arriving at your ears is profound and unique to you, and by incorporating your PHRTF into its speaker simulation, rather than the generalised and arbitrary HRTFs used by other binaural solutions, Aural ID is able to achieve incredible results when it comes to localisation and perceived space. Channel counts from stereo to Dolby Atmos are supported, and the binaural renderer gives an astonishingly lifelike impression of depth and height with the latter. A panoply of headphone-specific EQ correction curves is built in, and owners of Genelec Smart Active Monitors can even import GLM4 calibration data into the plugin, thereby virtualising their actual speaker setup.

All this power and personalisation comes at a considerable cost, it must be said, but for the professional producer/engineer moving frequently between speakers and headphones, Aural ID’s ingenious proposition and stunning efficacy will be worth every penny.

Toneboosters MorphIt

At the very opposite end of the pricing spectrum to Aural ID, Toneboosters’ cheap and cheerful headphone calibration plugin (and iOS/Android app) makes the headphones selected in one menu (ie, the ones you’re wearing) sound like the headphones selected in the other menu (the ones you wish you were wearing), or simply flattens their frequency response for a neutral sound. Almost 600 headphone profiles are onboard, alongside a handful of ‘Generic’ target curves (‘Harman’, ‘Earbuds’, ‘HiFi’, etc), and four points of curve adjustment (resonant high shelf, low shelf and two bells) make customisation quick and easy, should you need it.

It might not have the spatialising bells and whistles of the other plugins here, but when it comes to straight-up headphone-to-headphone transposition, Morphit is a fine option for the producer on a budget.

Do you use any of these plugins, or another not included in this list? Tell us in the comments below!