What is the value of the Waves CLA NX plugin?
The latest incarnation of the Waves NX virtual room plugin is the WAVES CLA NX.
This will put you virtually in the mixing room of Chris Lorde Alge and mimics the sound of his mixingroom and speakers.
In this blog an overview of how it works and sound and it’s usefullness.
You can get the plugin here: https://waves.alzt.net/7mGmP5
You can also watch the video below, where I go in depth with sound as well.
The value of a plugin like this
Mixing on headphones has of course many advantages like really pinpointing and zooming in on details in your audio.
But it lacks the 3d dispersion of sound which make that mixing on speakers in a proper treated acoustic environment.
A plugin liek teh CLA NX will let your mixes translate much, much better on all sorts of audio devices than when you mix on most headphones.
Simple things like the acoustics of your space have a huge impact on the decisions you make, a more reverby room will usually let you dial in less reverb and on headphones you have no additional reverb so there will be a danger you mix in too much reverb.
Also with speakers you have crossbleed.
This is how much of a speaker on one side you will hear with your opposite ear. This crossbleed is absent on headphones.
A plugin like the WAVES CLA NX will help will those issues on headphones.
The CLA NX Speakers
The CLA NX offers 3 different sets of speakers.
They are The cla10’s with sub, the main speakers and a boombox.
This gives you 3 different sound profiles already.
I find that both cla10’s with sub and the mains are pretty heavy on the low end in regard to without the plugin
It’s definitely something to get used to.
Fortunately the boombox speaker has a lack of low end on the other extreme end as reference.
I enjoyed the ambiance dial, it helps to get you more closer to the speaker or more to the back for a more diffuse sound, again this helps with referencing your mix.
Ans I really liked the sound of the ns10 with sub with the ambiance off on my dt990 headphones.
Although on speakers, it didn’t work at all, but that’s logical. So don’t forget to turn off the plugin while exporting.
I also find that using the headphone eq modelling really helps in getting a realistic pleasing sound, at least on the Beyerdynamic dt990s I used for testing
Waves NX Headtracker plugin
One feature which the NX series has over other, similar plugins is it’s headtracking option.
This needs a webcam to track your headmovement and has the big advantage that it will increase the realism of sittings behind speakers in a mixroom a lot.
This will put the speakers are in a fixed position and don’t move when you move your head, like in a real studio.
I did find that with quick head movement the tracks sometimes loses tracking. On slower speeds it’s working fine.
When you think this is nonsense, this feature can be disabled.
The CLA NX SOUND
It does deliver and work as alternative listening space, just as the other Waves NX spaces do.
It will definitely help you making better mixdecisions when you are forced to work on headphones.
And this one has it’s own sound signature, different from the other ones. Try it out to see if this sounds is to your liking.
Check out the plugin here:
https://waves.alzt.net/7mGmP5
