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VSX 5.0 Headphone Mixing System
The VSX 5.0 headphones from Steven Slate Audio have now been updated from Version 4 (see my VSX post) with Ear Canal Curve Optimization (E.C.C.O), which is an advanced calibration system that measures how your ears uniquely perceive sound. E.C.C.O adapts VSX to your personal hearing profile to get a version of VSX that’s literally tuned for you. My first impression is that VSX 5 sounds much better compared to VSX 4.
The length and diameter of your ear canal changes the way you hear upper midrange in headphones. That’s because the ear canal acts like a resonator, with a center frequency in the 2-4k region. This means that two people can hear dramatically different response in the same headphone. E.C.C.O calibrates your ear to VSX 5.0, so you have a custom listening experience for your unique ear anatomy.
Image: The VSX 5.0 Ear Canal Curve Optimization (ECCO)
Emulated rooms and headphones
For a complete list see VSX 4.0.
- There is no VSX 5 version for the club room the HD Linear 1 and 2 but each can still be accessed as VSX4 rooms within the VSX5 version. Human Linear replaces HD Linear in VSX 5.
- Human Linear
- This headphone model was introduced with VSX 5.0. It replicates the sound of precise studio monitors without room coloration. It’s ideal for fast, accurate decisions when you want pure linearity.
Note that HD Linear 1 and 2 (see VSX 4.0) were originally designed to deliver a response that looked relatively flat on the test bench. While they have a bit of upper midrange presence, they’re still in the ballpark of a neutral, widely accepted reference curve. But over the last two years, Slate Audio made an important discovery: sending a perfectly flat signal directly into your ears isn’t natural. In fact, headphone plugins that aim to “flatten” the response might actually be making the response less natural. Why? Because when we hear flat speakers in a room, our ears shape the sound in very specific way, introducing upper midrange emphasis and other frequency shifts. Plus, both ears are hearing both speakers, which further alters the perceived tonal balance. That’s where Human Linear comes in. It replicates how we actually hear flat speakers in a room, without the room itself. And with E.C.C.O., that response gets personalized even further to match the unique shape of your own ears.
Image: Human Linear and HD Linear 1 compared with the Bertom Audio EQ Curve Analyzer, which uses a test signal (noise) through a plugin and then analyzes the output to display the resulting frequency (green) and phase (purple) response curves.
Human Linear
Speaker models
With the new VSX 5.0 speaker models you will notice that it sounds very different from VSX 4. In particular:
- A more 3D, immersive soundstage.
- Clearer, more defined bass.
- A tighter, more focused phantom center.
If the transition from VSX4 feels unfamiliar at first, don’t worry. Your ears may need a few sessions to fully adjust—especially if you’ve spent a lot of time on Version 4. Try to avoid toggling back and forth too often, as it can disrupt the adjustment process.
Calibration
The first step in the ECCO calibration process is to match the volume of two different tones using the match tone fader by ear and not by eyes from the metering. This matching is repeated eight times for different tones. Subsequently, the levels are fine tuned by listening to a tone sweep and adjusting faders (in a range of -2 – +2dB) for the eight tones. The challenge is to achieve an even volume. Each tone should sound even in volume as if they were played from the same instrument at the same velocity. Finally, the Amount slider has to be adjusted until the sound is balanced, clear, and 3D with smooth upper mids and natural vocals. Three sound clips are provided for this (hip hop, rock, pop) but the slider (and EQ) can be adjusted afterwards using any reference song. The resulting calibration profile is saved. The default profile is an average of all beta testers.
Image: Steps taken during the calibration process: (1) tone level match, (2) tone sweep level match, (3) setting the Amount Slider.
With the ECCO amount slider at 0, it’s still the improved VSX 5.0 speakers, but it doesn’t remove any excess resonances from the ear canal, but that may work for your ears. At any time it is possible to toggle between the speaker models of version 5, 4, 3 and 2 within the plugin.
Image: E.C.C.O. EQ Section and Amount slider after calibration. Everything is still adjustable. Additional EQ bands are available to dial in lower or higher frequencies.
The user interface:
- E.C.C.O EQ: Click the E.C.C.O EQ Button to open the Panel shown above.
- EQ KNOBS: The EQ knobs shown in the light grey section are the bands that are adjusted in the E.C.C.O Calibration.
- EQ BLEND SLIDER: Use the slider to adjust the amount of personal EQ you need to get the most immersive sound
- EQ BYPASS: This bypasses the E.C.C.O EQ. Low and High are not effected by the BYPASS button
- LOAD PROFILE: Lets you load a saved profile
- SAVE AS: This lets you adjust you EQ and save it as a new profile.
Calibration experience
VSX 5 involves a calibration process that was not present in VSX 4. Since I wanted to know how reproducible this calibration is, I performed 10 calibration sessions over a period of a few days (See Table and Graph below, and Excel sheet at bottom of post). I was kind of surprised by the large variability between the final settings of each calibration session. The gains for 1.5 and 2.0 kHz remained relatively stable but the other EQ bands showed larger variation (up to about 7.5 dB). Also the Amount slider varied considerably.
