Need Sanity Check from ARC 2 Users [Sanity Achieved!]

I recently found time install ARC 2 and to do a new room measurement.  Results are great.  Stereo imaging particularly improved.  But there’s a big mystery.  My left speaker is getting noticeable bass correction, considerably more than the right speaker.  And like I said, it’s really helping the stereo imaging, so I have no complaints about how ARC 2 is performing.
 
But looking at the before and after graph line plots on the user interface, it shows the right speaker getting the bulk of the correction.  And, yes, my speakers are hooked up properly - when I pan left, sound shifts left, etc.  It seems to me that the right and left images are improperly switched.
 
Could some of you ARC 2 users check to see if you see the same phenomena?

it's typical if you speakers are not in the center of the room (like me one closer to wall than another) ....

Ya that's the kind of thing you'll see with Audyssey. Your room interacts with your speakers in weird ways and Audyssey fixes that. In my case, my front right speaker gets a massive cut at about 120Hz because there's a nasty eigenmode for it, since it is near a corner. My front left speaker is farther from the corner, since it is near the entry, and doesn't get the same correction.
 
That's a big reason to use it: Unless you've gone all out on room treatment and setup (and usually even then) there are differences in interactions from the different speakers. So you need some EQ to match them.

My room was very very bad, and was off centered as well (one monitor near a corner, the other one more in the center of the room)
I experienced a very similar profile to this, but to be honest I think my room was so bad using ARC seemed only to make it worse.
So I stopped using it.
What I decided to do and am just doing now, was to rebuild my room / studio and build a purpose designed control / mixing room and a separate live / tracking area. Hopefully with all the treatment being done to the control room, it will be as near as perfect as I can make it (have spent a lot of time on ratios / sizes  / damping etc and some money), so I'm hoping I won't have a need for ARC.............. 

mike_mccue
I don't understand the question. The idea is to make corrections that result in balance right to left. It shouldn't matter what that it starts with an imbalance and then corrects it.
 
If you just made the corrections recently it also makes sense that it may take a short while for you to forget what it previously sounded like and you'll get used to the new balance quickly.
 
It is also helpful to remember that the white line is a drawing of a white line and at best it's a prediction of what the intention is. The white line is not the result of a second round of analysis, so don't take the white line too seriously.
 
If ARC has improved your imaging then it seems like it is working. Yes?
 

ARC 2 seems to be working brilliantly.  All I'm saying is that it looks to me like the "before" images on the right and left are swapped.  I've got more pronounced correction of bass in the left channel than in the right.  But the "before" pictures show the right channel as being more bass deficient.
 
Let me give a hypothetical.  Suppose your left speaker needed a lot of correction and the right was dead on perfect (in ARC's estimation).  On the left, you'd expect to see a white line and an orange line that are quite different, and on the right they'd be largely the same plot.  Now imagine the pictures are swapped.  That's what it seems like I'm seeing.
 
I have no complaints about what ARC is doing other than toying with my sanity.

Hi David,
 Now I understand the nature of your question. There are a couple of possibilities I can think of but it seems like it would just be speculation without getting to hear your system first hand.
 The only thing I can think of is that the testing process is listening to more than just your speaker so my thought is that the microphone placement when testing may be hearing your room from its "listening position" differently than you perceive it sounds at your favorite listening position. In any event, it's an interesting observation and I'll be curious to see what you learn about it.
 
 best regards,
mike

Really? I thought the orange was the measurement, the green was the goal and the white was the result. What other test need to be ran? Serious question...and thanks for the info.

Mike
I think you make a very interesting point and one that I had not thought about before. Why is there no testing AFTER the correction has been applied to actually TEST what the correction is doing / has done? 
The more I think about it, surely this can be the only accurate way of deciding if the changes that have been applied are actually working??
Interesting and also begs the question as to why such a step is not mandatory? Perhaps the white line, as you say, gives the perception that all is now perfect, where as if you did a further set of measurements, this may not be the case!
Nigel

Cool - but then why doesn't IK have such a test cd / program as a third step. So the process would be
Measure
Apply first settings
Remeasure to see how the first application went
If OK leave alone, if not have a second setting procedure then remeasure again.
 
