I made a double plugin review for two products that are similar and were released within 7 days of each other. Here’s the video:
And here are my script notes for the Oscillot Audio Perspective portion:
With version 4.1 of Sonarworks Reference the speaker emulation and averaging feature was removed for some odd reason. Less than two months later, two new plugins that address this need were released. IK did not remove this virtual speaker function from their ARC system.
Oscillot claims to have been developing this plugin for at least two years.
The goal of both programs is to save you money on buying new speakers and allow you to quickly flip through them while still in the sweet spot. Listening to your audio on a variety of playback systems is a crucial step of audio production. Making sure the mid range is defined and the lows or high frequencies aren’t too much is a common practice. This also helps avoid ear fatigue. Can also be used for sound design purposes.
You should be listening through a nice set of speakers, because these plugins cannot turn crappy speakers into nice sounding ones. They can turn nice ones into simulated crappy ones though. For my test, I used Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers with the subwoofer off.
These plugins are also a good lesson in that no matter how good your mix is, it will never sound perfect on every playback system.
Tools that save time and money are a great thing. Now, the question is which of this is better?
I really liked the introduction in Perspective’s manual. It gave a lot of background information on how the plugin came into existence/who is behind the making of it.
It has a talkback feature.
Allows for speaker to speaker calibration. The original MixChecker had a broad feature like this but they got rid of it for the Pro version due to variables in speakers. That’s why calibrating speakers with Reference or ARC and then using Perspective in No Speakers mode may be the best bet.
Illustrated speakers without logos and generic but guessable names are shown, so the guessing game is a little easier.
Intro Price until August 15: $149
Very difficult to read the settings menu.
Noise only works on the automobile speakers.
Minimize button (bottom right).
Perspective has more studio speaker types.
I like Perspectives GUI better but I think MCP sounds more realistic. It has a more 3D sound to it whereas Perspective sounds more like an EQ. Like the speakers are being replaced as opposed to hearing the true devices. If I owned a pair of speakers that Perspective supports then I may feel differently.
Perspective has radio simulation…although it is kind of gimmicky.
Perspective uses less 63 MB less RAM compared to MixChecker Pro.
Perspective takes source speakers into account.
Does not require an iLok dongle.
Perspective accounts for your subwoofer.
Perspective has a good 20 minutes long video tutorial.
Has polarity flip
Perspective is cheaper right now, until August 15, 2018.
Perspective officially supports MacOS 10.7 Lion while MCP only officially supports Mavericks or newer.
Both are Perspective and MixChecker Pro are competent programs that will get the job done. It is a toss up on which is better. I would recommend both as quick ways to check mixes on virtual speaker setups. Right now, Perspective is the better value and does not require iLok software to run. Audified sounds better to my ears but you may feel differently. The nice thing is, if you are in the market for software like this both can be demoed.
If you use speaker calibration plugins such as Sonarworks Reference or IK Multimedia ARC, you should put those AFTER Perspective.