In all except one case the Amount slider had a large effect ranging from very bright/harsh (0) to dull (150). Comparing to the VSX 4 version, each of the VSX 5 profiles sounds very different. The VSX 4 sound thinner (perhaps wider), while each of the VSX 5 profiles sounds stronger and has more bass. Overall, too my ears, VSX 5 sounds much better. Comparing the profiles of the 10 calibration sessions with a couple of reference tracks, there were no dramatic differences despite the variation shown in the table. The exception was profile 3 that had too much mid for my taste (perhaps due to the dip in 3.0 kHz) and profile 6, which sounded to harsh and clearly is identified as an outlier in the table and graph. Thus, although theoretically their is a risk that different profiles sound very different and/or one would select a profile that is very bright (that is what we like, not?), which could affect the translatability of a mix or master, it seems that this is not the case. We will see how it works out with a real mix.
After removing profile 3 and 6, I used the median values to obtain my final profile (which sounds different from the Default profile):
| Frequency (kHz) | Gain (dB) |
| 1.5 | 1.8 |
| 2.0 | -2.3 |
| 2.5 | -2.1 |
| 3.0 | 0.0 |
| 3.5 | -2.2 |
| 4.0 | -4.9 |
| 4.5 | -5.9 |
| Amount | 30 |
Image: Results of ten calibration sessions. If all steps in the calibration process are bypassed then all gains are set to -5.0 dB and the amount slider is set to 100. The Default profile represents the average of all beta testers. The summary statistics are taken over the 10 calibration sessions.
Image: Graph of the 10 calibration sessions.
Tips
A few tips from Steven Slate
- When going through ECC calibration, focus on matching each consecutive tone. When it gets to the last roll section, just make sure no tone jumps out too loud or sounds quiet compared to the one before it.
- The amount slider is the final boss of VSX 5.0. But it’s simple to use. Either in the demo section at the end of the ECCO calibration or with your own reference mixes that you trust, listen to the vocal of the mix. Push the amount to the right until the vocal is too dull. Then push it to the left until the vocal is too harsh. And then find the spot where it’s just right. Clear and focused.  it doesn’t matter what the percentage is. It could be 2% or it could be 150%. there’s no wrong percentage.
- Every time you take the calibration, your settings will always differ by about 1 to 1.5db, this is a natural tolerance and does not actually make a huge difference in the end. So don’t over obsess about continuously taking the ECCO again.
- Now that you have everything dialed in, do not mix yet! Now it’s time to listen to references. Stick in V5, pick a few speakers, and spend at least an hour listening to your favorite mixes. these great mixes should sound incredibly 3-D, immersive, and balanced on all the speakers. But start getting to know where all the elements are sitting in the mixes. Resist the urge to jump back to V4 which is going to confuse your ears! You can do that later.
- Now that you know how great mixes sound on the speakers, load up your own mix and go with your instincts. Start tweaking and fixing stuff. Circle back to your reference mixes to check on certain elements like how loud to kick should be, how loud the bass guitar should be, where the vocal should sit compared to the other instruments, etc.
- Within only a few days you’ll start mixing faster easier and getting even better results. All the speakers in V5 are balanced and sound great so when a mix sounds great on them. It’ll sound great everywhere!
Other comments
Below are comments from Steven Slate Audio Dojo Facebook group and GearSpace that I believe are useful and relevant. I copied these comments and adapted/reduced them when necessary.
- Some beta testers preferred slightly louder tests, because it can excite the ear canal resonances a bit more.
- There are a lot of comments made about matching the levels of different tones. Especially for the tone sweep that also contains a reference tone that seems much louder. Various suggestions are made to approach the tone sweep:
- From Steven Slate: for now I would ignore the fact that you think that when it cycles back to the ref tone it’s louder. It’s a little bit hard to judge two different tones that are so far away in frequency response. So go with your gut and stick to making sure everything sounds the same when it’s played in a consecutive cycle.
- Click the lower tone to judge the next higher one. Start by focusing tightly on 3.5–4k before moving up as that’s where the tones start to really shift in texture. Go through it in pairs of tones instead of doing a full sweep.
- The roll section should feel like everything is coming off the same instrument. You don’t necessarily need to match the power of the lower reference tone with the ultra high tones, it’s more about feeling like the higher tones don’t jump out more or less to your ears.
- So far, after calibrating, almost everything sounds great to me! The one exception is the mono mixcube in Steven’s room. In V4 there’s clearly a bit of stereo information coming from the room reflections, and in V5 I can’t hear any of that at all. That’s really affecting my perception of that one as sounding like a real speaker. Was that a deliberate change?
- Steven Slate: I modeled the mixcube a bit closer, and the room is a bit more controlled acoustically. But this is good feedback, and I’ll look into it for sure!
- Steven Slate: for someone like me, V4 was fine but not perfect for my ears. It was tuned in collaboration with a lot of different users so the resulting curve was averaged out, and the ear profile curve was pretty broad. V5 allows you to hear the speakers exactly as they are in the room by calibrating your ear to the reference year who tuned the speakers. By finding a really good reference mix and dialing in the amount slider so that vocal sound clear, not harsh, and not dull, you will end up getting great results.
- The trick? Don’t overthink it, go with what sounds good, don’t question yourself, and focus on just making each consecutive tone in the calibration sound like the one to the left of it. You’re gonna do great and the results will be awesome.
In practice
This is the first mix and master I did with VSX 5 (see also here). I had to get used to the new sound (especially the increased bass) and, therefore, it took me another iteration to get to this result. It was a quick mix done in a few hours. Not perfect, but the main aim was to see how it turned out in terms of balance and frequency spectrum. Well, ….. I like it!
Mix
Master
Videos
General
Tutorial
References
