I mix on headphones, and use Nx. Since it doesn’t have a preset for my headphones, I use Sonarworks Reference to balance/ flatten them.
When using a separate plugin for balancing headphones, should it be placed before or after Nx in the chain? I can imagine arguments for either way, but surely there’s a best way.
Thanks!
Sonarworks should absolutely go last in the chain. Use Nx first, Sonarworks second… And make sure the headphone correction is turned OFF in Nx, of course, if you’re using Sonarworks.
This makes sense, but it was also confirmed by a Sonarworks representative.
TIP: Some DAWs have “Monitoring FX” which exist after the master bus. Reaper is one such example. If you slot Nx & Sonarworks into the monitoring effects you don’t have to turn them off before exporting your mix.
What’s your favorite Nx plugin? I would have a hard time answering. I like the NS-10s in Germano Studios because it discourages over-reliance on sub frequencies which helps for translation… But for general listening Ocean Way might be my favorite. I like them all.
Another tip – if you’re on Windows you can use VB-CABLE to route Spotify or whatever else into VB-CABLE and then into your DAW. I have to do this to listen through Nx while working the day job…
I really wish they had a proper Nx desktop app! (The one they have now isn’t the full Nx experience and doesn’t offer CLA, Ocean Way, or Germano Studios, or ARS3, etc.)
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Works for me, thanks! I own vanilla Nx and Ocean Way, and mostly use OW. Probably because I’m a Nashvillian and it seems sacreligious not to. 
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Yeah, I agree with Sam.
I only wish we could run these things system wide, outside of the DAW environment, so we don’t have to remember to turn these things of when bouncing.
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One of my favorite Cubase Pro features is the Control Room. Makes that unnecessary. Sonarworks and Nx are able to be active in the inserts all the time and it doesn’t affect the bounced output.
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That is definitely one of the better features with Cubase.
Still, if enough of us make enough noise, Waves will make an OS level version of their NX plugins, or even StudioRack will do and we can just host it inside of that.