Put your ARC reviews/comments here

[Mikem]

Anyone fire this thing up yet?

I've got mine, but haven't had a chance to calibrate my room yet. I'm actually a little bummed that you're required to take so many calibrations (minimum of 12, maximum of 20, I think). I really only need my engineering chair, so I guess I'll just a really close cluster right around where my head sits in the chair. Any thoughts as to whether I should leave the chair there when I do it? On the one hand, the chair is there when I mix, so maybe I should. But on the other hand, I wondered if there would be reflections off the chair that wouldn't occur if I were sitting in it. It's sort of faux leather, so it probably absorbs a bit, too.

Anyway, just wondered what the initial reactions are to this. I'll post mine when I've got the thing running.

Two other thoughts:

1) A big "Thanks!" to eSoundz for providing such a great deal on the crossgrade to us members (being platinum and using ePountz doesn't hurt, either). That price made this thing worth the experiment.

2) I really, really wish someone would make some kind of app that would allow this thing to run as a VST plug-in at the driver level so I could have it running all the time for listening to music, playing games, etc. I'm kinda doubting iTunes will ever support VST plug-ins for the PC.... Maybe RME could add some VST capacity to their little mixer/matrix software or something. Or maybe IK could make some kind of stand-alone version that could allow a virtual driver for routing purposes or something. I dunno. Just a thought.

-Mike

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Be sure to keep us posted Mike. Also, what kind of monitors are you using and what kind of treatment if any do you currently have up?

[Mikem]

For monitors, I've got the much praised and much reviled Mackie HR824's. I think they sound nice, but I haven't really tried anything else.

I've got 4 Ready Acoustic RT424B Acoustical Bags with 703 insulation mounted sort of horizontally in the upper corners of the room.

http://www.readyacoustics.com/index.php ... rod=RT424B

That's all the treatment I have--not much. It's basically a smallish carpeted bedroom. I've got two mod traps and one PVB I use during tracking.

http://modtrap.com/

http://www.realtraps.com/p_pvb.htm

My biggest issue is that I'm not going to live in or own this house forever, so I don't want to poke a bunch of holes in the walls or ceiling or glue a bunch of acoustic panels or bass traps up. I'm not a handy guy, so I'm not comfortable with having to repair anything before moving out at some future point.

My room has some odd bass issues. I've basically been left to guess on bass levels when mixing, having to consult other rooms and my car stereo to verify what's actually happening down there. My mixing chair spot lacks bass, but the back of my room seems to have an over abundance of it. So I'm curious to see what ARC decides to do about it. I'm not going to try to correct the back of the room at all, since I don't need to. And I don't want to have to compromise on the correction given to the mixing chair location.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

You sound like your in pretty much the same boat I am (only I'm using A7's instead of HR824's) so I'm really curious as to what your thoughts are. Thanks for being the guinea pig Mike!

[Mikem]

My short review: OK, count me among the converted.



That's what I got, and here's my review:

First about me (just so you know how much weight to give this review, if any):

I'm a hobbyist. I'm a practicing attorney by day, but my undergrad degree was a Bachelor of Arts with an emphasis in sound recording technology. I probably forgot about half of what I learned in school about recording, because I didn't take an engineering job right out of school. I've never worked professionally as an engineer. I'm not an IK Fan Boy, but I do own SampleTank 2, CSR and Amplitube 2, and have overall been pleased with my IK purchases to date.

As stated above, I work out of a spare bedroom, recording a fair amount of vocals and acoustic guitars. Any electric guitar stuff I do uses virtual amps (primarily Amplitube 2). I mix in my tracking room, which has very little acoustic treatment (just four bass traps up in the corners). I have to admit I didn't notice a huge difference when I put the traps in, which is part of the reason I was willing to try something different this time, rather than just piling on the bass traps until it "clicked".

1) Installation and Registration process. Typical IK stuff. Very painless if your DAW is connected to the internet, as mine is. Installation was very fast, because it's a very small app. Registration took like 30 seconds, since I'm familiar with the IK process and already have a login and password.

