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Mixing on headphones presents a number of issues that have plagued music-makers for decades. The 180° soundstage can make you second-guess your panning choices, the lack of room acoustics can throw off your reverb decisions, and your EQ settings can sound totally different when switching between headphones and speakers.
Many audio companies have approached these problems by designing more accurate headphone drivers, flattening frequency responses with custom EQ curves, and developing virtual monitoring plug-ins that attempt to simulate the experience of mixing on speakers in a studio. Some solutions are software-based while others require special modeling headphones, but IK Multimedia’s new ARC ON•EAR puts it all in one palm-sized device that works with almost any headphones, with or without a computer.
Combining advanced headphone calibration, virtual studio monitoring, audiophile-quality conversion, and other handy features, this sleek little box turns your headphones into a reference-grade listening system you can trust when making critical mixing and mastering decisions.
After demoing the ARC ON•EAR ourselves, we spoke with IK Multimedia’s Chief Technology Officer Davide Barbi, Product Manager Lorenzo Iori, Vice President of Sales and Marketing Daniel Boatman, and Account Sales Manager/Product Specialist Mark Kondrat to learn more about how it works, the technology under the hood, and the engineering that went into creating it.
IK Multimedia’s goal with the ARC ON•EAR was to make mixing on headphones feel liberating instead of limiting. “We all know all the difficulties that we have in mixing and mastering and balancing audio with headphones,” says IK Multimedia CTO Davide Barbi. “The perspective is totally unnatural on headphones because of the exaggerated stereo image, and for that reason, nobody in our industry really trusts authoring final audio on headphones. Balancing reverb, vocals, and everything else in a mix is very, very difficult.”
To solve these problems, IK’s Modena, Italy-based team applied their expertise in speaker calibration and DSP to the world of headphones. Using a special headphone measurement rig from GRAS Acoustics, paired with the same amplification circuit in the ARC ON•EAR, the team meticulously measured the frequency and phase responses of nearly 200 headphone models, then used a combination of DSP and listener testing to develop corrective EQ curves that provide truly transparent sound.
“The measurement is easy, but the challenge was to translate the instrumental measurement into something that we can use,” says Product Manager Lorenzo Iori. “We tested a lot of target curves. We started off with the HARMAN curve, which is made from a sample of listeners, both trained and not trained, but we tailored it toward our aim and only used people who are actually sound engineers. We think we achieved a target curve that better fits our needs as audio engineers.”
For the virtual monitoring aspect, IK Multimedia took a different approach than most existing solutions. Others use binaural impulse responses recorded in a studio, providing good spatialization with the side effect of having the sound of the room and speakers baked into the output. Instead, ARC ON•EAR uses DSP to filter and combine the left and right signals in a way that mimics our hearing while preserving a flat frequency response. This means that Studio Mode can be used with or without Virtual Speakers or modeled room acoustics.
“There are a lot of variables, and at this point in the technology, you cannot get a perfect reproduction of both frequency response and spatial position,” Iori explains. “If you want perfect spatial positioning, you have to basically destroy the frequency response, because the brain is continuously applying cross-correlations and other processing to the audio. Simulating that is tricky, so most of the competitors aim to achieve better spatial reproduction at the expense of frequency response. We try to keep the frequency response as flat as possible and from there move on to find the most accurate reproduction of the stereo field.”
The final piece of the puzzle was packaging all this technology in a portable piece of kit that you can take anywhere, plug into anything, and get great results with any headphones. ARC ON•EAR is small enough to stay out of your way while giving you access to a nice big volume knob and simple controls to access all of its features. It can act as a bus-powered audio interface via USB-C or operate on battery power and receive analog signal from any headphone output. Best of all, the amplifier adapts to the impedance and power specs of each headphone model, eliminating even more obstacles to achieving sonic transparency.
“Our design has a virtually zero-impedance output, and this means that the frequency response of the unit is not affected by the load that you apply to it,” says Iori. “The impedance is used by the hardware to calibrate its output level in order not to damage any headphones, and we also store the maximum power that is handled by each headphone. And so we use that data to calibrate the output of the device.”
After unboxing the ARC ON•EAR, you’ll need to download the corresponding software and audio driver via the IK Product Manager. Then, connect the device via USB, follow the prompts to update the firmware if necessary, and you’re ready to get set up.
All you have to do to start mixing with flatter sound is select your headphones from the lengthy list of models. Pressing the CAL button toggles the calibration on or off, and you can see the difference on the Frequency Response graph at the top. There’s also a Phase Align button that can help certain headphones sound more accurate, as well as a Tone control that offers a +/- 2 dB tilt if you prefer a slightly warmer or brighter sound.
Hitting the STUDIO button narrows the stereo image by blending the left and right channels with subtle phase and frequency differences to emulate the experience of speakers, and the stereo spread can be adjusted anywhere within a 180-degree arc. The Virtual Speakers menu allows you to apply various models ranging from common two- and three-way studio monitors to mastering-grade towers, boutique hi-fi speakers, and useful references like TV and smartphone speakers. IK Multimedia even plans to add virtual listening environments.
The FN button can be programmed to toggle any of the following settings: Mute, Dim, Mono, Virtual Speakers, Phase Align, Play/Pause, or LED Off/On. Additionally, holding FN and pressing CAL allows you to cycle between up to five presets. Each preset saves a snapshot of all the settings described above, so you can store calibration curves for various headphones, swap between Virtual Speaker models, or quickly change what the Function button does.
The overarching goal of ARC ON•EAR is to make headphones a viable option for professional engineers, bedroom producers, and audiophiles alike. “Like many of our products, I think it’s going to find a lot of use from engineers that either don't have great rooms or are forced to do a lot of mixing on headphones,” says Product Specialist Mark Kondrat. “But there are also a lot of professional engineers and producers who actually prefer headphones. ARC ON•EAR makes that process and workflow so much easier, so I think it's going to find a home in many demographics.”
“If you’re in a hotel room or the back of a bus, you just don't have the luxury of pulling out speakers—and you couldn't trust your speakers in those spaces, anyway,” adds Daniel Boatman, VP of Sales and Marketing. “For someone like me who has only ever mixed on speakers, if you asked me to mix on headphones, I'd be like, ‘This is going to be a disaster.’ But give me something like ARC ON•EAR and I can be confident that the work that I'm going to turn in is going to translate properly.”
Whether you need to make critical mixing and mastering decisions on the go or simply don’t have the space or budget for high-quality studio monitors, ARC ON•EAR just might be the missing piece in your monitoring chain. Check it out on Vintage King today, get in touch with one of our Audio Consultants, or schedule a demo at one of our world-class showrooms to hear it for yourself.
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