Audient’s ORIA Mini review: A giant leap for hardware-hosted room EQ and monitor controlStarting at £249 / $299, audient.com
Audient’s full-size ORIA audio interface and monitor marked a turning point for the British brand in 2024. It’s revered for its audio interfaces and analogue mixing consoles, with increased investment in software control and onboard digital signal processing (DSP). ORIA handles immersive audio and comprehensive monitor control in an intuitive app, plus Sonarworks integration to calibrate the various monitor speakers.

READ MORE: Audient’s ORIA is the Atmos interface that engineers have been waiting for

Now we have an ORIA Mini. Mini distills the room EQ and monitor control functions of the original ORIA into a stereo package to use alongside your existing audio interface. Since it runs the room EQ on an internal DSP chip, it solves a lot of frustrations associated with running EQ in the software realm. These include excess latency, crashes, and significant annoyance with room correction plugins that don’t have system-wide audio routing (these need to be put on the mix bus and then bypassed when rendering a stereo mix).
ORIA Mini’s most obvious competitor is IK Multimedia’s ARC Studio, which has a £250 street price for the full hardware/software package. On the room EQ side, this is a similar system to ORIA Mini, with interface main outs routed through the box, and room EQ run in ARC Studio’s DSP using IK’s ARC system. ARC Studio is priced lower, but there’s only a single EQ profile stored on the box, there are no monitor controller functions, inputs are analogue only, and there’s no easy way to add a subwoofer to your system.
ORIA Mini overcomes all these issues and more; it might just be a must-have for your studio.
Image: Press
What connections does ORIA Mini have?
ORIA Mini is a neat desktop box that’s 1U in height and just under a 1/2-rack in width. Powered by its USB-C connector, it won’t add to your sprawling collection of external power supplies.
Analogue inputs and outputs are on balanced jacks – you connect your interface main outs to the inputs and your studio monitors to the outputs. There’s also an S/PDIF digital in, so if your interface has a digital out you can get audio to ORIA Mini without having to use its analogue-to-digital converters; a neater, cleaner signal path. Plugging your interface into the digital input means the analogue inputs are then freed up for something else — an aux input from a laptop headphone output, for example. You can simply switch between inputs in the ORIA Control software. A single subwoofer jack output is also present – more on that later.
The front panel is refreshingly uncluttered, with just four LEDs to indicate profile selection, simple meters to show audio activity/clipping, and a ring-illuminated Profile button, which is used to toggle between profiles but also controls bypass and standby mode with press and hold gestures.
iPad remote control. Image: Press
Getting started with ORIA Mini
The complete bundle — on review here — is highly recommended since you get an ORIA Mini, a Sonarworks measurement mic, plus Sonarworks licenses including SoundID Reference for Speakers & Headphones. ORIA Mini doesn’t have a headphone socket (plus Sonarworks Integrations don’t tend to include headphone support in any case), but when you’re away from your studio and plugging straight into your laptop, you can use SoundID Reference to apply corrective EQ to your favourite headphones, making mixes more transferable to other systems. An unexpected bonus.
There are alternative bundles for users who already have a SoundID Reference license, plus a Hardware Only option for those who prefer to calibrate their system using manual measurements.
When working with a pair of monitors and no sub, Sonarworks set-up is pretty much the standard fare; plug the included measurement microphone into a mic input on your interface, turn on phantom power and follow the instructions. The SoundID Reference measurement app emits various test signals through the monitors and gets you to place the microphone at several locations in the room, employing clever, clicky triangulation signals to find the right spot. Once measurement is complete you connect ORIA Mini using USB, open the measurement’s corrective EQ calibration in the SoundID Reference app and export it to ORIA Mini.
In the ORIA Control desktop app the Sonarworks EQ calibration can be saved into a new Profile within the unit’s DSP chip. ORIA Mini cycles between four favourite presets on the hardware, but you can store up to 32 different profiles that can be promoted to the top four at will. Alternatively, per-channel manual EQ is also possible, but this is limited to eight bands.
In addition to room EQ, ORIA Control features prominent level meters, plus a range of handy monitor controls such as main volume, channel solo/mute, dim, mono, polarity flip, plus trim, delay and crossover settings for each channel. iPad remote control of the app is available and is a breeze to set up. There’s an ORIA plugin for Stream Deck too. (If you haven’t yet used a Stream Deck, you’re really missing out..)
The ORIA Control desktop app with a Sonarworks room EQ calibration loaded in. Image: Barry Watson
Going deeper with ORIA Mini
