IK Multimedia ARC

Just a quick heads up to everyone. I got the ARC room correction plug about 3 hours ago and I have to admit, I sincerely think it was WELL worth the wait. I think many were under the impression that this plug was just a waste of money and "only works where you listen". I gotta tell ya's, I think this thing is incredible! What most think is you run the mic and let it do its test and you're done. Not so. You need at least 12 symmetrically placed mic positions for this thing to come to life before you can get to the next step. They tell you to use 12-32 measuring points, and I must confess, more than 12 worked fantastic for me. The mic they give you is pretty nifty also and can also be used for other things. It's not cheap by any means in the sound it puts out as well as the construction.

This thing brought several monitors I use to life in a different way. I found this out from remixing tunes and burning a cd. The older mixed tunes were also burned for comparisson purposes. I had room correction already, but it was done quite a while ago and I have since added some new gear, monitors and other goodies, so this came at a good time. I was quite astonished how well this thing worked. Seriously when I tell you, I don't think a pro room eq done by someone with the right equipment would make much of a difference compared to how this thing works. Sure you need your traps and baffles or whetever else you use in your room, but lemme tell ya, this thing really makes a huge difference. It takes about 20 minutes to go through the motions of correcting your room with a particular set of monitors and saves the files and allows you to label what monitors you just corrected, and it gives you pictures of your monitors to choose from.

So far I've done my NS 10's, Tannoy's, Adam A7's, KRK's, a set of Tascam mini's, and a consumer pair of Radio Shack Optimus'. All work with my Adam Sub 8 and it's given monitors I wouldn't normally use a fresh, new and pretty awesome sound. It also kills the need to have an EQ dedicated to each pair of monitors for room correction as each monitor correction save applies an eq for that set. I highly recommend this for anyone whether you have a pro studio, or a home studio just looking to get a flat sound.

How it works: In case some of you don't know anything about this, once you do all your room correction stuff, you run this as a plug-in in your master section of your DAW. It uses about 1% CPU running Sonar in a large project and worked well in Cubase, Nuendo, WaveLab and Adobe Audition 3.

Pro's: Definitely can and will make a difference on any monitor in any room no matter what you have going on. Watching real time graphs as the plug is applied in real time will show you a flat response as opposed to not using it. It makes consumer type monitors and pro monitors sound very good without added coloration. As a matter of fact it took away quite a bit of my stuff. It uses very little system resources and each correction file (depending on how many mic placements you do, I used 17) is about 2.2MB per set of monitors.

The A7's have a bit of high end in them probably due to the ribbon tweeters. Though I have controlled this with the adjustment on the back, I set everything to flat before I corrected them. Some mids were taken out, some lows at about 80hz were removed as well as a bit of 500hz and a little 1k. It also softened up the 8-16k range considerably which I liked.

On the Tannoy, NS 10 and KRK's, it brought in the correct highs and got rid of the mid range congestion usually associated with those at about 800hz. I now have no problems using any of these monitors and don't really prefer one over the other like I have in the past.

Cons: You must remember to apply it in real time on your master out and remember to disable/delete it when you are ready to export audio or export something you've mastered. It's a bit pricey for a piece of software and a mic and once you use it a few times, it's one of those leave it and forget it type things...which is good. Then again, for the price you may pay for a real pro to come and do room correction as well as eq's needed and the right monitors and other room correction elements, this thing more than pays for itself in my humble opinion. Other than that, I can't say anything bad about this as of now. I highly recommend it! Just figure I'd pass this on to you guys that may be interested in this sort of thing. :)

****Update as of 3:26 am, 12-29-07. I have since done several more room corrections with my monitors. My initial mic positions were 17 total. I have since increased this to 23 for trial and error purposes and noticed a tighter sound and better stereo placement. (more correctly centered) My first attempts sounded excellent, but I started to notice my mixes were slightly off center. This was due to..well, me being an idiot. I won't even confess to how I f'd up because it's just beyond pathetic, but it's bad enough that I know I did it let alone you guys beatin my brains in for it. LOL! If you have any questions or anything, I'll be glad to try and answer them or even try new things for you purposely if need be. :)****

Thanks for that danny. I appreciate the REAL review.

my mixes sound great everywhere I play them on the first try!

Well it sounds as though you've found the holy grail! I just might have to add this to my wishlist. Right after the subwoofer, the tc electronics Powercore, EW Ministry of Rock, new headphones and the Hammond XK-3c. The list changes daily.

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

my mixes sound great everywhere I play them on the first try!

