Thanks Mike I will look into it too. bats we are trying to avoid all acoustic treatment now and do it all another way!
 
I don't think there is any harm in looking at options. I get the idea that a combination of a great sounding room and some form of monitor correction could be a good thing.
 
But if you use the reference approach it sort of takes the correction, the monitors and the room out of the equation to some extent.

Jeff Evans
Bill. I studied a Bachelor of Jazz on drums and they made us learn 50 tunes a year. They said after three years you will have 150 tunes under your belt. (It menat all of us could go out and do gigs immediately after finishing that course and start earning money, smart!) It is a very good way to do it. By analysing the harmony and melodies of the tunes you learn a lot about great writing. You start writing that way yourself. I was taught that way too your friend and I teach (music) that way too. Great musicians know a lot of tunes either standards/classics/covers or their own original tunes. And for the original guys it is usually both.

 
This is veering off topic, a little anyway, but I think your point sort of supports my premise, so I'll wander in, at least to my knees...
 
IF a teacher can keep their student focused on the real goals and still teach the theory and the technique then it's a wonderful approach. And I think it is probably a lot more applicable at a more advanced stage - say a college program, than at the beginner stage. Or more effective anyway. (btw, do I get points for not leaping on the drummer jokes???)

It's a fine line, and one of the challenges of teaching - how do you spark the interest and how do you maintain the interest/focus?
 
My absolute beginners get songs because, well, if they can't make music at some level they are going to drop the lessons.
 
My advanced students get almost all theory and techniques, with songs to illustrate specific points, but I also expect them to be transcribing tunes on their own. In the end they'll end up with a large catalog of music they can play (a song a week is probably a bit much for private lessons, but I like to move on to a new tune every third or maybe fourth week.) and they are already analyzing the music as they transcribe.
 
My intermediate students tend to just make me crazy!!!!

So how does this relate to the question of acoustical treatment vs a DSP solution? It does, I just need to think a bit about how to put it into words.

What this does not relate to is my underlying concern that these companies are selling a 'magic' solution that won't actually bring about world peace or even a perfect mix in any room. It's not unlike the dust-up over "balanced power"... another solution to some very specific problems sold as a cure-all.
 
If you are going to bring a product to market please be honest, and complete, when describing it. That's my big gripe. And at the risk of really being flamed - it's not unlike these "instant mastering" tools - I'm sorry, but mastering is NOT about the tools, it is about the ears, the experience, and the ears... it doesn't hurt to have a room set up for critical listening. And it especially doesn't hurt to have an objective 'second' set of ears give a listen.
 

 Jeff- Interesting take on this. The thing that strikes me with any correction system is that they are all different  ideas based on similar concepts . I can't answer for any other approach at this point as I haven't tried them. The Audyssey MultiEQ approach uses multiple samples in  closely gathered sample positions in close proximity to your listening position. This is an improvement over some systems which indicate only one POR in the room, and gives the listener some leeway to move within their space and still hear well.
 
 Most  hardware now is simply a small software program running inside a metal box. The hardware of today isn't the hardware of yesteryear. Once again a matter of preference with many people. Nothing wrong with either. I could go either way on that, to me it's all very similar.
 
 In addition, something that to my knowledge is only available in ARC2 is the ability to reference a given environment such as a car stereo,computer multimedia speakers and mono etc. effectively giving the mixer a cross section of what the same mix will translate to in these environments.  I have seen this in other devices but never in a monitor correction program that I'm aware of. And the car stereo selection is true to the setting as the mix sounds exactly like it does my car stereo.The laptop setting sounds exactly like the mix through my laptop speakers.No more need to burn a CD and take it to different places to test the mix.
 
 Mike, There may be a way to measure how ARC works but any  scientific experiment needs a good sample to test . What would constitute a good sample? We don't know the code they used or what the exact parameters were. We only know that it is time and frequency based correction using algorithms that are not readily available.
 
