Bring the acoustics of one of the world’s most renowned control rooms to your headphones with the latest plugin by Waves. Nx Germano Studios New York is an all-new plugin that emulates precise acoustic control inside your headphones, as if you were at Studio 1 in New York!

The major pop, rock, and hip-hop producers and artists of the last five decades have seen the inside walls. For example, artists like David Bowie, Travis Scott, Stevie Wonder, Kanye West, The Rolling Stones, Kendrick Lamar and Michael Jackson have flocked to Germano’s control rooms for their signature power, punch, and club-worthy low end. And now you can hear all of these renowned characteristics in your headphones with Nx Germano Studios New York.

Waves Nx Germano Studios New York

Hearing a flat reproduction of your mix requires a few things to be taken care of. Some examples include positioning your desk evenly between the trihedral corners of your wall, using acoustic treatment to avoid sound reflections, and your head must form an equilateral triangle with your studio monitors. But sadly, you can make sure all of these things are in place inside your bedroom studio and still hear an inaccurate reproduction of your mix. And when we hear an inaccurate reproduction of what we’re making in our DAW, how can we accurately decide what stereo field adjustments to make? Or what’s wrong with our dynamic range? Or whether we’re over or under compensating for our bass? Well, Waves want to help us solve that problem.

Made in partnership with Germano Studios New York (formerly The Hit Factory), Nx Germano Studios New York is a monitoring plugin for better mix referencing in headphones. It’s a “Precision model of Germano’s famed Studio 1 control room”, meaning it emulates the environment inside this famed control room. Moreover, this emulation means you can check your mixes on Germano’s 3 sets of custom studio monitors. These include the NS10 near-fields; the custom Exigy S412G four-way system with dual 18-inch subwoofers; and the Germano Acoustics A2s. And you can decide what monitors should be “on” at any time by selecting them in the top left of the user interface!

Emulate the acoustic response of a control room

This plugin does not aim to adjust the EQ response of your headphones. Nx Germano Studios New York emulates the “missing spatial acoustic response of headphones” for “any headphone model” rather than adjusting any dips or boosts in EQ response. Despite this, Waves has stated that Nx Germano “corrects the frequency response of a handful of popular headphone models”. The user interface features a Headphone EQ On/Off button with a drop-down menu next to it where you can select your headphone model if it’s included.

Headphone EQ adjustments may help address issues that result from the frequency balance or imbalance of our headphones. However, they won’t account for the fact that our headphones do lack the spatial and directional image that studio monitors in a room provide.

By using personalized head anatomy calibration, you can better reference the depth and stereo image of your mixdown. Additionally, you can accurately judge what space your reverb should and shouldn’t be in, and monitor the low-end response of your mix too. But you can do more than just mix in stereo in Nx Germano Studios New York, though. You can mix in surround for surround with Germano’s custom-built 5.1 system!

An immersive studio experience

What I personally find very cool is how you can look and hear around the virtual studio. Using the Studio Rotate control, you’ll “look around” a graphical representation of the studio inside the plugin. As a result, the plugin tampers with your audio in real-time and you’ll hear it as though you really were looking around the studio.

Moreover, you can make use of the Nx Head Tracker for Headphones with the Nx Germano plugin. The Head Tracker is a small device that latches on to your headphones and tracks your head movements. By doing so, it emulates the spatial acoustics of high-end rooms in your headphones! This feature is usable with an On/Off switch on the plugin interface.

Controls such as “Calibrate” allow you to adjust the settings of the plugin to fit your headphones.

Price and compatibility

Waves Nx Germano Studios New York is available now at an introductory price of $29.99 with coupon CREATE40 at checkout. The regular price thereafter will be $199. The plugin is compatible with Windows 10 64 bit, Windows 11, and macOS 10.14.6 or higher.