Well it sounds as though you've found the holy grail! I just might have to add this to my wishlist. Right after the subwoofer, the tc electronics Powercore, EW Ministry of Rock, new headphones and the Hammond XK-3c. The list changes daily.

Well bit, I don't know if I've found the holy grail, but I sure am happy with what I'm getting. :) Definitely get your sub first...I think every studio should have one. Then I'd go for the ARC if you are having any mix problems. I've read quite a few of your informative posts in this forum for quite a while. You seem to have a really great grasp on the recording field and all that goes with it. So you'd know for sure if your sounds were correct or not. I don't ever recall reading any posts from you stating you were ever unhappy with your mixes. If this is indeed the case, don't waste your money on the ARC plug man. Get all those other goodies you are after. But if you do have any type of problem with your mixes due to not hearing something correctly, I honestly and sincerely feel this thing could make a huge difference in your mixes.

For many years I have struggled with this problem. I feel I'm a very experienced engineer and know my stuff as far as recording and mixing etc. But it made me really think I was clueless when I'd talk the talk and then present a mix that would be played somewhere else (other than in my room) and I'd cringe. I always thought it was my ears man. For years this went on....struggling constantly on different systems trying to hear what I needed to fix back in my control room frequency wise. I was fooling myself. How could I hear something that wasn't there to begin with due to the room being jacked up, know what I mean? I swear to ya I'm not a spokes person for this ARC plug nor am I trying to pursuade you or anyone else to try it. It just made an incredible difference on my end to where engineering is great to me again. It was well worth it to get a mix near perfect in an hour for the $550 that plug cost me over going through the tedious motions of days, weeks and sometimes...months of unhappiness. It's just a shame this is not something people can try before they buy because it is quite costly. But for me, that cost paid for itself now that I can hear what I'm supposed to hear. You can't put a price on a good fix. :)

I like this idea with.

But, I think I should get some bass traps and such in hear to level the room out oveall before I would jump into something like this.

Having a setting accotding to what speakers we use sounds like an awesome idea, except I only use my mackies at this point.

Oh wait, Danny, just come to L.A. and bring ARC and tune my room BUDDY! :)

Oh wait I just realized, after you left, I wouldnt have the plugin that "tunes" the room, so no dice lol

ORIGINAL: Lanceindastudio

I like this idea with.

But, I think I should get some bass traps and such in hear to level the room out oveall before I would jump into something like this.

Having a setting accotding to what speakers we use sounds like an awesome idea, except I only use my mackies at this point.

Oh wait, Danny, just come to L.A. and bring ARC and tune my room BUDDY! :)

Oh wait I just realized, after you left, I wouldnt have the plugin that "tunes" the room, so no dice lol

LOL Lance! I'll be out in San Jose as well as LA in a few months. You anywhere near there? We we have to do is get another ID number for ARC and we can use it. It doesn't cost any money, just a quick email. You'll have the plug, it's the mic you won't have. So if I actually came there and did this for you, you'd have everythng you need once we correct the room. The plug remains on your hard drive via software and you just fire it up with each session. :) The catch is, the mic they give you is calibrated for the software so other mics won't yeild very good results. I tried a few and man...what a difference. Sounded horrible. So that's how they get ya...you need their mic or a mic with the flat response/curve theirs has I would think. But to be honest, I don't know enough about what that really means to even go there. LOL! So you anywhere near San Jose or LA? I'll bring my lil ARC suitcase with me bro! ;)

Hmm, Im in L.A. It would be fun to try ARC :)

Hi Gordon,

Congrats on your new purchase. Make sure you download the latest software for ARC on the IK website as it takes care of a few things that weren't in the first version.

As far as your mic placement, the best advice I can give you is to use a diagram that best fits your particular room. Then either get a mirror or have someone at your place adjust the height of the mic to your ears while you sit in your chair in your sweetspot and make sure it is facing straight up towards the ceiling. When you set the level of the mic in part one, make sure you use the lowest latency setting in ASIO that you can without any pops or clicks in the signal and make sure you are perfectly centered in your mixing sweetspot for mic position 1. This position is extremely important,s o make sure you're completely centered and lined up with where you would be sitting if your chair wasn't there. Make sure you compensate for where your head/ears would physically be once you move your chair, so measure and tape if possible.

When you do the level adjustment, make sure the level indicator light lands right on the "K" on "OK" and no higher or lower. Once you find the diagram you want, use a measuring tape, and even some tape spots on your floor to make sure each spot is as close and symmetrical as possible. That really is the key to this entire procedure and I can't stress this enough. If you're not accurate, you can sometimes pick up some phasing when you load up your corrected setting. This is due to not being accurate with your placement, and not being accurate with distances.