 
 Sure, if you know how to use a high resolution RTA I say go for it. As I understand you to say, the graphic isn't high resolution in ARC and maybe this is because there were corrections within a small range of frequencies and as such it is representative if a larger cross section, very specific areas within the range were corrected.. I would venture to guess that this is the case. ARC isn't so much cutting/boosting large sections of frequency as it is touching places that no regular EQ can touch and this can't always be defined graphically, or if it were it would easily eat up half your cpu in doing so.
 
 
 "What this does not relate to is my underlying concern that these companies are selling a 'magic' solution that won't actually bring about world peace or even a perfect mix in any room. It's not unlike the dust-up over "balanced power"... another solution to some very specific problems sold as a cure-all."
 
  Bill is anything ever really a 100% perfect fix? If I add bass traps to my room will the mix be 100% perfect? What if I add a whole treatment kit? Will my room be perfectly flat? Done correctly it can make things  better but I don't think we can say that it is a perfect solution in every case, or as you say, *magic*. Most home studio owners aren't going to go out and hire an expensive contractor to set up their room and there can  be nits with that process.JMHO.
 
 There isn't any real magic in any of this but I think ARC comes really close to it. I was faced with the same dilemma that so many others have faced. Fighting bad acoustics. I know we have been round about monitoring in small spaces  numerous times on the boards. You can monitor with just about anything if you know it well and can compensate. For instance, my room has the typical low end mud and some really big peaks in the mid ranges. Lets say that I know this and so I mix with dips in the mids in those ranges and I mix my bass heavier in certain ranges. My question is, why do that if I don't need to? Maybe I have acoustically treated my room and there are still some bad places in the freq. spectrum.Why not attempt to monitor the material in the way that it really sounds? Who wants to continually be fighting something that is only a process that stands in the way of the accuracy of the mix and takes more time? Anything that makes the job easier should be considered.
 
"If you are going to bring a product to market please be honest, and complete, when describing it. That's my big gripe. And at the risk of really being flamed - it's not unlike these "instant mastering" tools - I'm sorry, but mastering is NOT about the tools, it is about the ears, the experience, and the ears... it doesn't hurt to have a room set up for critical listening. And it especially doesn't hurt to have an objective 'second' set of ears give a listen."
 
 I also dislike the hype of some products that don't quite deliver what they were supposed to deliver.I can't quite make the jump in comparing a preset mastering plug- in to a monitor correction solution though. I don't see the similarities there exactly to something like ARC.
 
  Are you saying technology that makes something that was once more of a thought process easier takes the value out of the end result? I don't see the harm in having a preset to get close to a setting that you want to achieve.Looking at the signal chains in a lot of my presets has been very educational for me. I think the danger lies in not understanding the process. I guess if I simply used presets and never cared how it was done that wouldn't be considered being on top of ones game. I don't see monitor correction as anything but a way to make monitoring more accurate. Are you saying that companies selling monitor correction software are misrepresenting their products? Maybe some are but that catches up with you eventually. If the product doesn't work it will go the way of the dodo bird. Interestingly what we seem to be seeing are different approaches to the same old problems. Some of the new approaches are so much better the old ways are going away.
 
 At one point someone probably thought the automatic transmission was a bad idea. I can hear em arguing over it now. " You need a human being to change gears". Man will never fly, the world is flat etc. etc.
 
 

a couple random thoughts... out of order even<G>...

StariseAt one point someone probably thought the automatic transmission was a bad idea. I can hear em arguing over it now. " You need a human being to change gears". Man will never fly, the world is flat etc. etc.

 
That's not a bad analogy, I'm pretty sure those belts and gears appeared almost magical at one point. And there are time (getting fewer with each new generation) when my automatic will shift at a time that I think inappropriate. However, it is shooting for best gas mileage, and sometimes I want best performance (something some manufacturers have addressed.)
 
Ultimately I do not think the analogy holds... ARC and Auto-Cal are claiming to be able to fix time based anomalies, but that's not physically possible with only two loudspeakers. It is possible with lots of loudspeakers, but that's not what they do. If they instead claimed to fix our perception of time based anomalies I'd be much less critical.
 

