Waves and Ocean Way Collaborate on the New Waves Nx Ocean Way Nashville Plugin

— Now Shipping: The Waves Nx Ocean Way Nashville plugin brings the stellar acoustic environment and monitoring system of the famed Ocean Way Nashville studio control rooms to any pair of studio headphones —

Knoxville, TN — Waves Audio, the world’s leading developer of professional audio signal processing technologies and leading maker of audio plugins for mixing, music production, mastering, sound design, broadcast, post-production and live sound, is now shipping the Waves Nx Ocean Way Nashville plugin.

The Waves Nx Ocean Way Nashville plugin brings the stellar acoustic environment and monitoring system of the famed Ocean Way Nashville studio control rooms to any pair of studio headphones.

With Nx Ocean Way Nashville, producers and engineers can create better mixes, anywhere, anytime, using their favorite reference headphones. Mixes monitored on headphones through the Nx Ocean Way Nashville plugin will translate accurately to multiple audio systems and platforms – without the issues that often plague mixes created on headphones.

Ocean Way Nashville Studios are considered the pinnacle of acoustic design and studio monitoring – an audiophile sound engineer’s dream. Designed from the ground up by Ocean Way founder Allen Sides, the studios (now owned by Belmont University) were painstakingly planned and built to meet his vision of the ultimate recording, mixing and monitoring environment.

The studios’ control rooms in particular are designed to provide an accurate acoustic response that translates seamlessly to other listening conditions. Ocean Way Nashville’s spacious control rooms combine unusually large “sweet spots,” resulting from the rooms’ construction specs, with the Allen Sides-designed Ocean Way Audio HR1 and HR5 monitors, built for even dispersion across the room.

Closely supervised by Allen Sides himself, the Waves Nx Ocean Way Nashville plugin delivers – over any set of headphones – faithful representations of the control room’s finely tuned acoustics, as experienced through the Ocean Way Audio HR1 and HR5 far-field and near-field monitors.

Mixing on headphones has become increasingly popular in recent years. Producers and engineers, even at higher levels of the profession, do not always have regular access to a high-end professional mix room. Given the acoustics of an untreated mix room, headphone monitoring is often a necessity. However, headphones are notoriously challenging when it comes to critical decisions about stereo image, mix depth, low-end frequencies, and more.

With Nx Ocean Way Nashville inserted on the master bus of your session, you have the ultimate acoustic reference environment over any headphone model. You can better judge mix depth, panning, reverb placement and amount, low-end response and more – over any pair of headphones.

Nx Ocean Way Nashville is powered by Waves’ pioneering Nx technology for immersive spatial audio. Waves’ Nx uses channel crosstalk, inter-aural delays (ITD), filters (ILD), early reflections, and head motion tracking to replicate the immersive experience of hearing audio in the real world.

Coupled with precision measurements of the acoustic response at the original Ocean Way control rooms, the Nx algorithm delivers a faithful three-dimensional “out-of-head” representation of the original acoustic experience at Ocean Way, over any headphone model.

Developed by Waves Audio in collaboration with Ocean Way Nashville Studios at Belmont University and with Ocean Way Audio, this plugin represents a technological breakthrough in accurate 3D spatial audio modeling of a real acoustic environment.

As with all Waves Nx software, Nx Ocean Way Nashville supports head tracking (via the user’s webcam or the dedicated Waves Nx Head Tracker Bluetooth device), for enhanced realism of the immersive three-dimensional effect.

Ocean Way founder Allen Sides is enthusiastic about the result: “With Ocean Way, it was always about the sound. In all the studios we built over the years, the single most important thing was the monitor systems. What this plugin gives you is the space to create a better mix. You can put on a set of headphones, and it sounds like you’re sitting in this amazing control room, with an amazing set of speakers in front of you. This is a phenomenally accurate reproduction of what we created at Ocean Way Nashville – a remarkable replication of what it sounds like to sit in my studio control room. I think it’s a valuable asset to anyone trying to define what a truly great mix is. It simply makes the mixing job easier.”

Waves Nx Ocean Way Nashville features:

Precision model of the famed Ocean Way Nashville studio control rooms
Replicates the control rooms’ well-balanced acoustic response and HR1 / HR5 monitoring system over any pair of headphones
Supervised & approved by Ocean Way founder Allen Sides
Better reference for mix depth, panning, reverb & low-end response
Powered by Waves Nx immersive audio technology
Compatible with all headphone models
Selectable Ocean Way Audio HR1 and HR5 monitors
Adjustable studio Ambience control
Personalized head anatomy calibration
Supports head tracking for enhanced realism, through the user’s webcam or the Nx Head Tracker (purchased separately)