Also, look at the diagram closely. You will notice that the speaker placement given isn't in "the triangle" we are told to use for proper monitor placement. Get a pencil and draw lines lightly simulating how the mic placements would be set if the speakers in the diagram were set up in a triangle. This way when you're doing your placements, you'll know when you should be inside the cones, outside etc. What you draw is what you have to simulate when you do the mic placements.

Use room landmarks as guidelines for distances, mixing board faders, or anything else you can use to allow you to make mental note adjustments for your placements. For example, I looked at their mixing board supplied in the diagram and counted the faders from center to each mic position. I'd try to simulate that in my room and usually with my board, moving down or up 2 faders equalled their one in the diagram. Little stuff like that can really be helpful. Another example of this is channel 20 on my mixer is the center of my listening environment. So this was also my initial starting point placement as well as where I gauged where the rest of the placements would be. Once you do the basic positions provided in the diagram, you can add-lib a little and do a few of your own. BUT, do NOT go out of your listening environment. Don't go back further or deeper than you would listen. Just mic new placements that you would include in your mixing realm that might not appear on the diagram. Don't go outside of your realm by going out too far left or right, and don't change your mic height for this entire procedure.

Just examine the diagram and look at spots that may have some open areas that weren't included. Make sure you do 2-3 placements symmetrically of any new placements you are including on your own. For example, they only have 1 up close position for my particular room set-up via the diagram I chose. So I added a left and a right to the center they provided. Also, end your mic'ing procedure on an even number if possible. I've done this about 25 times now just experimenting. Odd number settings always seemed to turn out weird and I have no clue why this is. I was under the impression that the more places we can mic, the better it will sound. This in my opinion, is not the case. You will be perfectly ok with 18-20 mic placements depending on how big your room is. 18-20 was all I needed and anything more than that either gave me 0 difference or a strange sound that I just knew wasn't right. You may have to do the procedure a few times. Don't get upset or feel you've wasted your money. Each time you do the room correction you wil get better and more anal with how you go about it. The more anal and precise you are with your mic placements, the better this thing will work, I assure you. Just don't stress if you don't like the sound of your monitors at first. Just try a few different corrections and save each preset you create. Try to keep a log of what you did and how you placed the mics. Also remember where your settings were as far as the numbers you try to simulate as mic positions. Compare all of the room corrections you've done and see how much of a difference you can notice. When you start getting the same sounds no matter how many times you do the correction, chances are you have done it the right way.

Unfortunately I can't tell you if the above is the correct way to do this. But, it is what worked for me and the best advice I can give you. Try a few things on your own if you are not successful at first. If you do come up with anything new to add, please let me know as I'm always into trying new procedures or ideas. At this time, I have not done another room correction since I posted in this thread before. I am completely happy with my mixes and sincerely feel I have corrected my room the right way. If there's anything else I can do to help you out, let me know and I sure will try. Best of luck to ya...and let me know how this works for you. :)

Hi Gordon, you're quite welcome. Well, to be honest, position 1 has 2 and 3 close by in most cases and I didn't feel the need to do measurements directly left/right of position 1. You COULD try that if you wanted to. I tried it once or twice that way. You could use position 1 and and make your 2 and 3 left/right of it and then make 2 and 3 on the diagram your 4 and 5. As long as you're within your listening environment, I say go for it. Don't worry about the odd/even thing. Try everything man. For my particular room, I had always noticed something that just didn't sound right when I ended on an odd number after all the positions were done. Now, I also was using the old software which mentions they fixed a phasing issue which was what I seemed to be getting using the "end on odd" mic technique. It just could have been pure coincidence on my part but 18-20 seemed to be perfect for me. Like I say though, try everything and log your results for each mic procedure if you can. When you save a bunch of room corrections and compare them, you'll notice the difference and be able to make the decision on what is the right one after experimenting with this thng for a bit. It should take you about 20-30 minutes per correction. Good luck man, and pease let me know what you think of it. :)

Ah, believe it or not IK saw this post and contacted me to be on their site. I'll post up the link when they run it. Ya never know who's reading these forums I tell ya. :)

I guess this is the part that worries me:

Compare all of the room corrections you've done and see how much of a difference you can notice.

I don't really want to pay $600 for a piece of software that I have to run 18-20 mic tests a dozen or more times and then A/B back and forth between all the various tests to try to figure out 'what sounds right'. Frankly, what's coming out of my speakers now without any ARC treatment 'sounds right' - but no question that it could use some adjustment to flatten it out across the board.

