Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 – Legendary sound in your headphones

Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 – Legendary sound in your headphones

The Abbey Road legacy is massive, and Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 brings the sound of a legendary studio to headphones.

Abbey Road Studios is arguably one of the most legendary recording studios of all time, it is responsible for more chart-topping hits than almost any other. Hosting artists from Pink Floyd and The Beatles to Amy Winehouse and Frank Ocean. The new Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin brings the classic sound of Abbey Road Studios Control Room 3, which was responsible for some absolute classics such as Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, to your headphones.

The Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin uses Waves NX head-tracking technology which tricks the brain into thinking you’re actually sitting in Abbey Road Studios Control Room 3. The head-tracking changes the way you hear stereo space, very similar to real speakers, and the plugin emulates crosstalk realistically. Due to the nature of head-tracking, the Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin can handle 5.1 and 7.1 surround signals.

The Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin also has calibration for measurements of the individual user’s head, to help make the most of the system’s algorithm and maintain consistency.

How does it work?

The Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin features algorithms for the exact Nearfield, Midfield and Farfield monitors in Abbey Road Studios Control Room 3 – allowing you to reference and compare between all of the above. It works with Waves NX hardware or using a webcam to capture your head movements – using both in conjunction will give you 60 FPS for very fluid head movements, or you can turn it off and rotate freely using the plugin interface.

They’ve also integration a correction algorithm for certain models of headphones, similar to something like Sonarworks Reference 4 – however with less models to choose from. They’ve got a list of popular models from Audeze, Audio Technica, AKG, Beyerdynamic, Sennheiser , Shure and Sony.

The plugin is set to retail at USD $199 (Around R2800) however it’s currently on sale for USD $99 (Around R1400). Keep in mind this is designed for headphone users, so if you mainly use monitors, I’m not sure this will do much for you, however it’s great technology for reference purposes.

For more information check out the Waves website here.