2) Measurement process. The mic comes in a nice little foam-lined plastic shell. It comes with a mic clip, and here's my biggest beef about the whole process. The mic clip has the little metal piece inside of it designed to fit smaller mic stands (maybe the European standard?). That's all well and good, but I didn't have any tools I could find to get that damn piece out. I tried needle-nose pliers, nothing worked. So I ended up not being able to use the mic clip that came with the mic. It would be nice if this piece came OUTSIDE the clip, and you could insert it if needed. My Neumann KMS105 clip was small enough, but barely. The mic slipped out a couple of times. In hindsight, my SM81 clips would have been a better fit. Just be warned, if you have the same problem, you may want to have a skinny mic clip around, just in case.

You use the stand-alone version of the app to do the measuring. I fired it up, and assigned the proper inputs and outputs. I plugged the mic into my Fireface 800 (input 7 on the front, for convenience), and enabled the phantom power for that input, as required by the testing mic. I turned off any monitoring for the mic--you don't want feedback. I started with the volume all the way down, as suggested by the manual, and slowly started to turn it up. Good thing, because the test chirp is REALLY loud. Be careful. The chirp is like a quick frequency sweep. I set it to a comfortable level, as instructed. I then turned up the mic input until the meter on the GUI said it was in the appropriate signal range. I hit "next" and began collecting measurements.

I set the mic up around where my head is, pointed it to the ceiling (as instructed in the manual), and clicked the "get measurement" button (or words to that effect). It gives you about 3 seconds to get out the way--I moved back sort of behind my speakers so I wouldn't block any of the direct signal or immediate side wall reflections. It does a short series of chirps, like six or so, for the left speaker, waits a couple of seconds and repeats it for the right. After a couple of seconds of silence, it asks you to begin the next measurement.

It requires 12 measurements, but recommends you do more like 16. I did 16. It recommends you do sort of symmetrical measurements, so I would do sort of a left and right matching pair for each position. I moved sort of in and out and left and right within the main chair position, but all of my measurements were within a few feet of each other. I had to do a couple of the measurements more than once because my toddler son was making noise upstairs. Once, the program even gave me an error, telling me to reduce the ambient noise.

After collecting, it asked me to name the preset and pick an icon--they had one that looked like the HR824's.

3) Applying the Correction. I then fired up Cubase 4, put ARC as the last plug-in in the master section and imported a bunch of wave and mp3 files for listening purposes.

The manual warns against judging the results by your initial reaction, but advises letting your ears adjust to the new sound. I listened to some Radiohead and Genesis, stuff I'm familiar with first. I noticed that the Corrected sound seemed thinner, but looking at the graph, I realized why. It detected a huge boost in the 100 - 300 Hz range, along with a big dip below 100. Each speaker differed slightly, but there was some overlap (see the above graph). When this was compensated for, it thinned out a lot of the boominess I'd sort of gotten used to. I adjusted the Trim control to match the volume between the corrected and the dry signal for A/B'ing. When I did this, I clearly preferred the Corrected signal. It made my speakers sound more like the monitors I'd grown used to hearing at the various studios I'd interned at during school. I'd sort of forgotten how nice a flat signal really is--much less fatiguing.

I'm not saying that the result is perfect, but I can tell it's a big step forward. Here's my proof! I heard something I'd never heard before in "Sail to the Moon" by Radiohead. I've listened to this song at various volumes, and on headphones, probably 100 times. But something jumped out at me. Around the 2:26 mark, as Thom sings the word "president", he blows the bass note in the piano. Listen for it! I was like, "whoa, never heard that before!" There's such a wash of verb, it just kind of hides in there. I can hear it plainly listening through iTunes now--it just never caught my attention before.

Listening to some of my own old mixes, I generally liked what I heard. There were a few that probably lacked a bit in the 100-300 range, but not much. I tend to dip things in the 200-250 range, anyway, but I perhaps overcompensated at times trying to compete with my room/monitors.