So, that's what is weird to me - if you takign 18-20 samples within a 5' X 5' box where you mix from, why should you have to do that so many times and then guess which one sounds best to you? How does that whatever sounds best to you that way translate into a truly flat mix that sounds great not only on your studio monitors but everywhere else??

I guess what I'm getting at is - I don't want to pay $600 for this thing and then have to guess at which series of measurements sounds the best to me. I want what I just paid $600 for to do it.

Hey Danny,
I just wanted to give a big thanks for your exhaustive first hand review of the ARC System. I had been on the fence about getting it as there is no real demo and it can be bit expensive (more about that later) for the home studio DAW user. But, reading your review and experiences, along with a lot of positive reviews from various trade magazines (SOS, Keys. Beat, Sound & Recording, MusicTech to name a few) and even Craig Anderton, I decided to give it a shot. The final determining factor (I guess timing is everything)was IK's latest promotion and cross-grade deal which made getting the ARC System a real no brainer. To get the ball rolling, since I was not a registered IK customer of any product I decided to start with an inexpensive cross-grade qualified product.

I purchased Amplitube Live 1.0 (which included Amplitube LE) from audioMIDI.com for $20 (blowout sale) which once registered allowed me to get the ARC system from eSoundz.com for the crossgrade price of $386. Then once I registered the ARC System, I was able to choose and download a full version of one of IK's premiere effects plugins using their current "buy one get one free" promotion. I elected to get the SVX Ampeg plugin ($399 value). In addition to that, this past week IK was offering all registered IK "Powered by Amplitube" plugin users a free download of the latest Amplitube X-Gear plugin ($99 value). Since I had just registered the SVX Ampeg plugin, I ended up getting that also. So for a total outlay of $406 I got the ARC System, SVX Ampeg, Amplitude X-Gear, Amplitude LE & Amplitude Live. I basically got the ARC System for free once you consider what the cost of the other (4) plugins are when purchased separately! I am still pinching myself that I don't wake up from a dream.

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/Main.html?plugandmix/index.php

Anyway, today I had some downtime and was able to setup the ARC System in my home studio. Using your experiences as a guide I was able to setup both pairs of speakers (JBL 4312's & Realistic Minimus-7's) using (20) measurement positions, in about an hour. My home studio is in a small spare upstairs bedroom (10'x12'x8') that does not have much room treatment (other than some bookcases, curtains, floor carpet and misc clutter). I knew the room had some issues.
Looking at the room frequency graphs after taking my measurements confirmed it. I had a number of significant dips/notches from about 100Hz (in the left speaker) to 12k (in the right speaker) by as much as 6dB's. Now with ARC on it is pretty much flat across the spectrum. Listening to some reference music tracks that I use when mixing, I've noticed quite an improvement with my room ARC'd room than when it isn't which will make it easier to mix it right the first time. I often found myself going to my home stereo, boombox or car stereo to listen to my mixes and then going back and making changes as necessary. I could not really trust the sound of my room, until now.

So far I am liking what I am hearing and I think it is money well spent. Especially after all the extra's I got, I feel really good about it.

ORIGINAL: Danny Danzi
Let me ask ya, did you upgrade to the latest ARC software before you did the room correction?

I am using v1.0.1. Is that the latest?

FYI, I came across this:

http://www.disk.cz/disk/views.csp?!AV,476&CSPCHD=000100000001320c5Hoe003203758139


An ARC System v1.0.2 update. This is not officially posted on the main IK website.
I downloaded and installed it and it indeed does say v1.0.2. The installer is also
of a different size than the v1.0.1 installer. Although, the accompanying readme still says v1.0.1.
So far, I have not had any issues with the v1.0.2 update, even though I don't
really know what has changed.

Cheers

Not sure where you found $386 for the crossgrade on Esoundz Billy Buck, it's showing as $557 here - and that's the 'lower price for members' - perhaps not all members are created equal (or some are more equal than others, in Orwell's memorable phrase)?

Anyway I bought it locally here in Berlin for €419. I got the crossgrade based on the T-Racks EQ that came bundled with my E-Mu 1616m - nice of them to include free bundled stuff in the crossgrade deal. And NO DONGLES!

And, in lieu of a longer review, I am completely sold on this system. Best money I've spent in a while. to paraphrase the song: I can hear clearly now, the mud is gone... Getting one of the best reverbs I've ever heard (CSR) into the bargain was very thick, tasty icing on the cake.

