r/audioengineering • u/Fun_Raise_1837 • 1d ago

RME ROOM EQ VS Sonarworks EQ

Has anyone compared the sound of Sonarworks built in eq VS using the DSP based EQ withing RME Totalmix Room Eq.

I've read reveiws saying that UAD's Implementation of Sonarworks uses UAD eq's that improve the quality of the sound VS sonarworks built in eq's.

Would love some insight on the quality of the RME eq's VS the sonarworks eq's

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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4

u/RudeWolf Acoustician 1d ago

The Sonarworks implementation is convolution-based; therefore, the precision will be higher. RME Totalmix EQ is a PEQ, so you're limited in terms of shapes, and therefore, the precision will be lower. In my opinion, the Sonarworks Reference software excels in data gathering with its multi-point weighted average. With Totalmix, you need to use REW or some other software to gather the environmental acoustic measurement data.

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u/Plokhi 1d ago

Precision also means there will be a fuckton more ringing. You don’t WANT that many points.

And no, RME TotalMix can import sonarworks measurements, that’s the whole point of this post

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u/gl0ng009 22h ago

Sonarworks just rolled out a new feature that lets you export the EQ curve for use with RME devices Room EQ (different then PEQ). It’s a great addition, especially since RME’s built-in DSP has zero latency. I tested it by A/B-ing my system with and without the correction, and honestly, I couldn’t hear a huge difference. Makes me wonder if Sonarworks is doing more behind the scenes beyond just the EQ curve.

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u/FootballMain4234 21h ago

This is precisely the feature I was hoping to use. My question is concerning how the room eq sounds when u import a sonarworks file into it versus just using the sonarworks software itself to apply room correction. Is there any noticeable difference in sound quality between the rme room eq and the sonarworks eq.

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u/Plokhi 17h ago

You’re asking the wrong question. RME is a 10band parametric EQ, it will sound different yes. However if you need more than 10 bands to adjust speakers to your room, go back to speaker position and room acoustics.

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u/RudeWolf Acoustician 19h ago

Right, so RME DSP can use SW filters natively. I don't see why you'd want to run them anywhere else other than there. Unless RME explicitly claim that there can be a loss of accuracy, I can't see why no use their DSP.

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u/dimundsareforever 12h ago

Take all the upvotes! I somehow missed this announcement, and I’ve been wanting this for ages.

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u/1073N 1d ago

I'm not sure if your assumption about the precision is true. Achieving good low-frequency precision with convolution requires using a large window and this means very high latency. It's easy to achieve 1 Hz resolution with an IIR filter but a FIR/convolution approach would add a whole second of delay which is too much even for mixing.

Unless you use really crappy speakers, EQ-ing the room shouldn't require any narrow/precise adjustments above the Schroeder's frequency. It's the modal region of the room that will require the narrow and often quite drastic cuts. IIR filters are better for this. There is no pre-ringing that some FIR filters suffer from, the resolution can be very high and latency negligible.

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u/FootballMain4234 23h ago

Yeah I’m mostly concerned with my low end + time alignment. I’m looking to run sonarworks multichannel on my 2.1 system. My room is quite flat to around 100 or so. I’m hoping I don’t notice a big difference between the sonarworks filters and the rme ones. If anything it would be nice if the rme ones are of better quality so I can keep everything running on the rme dsp chip.

I was just curious if anyone had any insight into the algo’s used for rme and sonarworks eq’s I couldn’t find anything online about the rme eq.

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u/1073N 16h ago

RME is IIR EQ. IMO it is as perfect as it gets for the purpose. Of course if you don't apply the same EQ to all the system components, you'll have to slightly adjust the time alignment to compensate for the phase shift caused by the EQ.

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u/gl0ng009 22h ago

The new Sonarworks integration with RME is awesome. I’ve been using it with my setup, and it works great. Being able to export the EQ curve directly into the RME’s built-in DSP is super convenient, and since the DSP processing is zero-latency, there’s no hit to performance. It’s been really solid for my workflow—accurate sound without the usual plugin overhead. Definitely a smart move on Sonarworks’ part.

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u/Plokhi 1d ago

It’s just EQ. There won’t be any noticeable quality improvement because if you need to use sonarworks, your room or speakers are very likely the weak link, not EQ quality.

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u/S1egwardZwiebelbrudi 1d ago

honestly learn to measure your room independently and apply EQ accordingly. this is an absolute noob solution

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u/The66Ripper 7h ago

I will say I was 100% on that boat with you for a long time. I owned Sonarworks Reference 4 many years back and stopped using it because I felt how you did, which to be fair in stereo is a very valid point.

Once I transitioned into Atmos a few years back I measured my home Atmos room from a handful of points in REW at and around my listening position, averaged them out and applied per-speaker calibration first with Ground Control Sphere, then Apogee Control 2 briefly, then Audient’s Oria control software. Had consistent results between them and everything sounded really good. Not perfect, but good.

The Oria is the first interface I’ve owned that has Sonarworks integration and it came with the mic and a trial so I gave it a shot and holy shit for Atmos rooms this multichannel Sonarworks shit is a game changer.

For context for my 9-5 I work in 3x Genelec GLM tuned Atmos rooms on MTRX Studios in a very high end post house each room was between $70k-$90k to build in gear alone and now my home Atmos room which probably cost me $7k to build out sounds INCREDIBLY close to those rooms at my job. I’ve certainly spent a bit more than the average person on room treatment, but it’s by no means a flawless room and still has lots of room for treatment to improve the acoustics, but Sonarworks really seems to have tightened up what was wrong with it a whole lot more.

Since calibrating with Sonarworks, for the first time I can fully trust what I’m doing at home without needing to bring it to my job to double-check I’m not hearing some room acoustics stuff before sending final deliverables. I’ve never heard my home mix room sing like this and it’s almost entirely because of Sonarworks, but I think this whole situation is the most apparent in immersive rooms and a lot of it has more to do with the delay, trim and granularity of the EQ curves with convolved curves vs manual calibration with a standard parametric EQ.

For a standard stereo room with 1/6th of the variables in a 7.1.4 Atmos room I think manual calibration can still work and sound great but Sonarworks would still get you a bit closer to flat due to the convolution curves.

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u/kytdkut 20h ago edited 20h ago

having to deal with the sonarworks plugin or the virtual driver is a pain in the butt, have you tried it?
maybe on macos is different because of coreaudio, but on windows is really bad. not their fault though, we should have something like coreaudio on windows too -- still, never going to happen

edit: lol, sorry, should have added the following: I don't care about the quality if it disrupts my workflow and makes me not want to use it

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u/FootballMain4234 20h ago

I actually run sonarworks on osx within sonnox ListenHub so it’s system wide. It’s a nice setup. I’m Transitioning to a new bigger system and switching interfaces to rme ucx II so I’m trying to get a feel for what to expect.

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u/kytdkut 20h ago

I have the UCX II too and it's my dream interface. Using it makes me so happy somehow. It'll run my surround setup hopefully soon

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u/The66Ripper 7h ago

Agreed that the plugin workflow sucks and Systemwide is a pain. I have an Audient Oria running Sonarworks on the DSP of the unit so no plugin dealio, just a natively calibrated output.

I thought that was how the RME stuff worked but maybe I’m wrong?

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u/kytdkut 1h ago

nope the rme works just like you mention, you can export calibration profiles in sonarworks and load them on rme's room eq, I was complaining about the sonarworks plugin/virtual driver workflow

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u/lilchm 3h ago

The imported file sounds similar in RME room eq. I prefer the Sonarworks, but it’s nice to have the option as DSP on the RME side