DearVR MONITOR is your virtual control room from stereo up to 9.1.6 Immersive Audio
Disclosure: This product was not given to us for free to write this review or included with any compensation. This is an honest and trustworthy review of a revolutionary product.
On November 10th, 2020 Dear Reality, a software company striving to make the 3D audio world accessible for everyone with their outstanding tools for 3D audio production has just hit another mile stone in their journey to do so. With the release of their brand new tool DearVR MONITOR, they have just made it possible for anyone to step into the perfect control room over headphones with their outstanding virtual acoustics headphone technology. With DearVR MONITOR you can reference your mix in any size room with any speaker array available from stereo up to 9.1.6 immersive audio. Beyond Stereo Entertainment has had the pleasure to support Dear Reality in their endeavors and test their product to give you, the reader, a truly transparent and honest review of its capabilities. Lets dive in!
Your Virtual Reference Control Room
Referencing a mix in a surround format is a bit difficult without a truly measured and treated control room. Stepping into a studio with quality equipment to do so is equally as difficult, not to mention the fees per hour it cost to do so. Maybe you have invested your money to transform a bedroom in your house as a studio and you are now planning on building an Dolby Atmos setup? Forewarning, that will cost a lot more investment money and require a specific room treatment as well as acoustic measurements to ensure that you receive a decently accurate sound quality. Now, before you go and break the bank just know that Dear Reality has just eliminated these obstacles with this revolutionary technology.
DearVR MONITOR has many configurations to fit any and all of your production needs. Whether you are on the road, in your home studio, or in a hotel room, by adding DearVR MONITOR to your Master bus you can be in any listening environment of your choosing. First lets talk about the inputs.
Inputs
The input selector allows you to configure whatever speaker array you desire. The virtual speakers are an emulation of the Neumann KH-120 series, a studio preferred speaker for extremely accurate reference. A pair of these will run roughly around $1,400.00. With a sub channel configuration the sub monitor is an emulation of Neumann’s KH-810 subwoofer. This sub runs around $2,700.00. This being said with an immersive speaker array you are not only saving lots of money but you are also getting the best possible reference of your mix possible. The input drop down selector ranges from multiple types of mono sources up through two types of stereo configuration. Standard stereo with a speaker placement of 30 degrees left and right of the center listening zone, and Stereo wide with 45 degrees left and right of the center listening zone.
The horizontal plane category offers a LCRS setup up to 7.1 SDDS. With every configuration in between whether you are mixing for music or for film DearVR MONITOR gives you every and any option to check your mix and hear the consistencies and inconstancies of each setup.
If you desire to reference your mix in a Dolby Atmos setup with heights, DearVR MONITOR gives you options from 5.0.2 up to 9.1.6 with every variation in between. But wait, there’s more! It doesn’t end there for surround monitoring. Beyond 9.1.6 you also have surround options of 8.0, 9.1, 11.1, and 13.1. With the correct output configurations in your DAW you are able to reference your mix in all of these formats and mix in your own virtual mix room.
The Control room
The Control Room area allows you to configure the environment you are referencing in. Say goodbye to getting disturbed by surrounding noise and focus on your production.
In the Scene drop down you are offered a choice of listening in three variations of mix rooms A, B, and Large. Options for a truly undisturbed and transparent environment can be used with the Analytic Dry room and Analytic Position room. These are highly detailed resolutions with great spatial representation of mixing in a perfectly matched mix room.
To check your mix in other various common listening environments the Check category offers spaces typically not at an every day disposal. Options such as a Live Venue, Stadium, Acoustic Venue, Club, and Club Large. These environments are particularly useful when checking a mix for a live performance or other playback scenarios where you may be caught by surprise from unwanted frequency spikes. Now you can prepare ahead of time to have a perfectly mixed live edit for your next performance.
Other listening scenarios your are offered to check your mix continue on to environments such as a Car, Van, Cinema, Home Theater, Living Room and Kitchen. Totally unconventional listening environments but definitely some that someone, somewhere is referencing your mix on. Make sure your quality is consistent and perfect for them when they spread the word about your new creation.
Ambience and Focus
These environments can be adjusted for clarity with the ambience and focus sliders. The Ambience slider will allow you to adjust from a completely neutral sound to a completely in the room experience. This slider will adjust the room reflections of where your sound may be reflecting around the virtual room.
The Focus slider adjust the focus of where your sound source is projecting from. With 100% localized you are configuring the sound to be completely focused on the localization of the sound in the environment. With -100% you are configuring the sound to have the most clarity from the original source without any disturbed coloration to the sound. These parameters are all possible thanks to the patented Clarity algorithm by Sennheiser AMBEO.
Output
The Output configuration is most vital to the referencing ability. With support for head tracking DearVR MONITOR allows you to shift your head position in the room to provide a truly immersive experience as well providing the option to focus on a specific source and target any details from the source head on. The Master Gain is especially useful when needing to hear more or less detail of the overall environment and how your sound is projecting in the space.
The Review
With the DearVR MONITOR easy-to-use graphic interface it is easier than ever to understand the listening environment of the loudspeaker formats. Having the option to transition from any mix room and any speaker array simply by clicking, our work flow at Beyond Stereo Entertainment has never been easier. Referencing in different size environments has enabled us to understand the vulnerable details of sound otherwise impossible to presume in a studio or through headphones previously. We have been using this tool for only a few days now and it is no doubt the new standard tool in our mixing and production process.
Dear Reality is truly living up to their mission of providing the 3D Spatial Audio world to everyone. Even if 3D audio was never in your playbook, this is a tool that will bring great benefit to every creator and producer out there whether you are a bedroom producer or a studio mixing engineer. This tools revolutionizes the industry with the ability to listen in any stereo or surround format without needing to leave your workstation. There is truly no Cons that present it self from our review of this product. It is easy to use, extremely accurate, and outrageously powerful. We believe this tools should be in every creators inventory and we encourage you to support Dear Reality and their forward thinking innovations for the industry by adding it into your workflow.
If you act soon, you can receive the intro offer of this plugin for $50 dollars off from their website. Visit the site for more details.
We hope you enjoyed this review. If you have any question about what was covered here or wish we covered something else leave us a comment below! If you enjoyed this read be sure to like and subscribe to our blog to stay tuned to everything immersive audio.
