The ProblemVRM (Virtual Reference Monitoring) is Focusrite’s own loudspeaker & room simulator designed for headphone listening. Accurate mixing has until now, required expensive monitors and a carefully designed and treated control room. Currently, both professional music producers facing budgetary limitations and project music makers without access to such, frequently encounter mixing and "auditioning" difficulties.
The Solution
VRM allows you to choose from 10 pairs of industry standard nearfield and main monitors in an acoustically treated control room. You can select 6 different listening positions within that room; vary your distance from the monitors and move from left to right to check stereo imaging.
Engineers routinely A/B their mixes by burning CDs and taking them into untreated rooms to reference on consumer stereos. VRM eliminates this process by simulating two extra rooms; a large living room and a smaller bedroom. You can choose between a range of speakers including quality hi-fi, computer, cheap stereo and television speakers. As with the control room simulation, you can select between a number of listening positions to check stereo imaging and observe the effects of typical room modes on your mixes.
The Method
VRM uses standard headphones to reproduce the direct sound, together with a DSP system that is used to simulate specific monitoring scenarios. VRM's room models are mathematical models which provide greater flexibility in the possible combinations of loudspeakers and listening positions. The loudspeaker simulations are created using convolutions of impulse responses measured using the original loudspeakers. The accuracy of these simulations in different environments is taken care of by the impulse responses themselves and the way they are calculated and manipulated. Saffire Pro 24 DSP takes all the processing load off your computer.