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Sony is one of the leading developers of immersive audio technology, and the brand's new 360 Virtual Mixing Environment (360VME) is making immersive mixing more accessible than ever. Using personalized acoustical measurements captured in your studio with your speakers and your ears, 360VME replicates your mixing environment anywhere you can take a laptop and headphones.
Vintage King has partnered with Sony to offer a complete 360VME package, including on-site studio measurements, a 360VME software license, and Sony's MDR-MV1 headphones to ensure perfect binaural reproduction. We spoke with Sony's Professional Solutions Specialist Douglas Battle to understand how the technology works, who it’s for, and what to expect as a user.
While most competitors offer personalized binaural decoding for generic virtual studios or real immersive speaker systems captured with a generic binaural microphone, Sony’s solution is customized end-to-end for optimal accuracy.
With a single measurement, 360VME captures the sound of your monitors in your room, as you hear them through your own ears. This data, combined with Sony’s advanced acoustic modeling, gives you a personalized profile that recreates the sound of your studio in headphones so you can mix anywhere.
“The microphones go in your ear almost like earbuds, but instead of playing back music, they're actually capturing audio,” Battle explains. “Once the setup's done, the actual measurement takes about five minutes for a stereo room and roughly ten for an immersive system.”
It doesn’t matter if you mix in Sony's 360 Reality Audio, Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, traditional surround, or good old stereo. 360VME captures exactly what comes out of your speakers, whether you have two or 16. All you have to do is route your DAW outputs to the 360VME software or plug-in, put on your headphones, and it’ll sound just like you’re sitting in the sweet spot.
“It’s available in standalone or as a plug-in,” says Battle. “In standalone, it's not limited to playing back audio from a DAW. It could work with anything that's outputting multi-channel or stereo. 360VME is format agnostic and compatible with any format up to 16 channels.”
360VME has many uses. It allows engineers and producers to mix confidently on the go, enables busy post-production facilities to scale operations, and lets schools give students virtual access to facilities.
“In terms of who's using it, there are mixing engineers, artists, producers, QC folks, and A&R reps who need to hear what's going on in the studio when they're not there,” Battle explains. “Outside of the music and film industries, it's been really useful for schools that have limited facilities and a huge number of students that want to be using them.”
Vintage King’s 360VME package includes everything you need to virtualize your studio:
During your appointment, a Vintage King technician trained and certified by Sony will evaluate your monitor setup, fit you with a set of specialized binaural microphones, and capture impulse responses from each speaker. Need profiles for multiple engineers, students, or other team members? No problem.
“Let's say you've got ten in-house engineers that might need to use the room at any given time,” says Battle. “You can have all the engineers measured so that if the room's booked, they're able to make decisions in their preferred listening environment and know exactly how their mix will translate on the studio’s monitors while working on headphones.”
After the on-site measurement, you’ll receive a license for the 360VME software and a calibrated profile you can start using right away. Although 360VME works with any headphones, the package includes a pair of MDR-MV1 open-back headphones with a frequency response of 5 Hz–80 kHz for optimal translation.
“When we do the measurement for you, you'll take the headphones off, put them back on, and it'll sound like the headphones are invisible,” Battle says. “It will sound like the speakers the entire time. That's when the measurement technician knows that they did their job.”
After the initial measurement, 360VME fits easily into any workflow. You can route up to 16 channels of audio to the plug-in or standalone app, solo speakers, reference different rooms (if measured in multiple), and A/B the binaural output against regular stereo.
Want to hear 360VME in action? Sign up for a demo to see how it works and let the results speak for themselves. Or, if you're ready to schedule an on-site acoustical measurement, you can purchase the complete Sony 360VME bundle here.
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