Starise
Bill is anything ever really a 100% perfect fix? If I add bass traps to my room will the mix be 100% perfect? What if I add a whole treatment kit? Will my room be perfectly flat? Done correctly it can make things  better but I don't think we can say that it is a perfect solution in every case, or as you say, *magic*.

 
No magic required!
 
I'm not sure that such a fix can be described as perfect, but it is a step ahead because it solves the problems at the source. Fewer band-aids means fewer artifacts. I think that's a better solution.

You are right that there may not be a perfect, or even great solution for every room... but keep in mind that perfectly flat is not the objective, anymore than anechoic is. An anechoic, perfectly flat room would be downright unpleasant.
 
The only way to build, first time every time, a room that is suitable for critical listening is to build from scratch. That's impractical/impossible for the majority of cases we are discussing. That leaves taking an existing space and adapting it to critical listening. And that is possible, and it has been done, done regularly, and done well, for about 40 years now. It was done before that, but it was even more of a special case.
 

StariseMost home studio owners aren't going to go out and hire an expensive contractor to set up their room and there can  be nits with that process.JMHO.

 
With an experienced designer there are seldom any nits... provided the client listens to the designer. But no, most home studio owners lack the financial resources to hire a reputable design firm. From my somewhat limited perspective they also lack the desire to do so, or even an understanding of the value an experienced designer provides.
 
This brings us back to the point where you can not know what you do not know. Several folks here have worked in well designed rooms (albeit sometimes with crappy monitors... ugh!) But I'll wager that the majority have not. So they are not aware of what such a design can do for them.
 
All of which avoids the bigger question... if you are doing this as a hobby, or just starting out on the career path does it makes sense to spend that kind of money on room design? In the former case I think it is an unqualified "no" - even if you are a trust fund baby<G>! In the later I'm not so sure...
 
I think one of the things that sometimes bothers me is that it really is not all that difficult to master the math and physics necessary to understand small room acoustics. There is an obstacle... there is a LOT of just plain bad information out there on the web. But it can be done if one returns to the basic texts.
 

Starise I also dislike the hype of some products that don't quite deliver what they were supposed to deliver.I can't quite make the jump in comparing a preset mastering plug- in to a monitor correction solution though. I don't see the similarities there exactly to something like ARC.

 
OK, I think they are similar. In both cases someone (a developer) is promising you that a simple (or complex?) software tool will remove any need to actually learn to listen. That's a crock!
 
I LOVE Izotope's plug-ins, I think they are some of the most musically useful tools available. I'm astounded at how easy they are to use every time. There's a lot of genius under the hood.
 
BUT... just owning these tools does not make me a mastering engineer. I do not have the rest of the stuff one needs to do proper mastering... the ears, the experience, the cockpit time with a mentor, the room, the loudspeakers, etc. I will pre-master my mixes - or I did when I had a reasonable listening space (I really need to figure out a way to get that back!) I think the Ozone suite would probably be a wonderful tool, if I had all the rest.
 
But expecting Ozone or T-Racks or any other "mastering suite" to turn you into a mastering engineer is folly. And assuming that you can not master a track without them is even worse.
 

StariseAre you saying technology that makes something that was once more of a thought process easier takes the value out of the end result?

 
Not at all. I have a Conn Strobe Tuner... I can tune my guitars without it, and I can even get really close to proper intonation on the bridge without it, but why bother. I can do it faster, and more accurately, with the strobe tuner!
 

StariseI don't see the harm in having a preset to get close to a setting that you want to achieve.

 
I'm curious... have you ever actually found a preset that worked 'out of the box?' I haven't - and yes, I seldom use preset patches for synths either<G>. Maybe I am a curmudgeon?
 

StariseLooking at the signal chains in a lot of my presets has been very educational for me.

 
That's a brilliant use of presets. I find that the presets that come with the UAD plug-ins to be really educational, same goes for the Izoptope presets, and some of the PSP Audio presets... learned quite a few Lexicon 42 tricks that way. Oddly enough, I do not find the same to be true of presets in hardware (pseudo-hardware?) devices. I have a PCM-90 that sounds awesome, but the presets have always left me cold, and it has take me some time to figure out how to use it.
 

