Ideally, we’d always be able to mix using a well-calibrated monitoring setup, but it’s not always possible. As such, you might often slip on your studio headphones when you’re riding the faders, but as we all know, mixing on cans is very different to mixing using speakers.
Enter Blue Cat Audio’s Re-Head, a new plugin that’s designed to create “a mixing room experience when using headphones.” The developer admits that it isn’t going to replace your studio monitors, but it might help to make the differences between using your headphones and your speakers less pronounced.
Re-Head uses a ‘head response’ model that’s designed to simulate the way that your head affects the audio when you’re using studio monitors. This in turn creates a simulated acoustic space, with stereo processing helping to negate the hard-panned sound that you get when you’re using headphones.
There’s also a spectrum analyzer and an EQ, and you can also add an Impulse Response representation of your mixing room.
Blue Cat Audio says that, as well as being useful when you’re mixing, Re-Head might also come in handy when you’re recording distorted guitars and other instruments, making them sound less unnaturally ‘in your face’ (or ‘in your ears’, perhaps).
Re-Head runs on PC and Mac in VST/AU formats. The regular price is $49/€49, but you can currently purchase it for the introductory price of $34/€34.
Find out more on the Blue Cat Audio website.