ORIGINAL: Danny Danzi

ORIGINAL: Wiz

HI

I am curious about this..

can you give us an idea of your room, and what treatments you have done, prior to getting the plug and shooting the room,

dimensions would be cool..

also, what didnt used to translate in your mixes previously? that does now....?

thanks

Wiz

Hi Wiz, I'll try to help answer your questions. :) The room is 16x16 (I think, I know I'm close..maybe a bit bigger...trying to remember, had it built when I was like 8 yrs old) and I put in a drop ceiling with 2 inch acoustic tiles all over the room. The light fixture platic sheets were the thickest I could buy, and the room is semi-soundproof I guess you can say. A wall within a wall with an inch in between each wall, so it's pretty tight and silent in here. The door unfortunately is a sliding glass door becuase this was originally my outside backyard. I most times leave the door open though unless I am really doing loud stuff or rehearsing with my band. I did treatments with the door open and closed and have thin sheets of foam on the glass door. No bass traps or any other foam type things on the walls or ceiling. I know this probably would have helped, but man, though it works, it just looks ugly and I do have chicks over once in a while. LOL!!

The floor is carpeted, no shag rugs...we shag in the other room. LOL! ;) Walls are panel and the room is loaded with gear. My problem in the past was not hearing enough bass and the correct bass frequencies. I did evetually have a room EQ done where a dude came out and did all the tests etc. This helped quite a lot, but all I had was NS-10's as my main monitors at the time and no sub. So the sound was really lacking in the low end which made me think I needed more. So I added more in my mixes and the result was loads of bass, mud and improper sub lows coming out all over. It was horrible man. So much so, I really wanted to totally give up trying to get good sound and just wanted to log ideas not caring what they sounded like.

I got new monitors over the years. Tannoy, KRK, and a few months ago, my Adam A7's with the Sub 8 whoofer. This made an incredible difference and my mixes improved by at least 90%. I was actually totally happy with that set up as it was. But a few of my friends kept telling me though my mixes were good, they kept on hearing a few rumbles in the 85hz range as well as something weird from like 500hz to 800hz. I couldn't hear it on my end at first until I literally went to their studio's (where they have the correct room, right room correction and $10,000 monitor set ups) and I heard what I SHOULD be hearing while there. They showed me what they would have had to do to master my stuff to where those offending frequencies would be gone. So it ocurred to me I was still having a few issues that I wasn't hearing an decided to try this ARC plug. It didn't cost me anything because my girl loves me (LOL) so I figured...what did I have to lose other than the time to set this thing up?

I tried it and it really made a difference. I heard the before and after curve immediately. Now though this sounded good, I had to put it through the final test to see if it really made a difference in a mix at my buddy's place. When all was said and done, he loved my mix and said nothing was wrong with it other than subjective things he would have done if he was engineering it. The same with my other friend....all the probalems in the 500-800hz range were gone, and that rumble at 85hz was also. We then decided to really put this plug to the test.

These guys are absolutely anal about room correction and have a Rane EQ for every set of monitors they own that is set up and properly done. We wanted to see if the ARC would alter their sound. So we installed the plug and did all the mic placements. When we fired up the plug to see what it had done to their speakers, we were astonished as to what it had done. Just about nothing! The slight alteration is made was not even audible and the curve that was drawn was barely noticable. We could not hear a difference using it at all on both counts. This was proof to us that this thing defintely zero'd out the room and was nearly perfect with their already done room correction. But we weren't done there. We decided to turn off the EQ that was used for the speaker correction on the main monitors. I forget the name of them...way out of my price range whatever they were. LOL! We listened to a few tunes with the Rane EQ off to get our ears settled in with everything being wrong. We then did another ARC room eq and the damned thing fixed the room to where it sounded identical to when the Rane EQ was turned back on. We'd toggle the eq off and then turn on the ARC, then turn off the ARC and turn the EQ back on and we could NOT hear a difference!

This definitely impressed my friend. The only thing he doesn't like about the ARC plug is having to always use it in your master section. It's way too easy to forget to disable it and proceed with your export which as you know, can be a mess if you totally forget and wonder what sounds wrong with your mix...or, the time it takes to export a huge project only to have to redo it. You know how it is in this field man, time is money. So anyway, I hope some of this stuff helps with your questions. I know this thing may not be for everyone, but it made a difference in my world. :)

Danni

I just wanted to apologise for not replying to your post....sorry mate... I forgot about this thread...your answer is great...thanks...

I have ordered a copy of ARC and I am going to give it a try...

thanks, and sorry for being rude...by not replying..

Wiz