The more I think about this, I cannot see how one measure then just apply some settings that are at best an educated (admittedly very educated) guess as to what will happen.
I am not technical enough to understand the subject fully, but I know all monitors (sometimes of the same make and model) can sound different.
So one measure then a suggested set of adjustments must surely have the potential to sound different on different systems??
Love to hear other peoples thoughts
Nigel
 
 
 
 
 

I'm not sure I understand your question.  For every room and set of monitors in that room, you need a custom measurement.  However, if Audyssey have done their job right, a follow-up measurement to check the accuracy of the initial measurement should not be necessary. 
 
OK what I'm trying to say is that you do the initial measurement, then using that you apply changes, that Audyssey have calculated will resolve the issue, I suppose they based this on known facts etc about various responses of different makes of monitors. / research etc
All I was trying to say is what if the changes did not do what was expected, and that could be for any number of reasons.
If that can happen, then surely a second check to make sure what they thought happened actually did, would be a sensible"double check" step?
As I said I'm not that technical, certainly far less than many on this forum, I'm just using what I think is common sense.
I could well be (and have been MANY MANY times before) quite Totally wrong
 

I had an issue with my studio that indicated less volume on one side than the other. As it turned out I already knew that my hearing in my right ear needs more db for some reason than my left ear does. According to my audiologist I have good freq. in both ears but my right ear seems to need more volume. If I hadn't known I would have likely blamed ARC2 for the difference. Maybe not an issue for you but I thought I'd throw that out there. 
 
 
In most studios the speakers are more or less in a triangle formation with the listener as one part of the triangle. Are your speakers set up this way? Stupid question number 2 (I'm sorry I had to ask. It's usually the stupid things that sink me)- Is there a chance that you panned your bass? Do your studio monitors have any controls on the back that might influence their performance?3. Is  Is there a chance that the correction procedure might need reevaluating? If the mic picked up something else during corrections it could change the outcome.3. Have you tried exchanging monitors to see if the problem might lie there?...I know you probably covered all of this but I had to ask.
 
I would be curious to see what would happen if you added a sub woofer to the setup. If ARC is correcting more bass in one speaker because you have a really strange shaped room then adding a sub woofer could help in taking the bass to another location in the room. I would also be curious to see what maybe moving the speakers slightly ( if possible) would do.
 
 
I'm not really sure what's going on here but hopefully a few changes will correct the correction.
 
 
 
 

Bajan Blue
My room was very very bad, and was off centered as well (one monitor near a corner, the other one more in the center of the room)
I experienced a very similar profile to this, but to be honest I think my room was so bad using ARC seemed only to make it worse.
So I stopped using it.
What I decided to do and am just doing now, was to rebuild my room / studio and build a purpose designed control / mixing room and a separate live / tracking area. Hopefully with all the treatment being done to the control room, it will be as near as perfect as I can make it (have spent a lot of time on ratios / sizes  / damping etc and some money), so I'm hoping I won't have a need for ARC.............. 

If you take enough time to rebuild properly, there will be no need for ARC. Did it that way, never used ARC since ...
Anybody wants the license; it's sitting there idle ... I could swap it for ST3 - oh wait that's not the thread for ST3 bashing, is it?? ;-)

mike_mccue
 
How about doing something crazy like running one of the speaker sources through an extra, post ARC output, analog stage where you can mangle the frequency response on purpose to see if it displays the "mangle" in the right place in your ARC gui? For example; run one output from your DAW through an outboard mixer and take out all the bass, or highs, or etc. You get the idea. :-)
 

Clever idea, Mike.  If I had an outboard mixer or something equivalent, I'd be tempted to try just that.  It would certainly provide an indisputable proof of a bug, if one exists.

That's kinda what I have been suggesting all along.
 
;-)
 
all the best,
mike