I've never had a single thing that has made such a difference.

I just installed and ran ARC for the first time and created a room correction eq curve.

Absolutely awesome . As I said at the beginning; I've never had a single instance of anything linked with my studio do so much. I have no acoustic treatment in my room. Its not flat at with a big dips all over the place. 3 of the walls having book cases with the fourth having a window under which rests a 2 seater sofa double bed. The wall opposite has a door opening at the opposite end of my mixing/listening position. It has carpeted timber floors. 3.7 metres wide by 4.9 long with 2.7 metre high ceiling. The walls and ceiling are lined with old fashioned (constructed 1957) horse hair fibres and plaster dry wall.

A before and after comparison just astounds my sense of hearing. I bought the package on part recommendation and part gamble as there was much more work treating the room with physical materials than software. I wanted immediate results, though I do want some minor treatments to complement what I now have.

I'm about to burn a test CD to use in the lounge room Hi FI and the car.

What an interesting toy. I got is a crossgrade because I own so much other IK stuff with free shipping to Australia.

I couldn't agree more - it's improved my mixes a great deal. I know it doesn't "fix" my room, but the majority of what I record is direct, or low volume (Acoustic Guitar, etc). Physical treatment would help too, but in my case - my room is just oddly shaped, etc.

Isn't it nice to do a mix that has a nicely controlled low end?

:-)

I hope more people give it a try!

ORIGINAL: mudgel

I've never had a single thing that has made such a difference.

I just installed and ran ARC for the first time and created a room correction eq curve.

Absolutely awesome . As I said at the beginning; I've never had a single instance of anything linked with my studio do so much. I have no acoustic treatment in my room. Its not flat at with a big dips all over the place. 3 of the walls having book cases with the fourth having a window under which rests a 2 seater sofa double bed. The wall opposite has a door opening at the opposite end of my mixing/listening position. It has carpeted timber floors. 3.7 metres wide by 4.9 long with 2.7 metre high ceiling. The walls and ceiling are lined with old fashioned (constructed 1957) horse hair fibres and plaster dry wall.

A before and after comparison just astounds my sense of hearing. I bought the package on part recommendation and part gamble as there was much more work treating the room with physical materials than software. I wanted immediate results, though I do want some minor treatments to complement what I now have.

I'm about to burn a test CD to use in the lounge room Hi FI and the car.

What an interesting toy. I got is a crossgrade because I own so much other IK stuff with free shipping to Australia.

Will be interesting to see if you mixes translate better....let us know...

Also, what did it cost you..? Where did you get it?


cheers

Wiz

ARC is on my next on my list to buy. I keep hearing good things about it from people who actually use it. Thanks for the mini review with Sonar. How much of a CPU hit is it?

It does rock

I am just so lazy that after moving my room around a few times to allow people to stay I have not bothered re-calibrating, which is shocking I know.

Still it is the mutts nutts.

G

∞

ORIGINAL: mike_mccue

"from people who actually use it"?


best,
mike

I've read posts (not here) where folk will stay it doesn't do this or can't do that based theory and called it a type of "snake oil" before they've actually tried it in their own mixing enviroment. Even the OP (for whatever reason) thought he was taking a gamble. Turns out he's more than pleased thus far.

∞

There is nothing wrong with the ARC approach, and it can in fact help despite the widely-held opinion that it is snake oil. (Ethan Winer has called ARC "a joke".)

You just have to be aware of its limitations.

It cannot "correct" a room. Its effect is only valid in the mix position, and in fact might make your output sound worse to listeners positioned elsewhere in the room.

It cannot compensate for a resonant null. No equalization scheme can. A null is a null is a null and it doesn't matter if you blast that frequency out at jet-engine volume, the null remains.

You should not think of ARC as a substitute for acoustic treatments, but rather as a way to augment them, to reduce the worst resonant peaks that your traps cannot fully mitigate.

I'd like to add that if you're not willing to spend the money on ARC you can achieve the same result with an inexpensive outboard parametric equalizer such as the Behringer FBQ2496 and a little manual testing and tweaking. Not only will it cost less, since it's a hardware rather than a software solution you also avoid the CPU overhead.

Great points Bitflipper. Nah I personally don't look at it as room treatment (I have some treatment in place and plan to add more.) but as an extention of ones monitoring system. It is what it is...an equalization system (and hopefully a transparent one) and thanks for the tip on the Behringer. I will look into it as well.