StariseI think the danger lies in not understanding the process. I guess if I simply used presets and never cared how it was done that wouldn't be considered being on top of ones game.

 
Agreed!
 

StariseI don't see monitor correction as anything but a way to make monitoring more accurate.

 

StariseAre you saying that companies selling monitor correction software are misrepresenting their products?

 
No, because that might cause me to require the services of a good attorney... I am saying that it is my opinion that they'd be in better shape if they talked about perception, which they can control, as opposed to really correcting time domain problems.
 
I'd really love to be proven wrong, or I'd love to see a new system/approach that could take my ridiculously horrible little listening space to at least usable. But I haven't heard it yet. I've also stipulated, several times, that this is born of having worked in a variety of rooms since the mid 1970s... I am certain that has shaped my perceptions.
 
 

"Mike, There may be a way to measure how ARC works but any  scientific experiment needs a good sample to test . What would constitute a good sample?"
 
Pink Noise.
 
You crank up a RTA and run Pink Noise through your system. You observe the flapping and the flutter and try to see the rhythmic patterns which lets you identify some areas that seem to persist as peaks and nulls.
 
Then you turn on your Room Correction (or drag in your absorbers, or adjust speaker placement etc. etc.) and you run the RTA test again.
 
That's how you figure out if 
 
"it corrected everything except a very small bump in the 1.5 khz range,maybe 1 or 2 db."
 
Is actually happening or if you still see a lot of flapping and fluttering, and, or significant peaks or nulls.
 
I use a mic and an associated calibration file, but if you are really just focusing on the change, before and after, then you can get away with using a decent omni mic.
 
It's my impression that the graph that ARC displays shows you what it did in the electronic domain. I think, if I understand it correctly that the graph ends up serving as suggestion of what you should be hearing.
 
It's my impression that this serves as a very powerful suggestion.

 
I have what I believe is a rhetorical question; Can you run the ARC correction functionality while you are making your chirp tests? In other words, after you have applied ARC and it's active in your room, can you also make further tests using the ARC testing procedure to test the results of the active application of ARC?
 
Or do you just do your very best job (I'll defer to Danni here) of running the tests and then hit the switch and call it done?
 
Maybe that is an ARC 2 feature?
 
The systems I am familiar with that are used on multi amped arrays are active in that they can re evaluate the results of the adjustments and continue to attempt improvements and you have an independent RTA feature so that you may evaluate the results as a bystander.
 
 
With regards to time domain, I don't know how to measure for time domain (but I do know how to interpret a waterfall graph) but it seems obvious that anyone that knows how to measure acoustical environments for the time domain could suggest the test sample as easily as I blurted out "pink noise" for the RTA.
 
RTA's also work very well with sweeps (that's what some folks call chirps) Pink Noise measures an *energized* room, Chirps measure a near *instantaneous* response so as to avoid the distraction of all the energy bouncing around the room. Chirps can also be evaluated for timing information, so I imagine that is why ARC uses them instead of pink noise. Spoken word is often times butchered by timing issues in large installations so chirps can be very helpful when timing large multi amped arrays. Pink Noise mimics the condition of musical material being played back so people that are concerned about music payback find it to be a practical and useful approach to testing.
 
 
None of this analyzes how ARC is doing what it doing but it will tell you a lot about what ARC is doing.
 
It's super easy to do the RTA tests (if you have a RTA setup), yet only a few people seem to do it.
 
 
best regards,
mike 
 
 
 
 

audimute

mike_mccue
I have what I believe is a rhetorical question; Can you run the ARC correction functionality while you are making your chirp tests? In other words, after you have applied ARC and it's active in your room, can you also make further tests using the ARC testing procedure to test the results of the active application of ARC?
 
Or do you just do your very best job (I'll defer to Danni here) of running the tests and then hit the switch and call it done?
 
Maybe that is an ARC 2 feature?
 
best regards,
mike  

No, you can't run the VST while you're in correction mode....however, one could literally record the "chirps" and run them through the VST correction either by using Winamp (allows for VST plugin use) or by importing the chirps into the DAW of your choice.
 
