Sonnox

We all strive to achieve perfect mixes, but
with so many considerations and
judgements that are unique to the music you
are creating, achieving this perfection can be an
uphill battle. Many tools and techniques have
been developed over the years aimed at making
life easier at mixdown time, but these often
assume you’re working with a full-featured
studio console and don’t translate so well to
mixing in the box.
With this in mind, Sonnox have developed
ListenHub, a blend of input switcher, monitor
controller and audio toolbox. This is all geared
towards helping you compare and contrast your
mix with other recordings, and identify problem
areas within your mixes. It also encourages a
“best practice” approach to monitoring levels
and loudness, and protects your speakers from
inadvertently high signal levels.
Virtual I/O
ListenHub is a CoreAudio device – in essence a
software-based virtual audio interface. The
device provides three (and sometimes four)
stereo inputs, only one of which can be active at
a time. The active input is fed through
S o n n o x
ListenHub £59
Monitor controllers that mimic the capabilities of a console’s master
section are increasingly popular. But in software? Listen up…
“Geared to help you
contrast your mix with
other recordings, and
identify problem areas
within your mixes”
LOUDNESS METERING
Current short-term LUFS
loudness metering of the
active input
PSR DYNAMICS METERING
Meters the difference between
peak level and short-term loudness
INPUT SELECTION
Select the source signal
that you want to feed
through your monitors
PSR HISTORY
PSR History graph shows how
dynamics have changed over time
LOUDNESS MATCHING
Automatically match the
loudness of all ListenHub
input signals
OUTPUT SELECTION
The active input is routed
to either main or alt
monitor outputs
BAND SOLO
Isolate different
frequency bands and
control stereo channels
SPECTRUM ANALYSER
Realtime analysis of the active
input’s frequency spectrum
DIM AND MUTE
No monitor controller
would be complete
without dim and
mute controls
STEPPED
MONITOR LEVELS
Preset output levels
help you maintain
volume consistency
and familiarity
MONITOR FX CHAIN
Each output buss can host up to
three AU plugins
ListenHub’s tools (more on which in a moment)
and on to one of two possible stereo outputs
that are routed to your audio hardware’s
physical outputs. Unfortunately for Windows
users, being a CoreAudio device means that
ListenHub is Mac only.
The device’s irst stereo input always carries
the system sound. This allows reference music
from Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever
platform you’re using, to be easily fed into the
device. How ListenHub’s remaining inputs are
used depends on the way that it’s been
conigured, but the most straightforward
method is to assign the ListenHub device as
your DAW’s output device.
With this done, you route your DAW’s monitor
output buss to ListenHub’s Main input, and route
a secondary DAW output buss to ListenHub’s
Reference input. The point of this Reference
72 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2022
> reviews / sonnox listenhub
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