To add a subwoofer, ORIA Mini takes the incoming stereo input and outputs it to the stereo outs and Sub out using bass management; the sub here isn’t fed by a dedicated output on the audio interface like in surround setups. Bass management essentially high-passes your main monitors at a set crossover frequency so they no longer have to manage ultra-low frequencies, instead leaving those frequencies for the sub. Apart from deeper bass extension there’s also the advantages of reduced chances of distortion and port resonances from the main monitors, plus less bass build-up due to monitors being placed close to walls.
The set-up is a little more involved here. The first step, before running any Sonarworks measurement, is to plug the monitors and sub into ORIA Mini and engage the crossover to high-pass the left/right speakers in ORIA Control. Next, you re-run the Sonarworks measurement process with ORIA Mini inline and the sub turned on. Sonarworks produces a new stereo calibration file which can be exported to ORIA Mini with an identifying name, e.g, ‘Sub on’. You then leave alone the settings on the sub and ensure that the crossover on the main L/R speakers is set to the same frequency as in the measurement process.
There’s loads of flexibility here. You can start by measuring a standard stereo setup without a sub, and then run through the process above to create a Profile with the sub and bass management in the chain (you’ll need to make sure the Sub out is muted on all Profiles that don’t use the subwoofer). Then you have a simple way of switching between a studio/domestic’ listening system and one that approximates the sound of your track played through a club system, all with calibrated EQ and channel trim/delay time.
This is a big deal. Most affordable monitor controllers don’t feature a way of integrating a sub unless it’s permanently placed inline with the main monitors, which means you also need a sub that can handle bass management internally. In this situation there’d be no calibration of level or EQ and you wouldn’t be able to easily switch between listening to your monitors in full range versus high-passed monitors with bass extension and sub enabled. Putting this in context, bass-managed monitor controllers from the likes of Grace are 10x the price of ORIA Mini.
Image: Press
What’s ORIA Mini like to use?
ORIA Mini is a joy to use. I soon wonder how I managed to get things done efficiently before it arrived. I swiftly get accustomed to reaching for the iPad app instead of the volume knob on my audio interface since far more control is easily at hand.
Better still, after setting up a custom Stream Deck layout for my most-used functions, I’m able to work even more efficiently, relishing the convenience of hardware control and not having to shift focus on screen. A brief listen in mono and a translation check on (virtual) phone speakers are both really immediate yet crucial quality control checks that I might otherwise avoid if I have to switch apps and perform multiple mouse clicks before switching back to the DAW.
The ORIA Control profile running on Stream Deck. Image: Barry Watson
Speaking of translation checks, this is an aspect where ARC Studio has the upper hand. Since Studio is controlled directly by IK’s ARC app, you can quickly load virtual monitoring over the top of the room EQ, and change the target curve at the press of a button (e.g. having a target curve with full high-mids for critical listening, and a less fatiguing, scooped-mids target curve for general listening).
With ORIA Mini, since Sonarworks calibration is fixed once loaded into DSP, you need to, using SoundID Reference, export each and every translation check and version of the target curve as separate profiles for ORIA Control. But I personally don’t necessarily see this as a negative. I’d rather select a couple of different target curves and a few crucial translation checks, export them to ORIA Mini, and then proceed to work without the novelty and distraction of checking my mix on 20 different systems.
The measured response of my studio monitors with the smartphone speaker Translation Check added on top. Each different Translation Check or target curve needs to be exported as a new ORIA Control profile. Image: Barry Watson
Should I buy ORIA Mini?
ORIA Mini is essential for anyone frustrated with software room EQ or buried monitor controller functions. The Complete Bundle is a standout bargain—arguably the best £379 you’ll spend on your studio.

Key features

Room EQ system and monitor controller with Sonarworks integration
For stereo monitors, with/without subwoofer
Bus-powered via USB-C
Near-zero latency
4 switchable calibration profiles toggled from the hardware / 32 profiles can be stored in total
ORIA Control app for desktop
Volume, channel solo/mute, dim, mono and polarity reverse switches in software
18-band EQ Sonarworks calibration / 8-band manual calibration
Remote control via iPad app and Stream Deck
Delay time, output trim and crossover frequency (bass management) controls per channel
Stereo TRS jack inputs and outputs
Optical S/PDIF digital input (supports 44.1 kHz to 96 kHz sample rates)
Single TRS jack subwoofer output
Further profiles available in control software
Signal status LEDs
Dynamic range: ADC 122.5 dB(A) / DAC 127 dB(A)
Max input / output level: +18 dBu
Comes with USB-C cable

 
The post Audient’s ORIA Mini review: A giant leap for hardware-hosted room EQ and monitor control appeared first on MusicTech.