A few things to add to the discussion that maybe I can provide or at least give us all something to think about....
 
As some of you know, I beta test for an amp sim company. We of course do lots of IR work as well as use tube schematic formulas and all sorts of math to create our sims. That said, I am a complete dope on what those numbers mean but it piqued my interest enough to where I started looking into what makes up a sound and how frequencies are adjusted etc. To make a long story short, this lead me to check out an ARC correction file using "open with" and it's quite scary once it opens up and you see all the stuff it messes with.
 
I don't think it would be against any policy to share that correction file with everyone....unless of course Obi were to sign on and tell me it was some sort of violation? I wouldn't think it would be since this would be a correction file of my room.....but when you see all the stuff it takes into account, it's a pretty good "look" at what this thing is at least trying to do.
 
Another thing I noticed was, in my early dealings with ARC, I used a latency setting of 4096 due to me using mixing consoles in my studio. Of course there is no need for input monitoring via soundcard and there is no need to go for low ASIO buffers unless a softsynth is used in real time. Anyway, when ARC corrected my room, something sounded weird....like not quite right...not as tight as I had hoped? I wish I could remember what it was...but I just knew it couldn't be right...however, the sound of the core eq tone....was great. When I did the correction again, I dropped my buffers to 64 via ASIO. There was a difference. If so, is there a chance it DID compensate for reflection and that was the sound I heard?
 
For example....if the difference in the measurement between when the chirp starts (I'm guessing there is a timer in there somewhere) has a little latency....that would affect the outcome, yes? Also, that was an earlier version of the software when that happened. But I did the exact correction again with lower latency and the core sound remained...but things were tighter and it felt right to me.
 
So maybe there was a compensation and it does mess with some time/delay stuff? I have no clue...but I will definitely share one of my correction files if anyone thinks it may be helpful. This has been a great conversation so far....I'm hoping no one comes in and wrecks it. :)
 
-Danny
 

I wouldn't expect latency to be an issue at all, no matter how long. However, I would not be surprised if you got different results every time you set it up. 

Honest bit, it's been nearly identical for me everytime I've done it in my studio as far as what the curve reads as well as the core sound. As a matter of fact, ARC 2 sounds nearly the same as ARC 1 and gave almost the same results. The difference between the two was ARC 2 seems to favor a slight bit more high end and when you look at the curve, you can see it.
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4909348/ARC%201%262.JPG
 
See that little bump in the highs on ARC 2? We can manually adjust that with ARC 2 so once I lower that a bit, it sounds the same as ARC 1 to me and as you can see, the curves really are similar. The sound is spot on too.
 
The latency thing.....I could be out of my tree on that part. But I figure...if this thing is timing things....if the burst it shoots out is 4096 samples late as opposed to 64 samples....it could be over-compensating for anything that *may* be time related. I have no clue...I just know that something weird happened when I had my latency set that high and dropping it removed whatever weirdness I was hearing. I did the procedure exactly the same way to the numbers. Each time I have done it after that time, has been perfect for me in every room. I know the whole thing sounds like a load of crap....but man, it definitely works for me so it's doing something to fool me into thinking I'm doing a good job. LOL! :)
 
-Danny

Looking at those curves Danny has posted up are rather interesting. Look at the 'Before' plot. There is some wild variation there Danny.  (especially down the low end) What I find interesting is when I do a RTA analysis with pink noise and either a quality measurement mic or an expensive condenser (and this might obviously not be the best test) I get a near flat line with my Mackie HR824's on concrete stands well out from the walls etc. I am not seeing + or - 6 db variation that you are there, nowhere near it.
 
If Danny is getting such variations ('before' and the 'after' looks great for him) maybe then ARC is good for him. I could certainly see why Danny likes it.
 
On the other hand it may do nothing for me. I have always had a gut feeling I am hearing everything near perfectly now without any form of correction. This is where referencing is great. I know my reference CD backwards. (Steely Dan 'Everything Must Go') When I do get the opportunity to go into a nice room and hear a very nice speaker system in a very nice acoustic environment I usually hear the same thing in there from the ref CD. So I know I must be damn close.