4) Final thoughts. I'm not going to debate with people who say it's snake oil, or that you can do the same thing with free impulse response software and a proper mic, or that no software can compensate or correct what happens in the room--"It's physics, man! It can't be done!" Yeah, I'm not gonna get into it with them. I've read the arguments and knew what the naysayers were predicting. You can decide if it's worth it for yourself. Sure, try the free approaches first, if you have a proper measurement mic. Maybe that will suffice for you. I was very skeptical of ARC and was prepared to admit that I'd wasted money on something that didn't help compensate for my room. But I'm happy to report that it really did help.

Now, maybe if I had sufficiently golden ears, I would simply be able to make those adjustments myself. But I don't (which is probably why I'm an attorney, not an engineer), so I'm happy to invest in a relatively painless solution, especially one I can use to fix my next mixing environment at my next house, etc.

I think ARC will make my mixes better, and help me get better results faster, so it will have been worth the investment.

That's my review!

-Mike

[Mikem]

For the sake of full disclosure, I completely this entire process under the influence of pain medication (liquid Lortab), since I had my tonsils out and my deviated septum fixed the day before Thanksgiving--and my throat still hurts like hell.

So while I feel like I'm thinking clearly despite the medication (I've returned to work and am driving around town), if you read my review and said, "he's on drugs!", you wouldn't exactly be wrong.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Thanks for the review Mike. Please post back after a couple of weeks have passed. I'd love to know how well it works for you after some time.

I can't even imagine how great the word of mouth would have to be on this for me to even consider picking it up with no way to demo and the [astounding] claims by IK. It could be great, hell even if it's a small improvement it would be worth the price, but it's all just so hard to believe on faith alone.

NFR perhaps? If it's good I'll spread the word, honest .

[gnu23]

I don't have any doubt ARC can do what it claims. Though I can't recall the product(s?) name, there have been others in this market segment before and none of them were reported to be snake oil.

What doesn't grab me is the cost. It's too much buck for too little bang at my level (I'm more than a hobbyist/less than semi-pro). VFM is a subjective topic, though, so if it all "works" for the person buying it, coolness be unto them.

I will follow this thread - looking forward to others experiences with ARC.

[Mikem]

I guess Squids can censor this post if he doesn't want this info made public for any reason, but I guess the price I paid factors into my level of satisfaction in terms of FMV. The crossgrade price for a platinum member at eSoundz is $xxx.xx. And since I had $50 in eSoundz points and they gave me free shipping, I ended up paying $xxx.xx total. So for a little over $XXX, I found it too tempting. If I were paying full price without a crossgrade, I would probably not have been tempted at all.

-Mike

[Spin Boyz]

"If I were paying full price without a crossgrade (nearly $600), I would probably not have been tempted at all."

I'm in this group. If I knew I could sell it, after hearing no improvement in my mixes of course, I would buy it. $600 is a bit much. $300 is better.

[justjazz]

...

[Mikem]

Since it's a mixing tool, latency shouldn't be an issue. You'd turn it off during tracking, since it wouldn't be necessary. I didn't even look at the CPU, and I doubt it's much at all, but my machine is fairly powerful and hasn't been maxed out on any projects yet. I just keep raising my buffers as needed during mixing when the CPU starts acting taxed.

I haven't done multiple measurements, since I'm only concerned about fixing my mixing chair spot. Certainly if I measured from different parts of the room, the results would be different. I think that's what you were asking. If I get a chance, I may try doing another calibration, but I'm satisfied with my initial results, so I don't feel compelled to mess with it much more.

[Mikem]

Does ARC show the change in measured curve from one position to another?

Oh, maybe what you mean is can you see the curve for each individual measurement. No, you can't. It only gives you one curve, which I assume is some kind of average of all the measurements you take. Since acoustics can be quite different from spot to spot, even inches away from each other, I think it's wise to make multiple measurements, even if they're close together. And you won't always hold your head in exactly the same place, etc.

It's not an exact science, obviously, but for me, it's definitely a step forward for my room.

[Usi]

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Hi everybody,

I just won't to post my first ARC experience. I'm a german hobby recorder. (Sorry because of my english ...)

