Audeze Reveal+ Plug-in

I wasn't expecting to have a software page for wired headphones anytime soon, but there is a good reason for it. I mentioned before how Audeze has developed a gaming headset line as well, with the Mobius and Penrose, their two recent entries, having dedicated software drivers. This in itself makes sense as tweaks are possible with both the headphone tuning as it pertains to different use cases, including gaming and music listening, and the microphone settings. With the LCD line, Audeze has dedicated significant resources to working with Embody on a highly popular plug-in called Reveal+, which it also calls a "plugin," which is the inaccurate but more commonly used spelling. This collaboration started in 2019 with the aim to develop an HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) headphones plug-in for personalized audio. The result was Reveal+. It began as a free plug-in offering EQ presets for its products, which many recognize the high benefit of. These presets became quite popular almost instantly, and Audeze Reveal+ has since evolved to offer more as a paid option. Audeze Reveal+ only recently hit a major feature update too, so it is good timing that we are examining it now.


Audeze Reveal+, currently in version 2.0, is meant for professionals and best used with its LCD Reference line, where having a dedicated plug-in for personalized sound mixing from various professional sound studios anywhere in the world no doubt provides more value than the $199 lifetime license fee. The cost also drops to $99 when bundled with any of the LCD Reference headphones, of which the LCD-2 Classic is not one. Regardless, Audeze were kind enough to set up a license for testing, and a 14-day free trial can be found on the product page here. You can have up to 10 trial licenses on a single computer, so there is a lot of leeway to try it out for longer than just the 14 days would suggest, and the full version can be installed on up to three computers simultaneously. There is also a monthly rental scheme, which can be paused at any time, that also operates as a "rent to own" scheme allowing users to fully own the program after a certain number of rental payments have been made. I will also clarify that you are only paying if you want the personalized audio profiles, as the Audeze EQ presets in the plug-in remain freely available and will continue to be free as far as I am aware. The installation process is quite simple, and the release notes shown in the installation undersell how much of an improvement this is over version 1.x based on all I have seen.

Given Reveal+ is a plug-in, there are some other caveats to consider. OS support currently is for Windows 7 through 10, although support for Win 7 is likely to be stopped since Microsoft has declared it EOL, in addition to macOS 10.9–10.15 and 11.0. Any halfway decent CPU is plenty enough (think better than Intel Core 2 Duo), but the actual software suite the plug-in will be used with is another matter entirely. As of today, Reveal+ is available in AU, AAX, VST, VST3 plug-in formats, meaning it is compatible with DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation) or media players that use these, including ProTools, Logic Pro X, Ableton Live, Digital Performer, REAPER for DAWs and JRiver, Fidelia, AudirvanaPlus, Sound Source, and VOX for media players. Users of Pure Music, Foobar2000 or Equalizer APO are currently out of luck. I use JRiver personally and think it is absolutely fantastic, too.


There is a very handy Reveal+ user guide on the Audeze website, and a series of videos on the product page go through tutorials and more. There are even some software-specific videos, such as this one pertaining to using Reveal+ with JRiver, which walks you through the steps to add it to and have it recognized by the media player. Once done, simply open the plug-in in the DAW or media player of your choice; everything will look the same past that. You will be prompted to enter the email address registered to the license, trial or otherwise, following which a QR code will take you to the next step now rather than having you download a separate mobile app as with previous versions.


The QR code, once scanned on your smartphone, takes you to a link that prompts you to photograph your ear and submit it to create your own HRTF profile. There is seamless communication between the Embody segment and Audeze Reveal+ 2.0, which is no doubt the product of the last two years of collaboration. The plug-in recognizes the profile and applies it to your account, meaning any computer with the plug-in installed to your license will have it as well. At this point, the full plug-in shows up, and with a decent tutorial as well, which you can access at any time.

I won't pretend to know the nuances of sound mixing, and I certainly can't tell you if Reveal+ 2.0 will look and behave differently with DAWs, where the main application lies, but the quick tour in the video above shows a well laid out UI with Audeze open-backs, closed-backs, and even IEMs supported, though it is best used with the LCD Reference line of headphones that emphasize accuracy and a neutral response for audio monitoring, but also audio creation. It, or rather the base software, recognizes the playing audio file, and we see Reveal+ show the sampling rate and number of channels right away, helping you then choose between any of six mixing studios and configurations as best appropriate. There are some images, videos, and social media links to these studios as well, but most of your time will be spent configuring the mixing as you want it to sound based on the positioning of the speakers and the setup of the same. Expected options are seen here, including gain, channel balance, and ambiance, but also the headphone settings, which is where the profiles generated for you and your chosen headphones come in. This latest version also allows further customization of the extent of the HRTF profile and its effect on the mixing, which plays a huge role depending on whether you messed up or feel your profile is not true to your own interests or preferences. Once done, you can save the settings and go back to either listening to the audio with the newly configured settings that can also be saved as a global profile associated with the program, or edit the audio file further in the DAW with the confidence that you are mixing it in a similar environment as the studio of your choosing.

I do not belong to the target audience here, and indeed would likely not pay for the license, either. But I can't lie and say it is completely useless to just media playback, including lower-sampling-rate stereo movies as much as high bit-rate FLAC audio files. There is a significant effect on imaging and soundstage, as well as clarity of the same. The whole notion of Audeze LCD headphones benefiting from EQ is quite valid, but using Reveal+ with the presets helps negate most of that need. It, as much as possible, recreates the effect of listening to the speaker setup in the studio you chose with your stereo headphones, which is similar in principle to what Creative tries to do with its Super X-Fi headphone holography. At this point, I asked Audeze more about why it partnered with Embody, what it aims to achieve with Reveal+, and how it differs from some competing solutions, and the provided answer is quoted below.

(Our) Work with Embody was triggered by our earlier work on spatial audio. We had the Reveal plugin initially. This allowed the users to use a target curve irrespective of the model of the headphone. So if an engineer with LCD-X is collaborating with another using LCD-2, we wanted to provide a reference that translates well when you go to the speakers that both could use. Then we saw the trend that more people started mixing on headphones. We realized many people were using Reveal to mix as well. So wanted to extend the plugin to create a realistic experience. To recreate the studio, we need 4 things: a) The freq response of the speaker b) the Room response c) the HRTF of the user d) EQ for headphones. The speaker and room response are easier to figure out. But the HRTF is a bit more difficult. We tried different methods/companies and Embody had the most optimal solution with the least friction for the customer. They were able to create a HRTF within 15 seconds from a photo. (The other solutions need multiple photos or video and some even have to be uploaded to the cloud and need manual intervention). Embody solution was very easy to integrate. But it was initially designed for gaming. So we worked with embody to make it work for professional applications.

The other solutions are quite different:

• Sound ID - We work with Sonarworks as well. I believe these do a,b and d. There is no spatialization with this solution.
• Mosayc - This is more of an EQ profile. I believe it tests the hearing capabilities and adjusts the EQ to compensate.
• Creative SXFI - This solution is the closest in terms of technology to Embody, but primarily designed for Gaming. We have only tested the consumer headphone version.
• In addition to Embody, there are a couple of other solutions. The most prominent one being Genelec. We tested it a couple of years ago. It requires a video and the content to be uploaded to the cloud. Then it requires a mesh creation (manual ?) and takes a few days. It was also very expensive.