Sound Magic has announced Serenade Headquarter, a multi effects unit for the Serenade Pro audio interface.

Sound Magic Serenade Headquarter

Based on the hardware, it combines Virtual Preamp, Headphone Mix and other technology to enhance the audio interface, turn it into an effect unit, and thus achieve a better sound for your music and recordings. With Serenade Headquarter, you can simulate speaker on your headphones, color your music and recording and adjust volume without loss in dynamic range. And because it is calibrated the sound with the hardware, it can achieve more precise final result than common software effects.

Virtual Preamp is a brand new technology developed by Sound Magic to improve the timbre and sound quality when dealing with different volume levels. Usually when you turn down the volume in software, the noise floor of the hardware does not change. This results in the loss of dynamic range. When you turn up the volume, the background noise is also increased and the dynamic range does not improve. Virtual Preamp enables users to avoid the loss of dynamic range when turning down the volume and improves the dynamic range when turning up the volume. During the amplifying process, high end analog gear has the special ability to add their unique color to the final sound. This is a killer point that has fascinated most musicians and audiophiles for years. Virtual Preamp technology has not only managed to reproduce this ethereal quality of vintage analog gear, but also provides a selection of different colors for the sound – and lets you choose the tonal color that best suits your music. Simply choose the virtual vintage gear you’d like to use and find the color that best fits your personal taste.

Headphone Mix technology is suitable for those who make their music on a headphone monitoring system. It combines an environment simulation system, a frequency compensating system and HRTF technologies to emulate the “feeling” of speakers on your headphones. With it, you can achieve incredible results when mixing and mastering. Although the sound you hear in your headphones may be more detailed than what comes from a comparably priced speaker system, the imaging of the sound field is still a weak point for headphones. Our Headphone Mix Technology is the solution. By combining our environment simulation system, our frequency compensating system and HRTF technologies, Serenade can reproduces that speaker “feeling” in your headphones. This greatly improves the utility of any headphone system.

More information: Sound Magic / Serenade Headquarter