I'm recording vocal choirs and some jazz combos mostly in live situations. At home in my "studio": guest bedroom and homeoffice, I do the "mixdown" (most recordings are only stereo) and the pre-mastering. The room ist quite small (3 x 4 x 2,4 m) and therefor the therefore the frequencies of the standing waves are quite high: mostly 100 Hz, 160 Hz and not much reproduction under 50 Hz.

I use a pair of cheap active Monitors (ESI nEar 05 eXpirience, 5 inch/1 inch) and the ESI SW 10K 10 inch Sub. Because of the other use of the room, everything stood quite near to the walls (about half a meter), however after I had bought the speakers, I was quite impressed how acurate they are. But I always thougt of the acoustic problems wich must be there. So I took my simple SPL-meter (the analog radio shak model) and used it with corection curve in TrueRTA. There I found the big gaps and raisings with differences about 15dB!

As Ik anounced the ARC I was quite intrested, but as I first saw the price I was shocked. € 579,00 in germany; that's nearly the price of my hole monitoring system! But after some internet research how FIR filter can be used (and are used by some manufactors like www.klein-hummel.com) in acoustic room ... any Markus (www.klein-hummel.com%29%20in%20acoustic%20room%20compensation,%20I%20went%20to%20my%20dealer%20and%20get%20one%20today.%0A%0AThe%20installation%20was%20no%20problem%20at%20all%20and%20after%20the%20measuring%20process%20I%20started%20my%20sequencer%20with%20the%20VST%20plugin%20at%20the%20master%20bus.%0A%0ALike%20the%20very%20good%20user%20manual%20quoted,%20I%20was%20quite%20disappointed%20because%20the%20sound%20became%20somewhat%20thin%20and%20unhyped.%20But%20after%20listening%20to%20my%20favorit%20CDs%20and%20mostly%20to%20my%20own%20recodings%20I%20have%20to%20admit,%20that%20may%20speakers%20are%20not%20realy%20flat%20in%20therms%20of%20frequency%20response.%20%0A%0ANow%20with%20the%20ARC%20the%20sound%20changed%20in%20the%20following%20ways:%0A%0A1.%20The%20hype%20in%20the%20%28high%29%20mids%20is%20gone%20%28was%20about%201%20and%205%20kHz%29,%20the%20boominess%20in%20the%20low%20end%20is%20gone,%20but%20therefore%20the%20sound%20is%20%22less%20intresting%22%0A%0A2.%20They%20realy%20do%20something%20in%20the%20time%20domain,%20because%20I%20can%20hear%20less%20hall%20%28of%20the%20room,%20not%20the%20recording%29.%20Everything%20becomes%20clearer.%0A%0ASo%20my%20conclusion%20is:%20they%20did%20a%20great%20job%20with%20this%20pice%20of%20software.%20It%20realy%20does%20what%20it%20is%20supossed%20to%20do.%20My%20room%20is%20acustically%20still%20not%20a%20mastering%20studio,%20but%20it%20has%20enhanced%20a%20lot.%0AThe%20downsite%20is:%20say%20goodbye%20to%20the%20hyped%20sound%20of%20the%20cheap%20%22monitor%22%20speakers%20with%20mostly%20HiFi%20charakteristic.%20It%20is%20nearly%20flatten%20out.%20I%20wish%20the%20software%20had%20some%20more%20possibilites%20for%20tweaking%3A%20loadable%20target%20frequency%20curves%20for%20example%20and%20more%20information%20about%20the%20correction%20itself.%20But%20I%20guess%20that%20is%20a%20secret%20of%20Audyssey.%0A%0AGreetings%20from%20good%20old%20germany%0AMarkus)

[olepro]

Hi usi

Thanks for your review.

As i see it you could (now you know the frequense curve is flat) just add a little eq to adjust for the (thin) sound if you want.
Adding a little boost to an all ready corrected sound will add much less problems to the sound.

I have ordered the ARC system my self but have not received it yet (awaiting stock)
I will use it on my hifi allso, and are really looking forward to try it there as i allways make the final mixing there on my Tannoy D700's.

I have all my music now on the computer and are able to add vst plugins on the output of my player software so i will be able to listen to all my music with room correction.... cant wait to try it
I will come back with my opinions then.