The room ambience is also fixed, although switching between each set of monitors influences things, replicating the mix room. This is different to the mathematical model approach used for Virtual Mix Room and means there’s no way to adjust speaker positions, and no forward or back head tracking. It’s also worth noting that the plugin has a specific ‘sweet spot’, captured using impulse responses. Waves doesn’t actually specify the monitors used, but Abbey Road Studio 3’s main monitors are well known to be soffit-mounted Questeds (the Q412 system), and the surround monitors are the floor-standing ‘headed’ B&W 800D, both of which match the graphics on the plugin, as you’d expect. When using the stereo version of the plugin, you get a choice of three pairs of monitors (Near, Mid and Far), while for the surround plugin, the monitors default to the midfields. What marks this plugin out from Virtual Mix Room, of course, is that it incorporates the Studio 3 control room ambience and loudspeakers. However, the Headphone EQ option conveniently includes calibration curves that help to smooth out the frequency response for a handful of preset headphone models. Much like with Virtual Mix Room, Abbey Road Studio 3 lets you use any headphones you like for the process, as it’s not primarily trying to ‘correct’ them to some kind of standard.