Waves announced that it is now shipping the new CLA Nx plugin, designed to bring GRAMMY-winning mixer Chris Lord-Alge’s Mix LA studio control room to any pair of headphones.
After faithfully modeling Lord-Alge’s console and classic hardware gear in previous CLA-designated plugins, Waves and CLA have finally teamed up to replicate his unique and proven Mix LA room acoustics and monitoring system. The CLA Nx plugin combines Waves Nx spatial audio technology with measurements of Mix LA to replicate the acoustic response.
Built by the late premier studio designer Vincent Van Hoff, Mix LA has been Lord-Alge’s studio since 2008, a room where he’s deliver mixes for Bruce Springsteen, Green Day, Muse and other top artists. The new plugin includes the acoustic response of Lord-Alge’s NS10-modeled CLA-10 nearfield monitors, coupled with his subwoofer system; his custom-built Ocean Way HR1 farfield loudspeakers, modified to his specs; and the boombox model he relies on to check how his mixes will translate to small-speaker devices.
CLA Nx also supports head tracking – via a webcam or the optional Waves Nx Head Tracker Bluetooth device – to provide enhanced realism of the immersive three-dimensional spatial effect.
Lord-Alge: “With CLA Nx, my studio can now be your studio. This is a way you can monitor how I monitor and hear your mixes on your own headphones like you’re in my control room. It’s accurate – you can count on what you’re hearing, and that’s so important to mixing. My room sounds perfect to me. The way it’s built, with the surface and the angles just right – it makes a huge difference to how I hear.
“The low end and the top end are focused on my ears and not reflecting. What I hear is what I get, and I don’t have to worry about ‘Is it too much bass, is it too bright, is there too much reflection in the room?’ That’s what we can now translate with CLA Nx. You can be in the same control room with me, sit in my chair, and have a similar monitoring experience in your own headphones.”
