I get a little tired of people denigrating other people's experiences just because they can't believe that a company may have developed a technology that is beyond their current level of understanding. I think that anyone who actually gives it a fair trial has a great chance of becoming a believer too, not because of anything someone else says, but through their own experience.

 
This above sums it up for me. Though I try not to let my frustration get the best of me to where I would rant, I'm also a firm believer of "don't believe everything you read and don't allow your mind to rule things out until you can experience something for yourself."
 
Present company in this thread excluded, there have been a few that have joined other threads totally annihilating ARC. Take one listen to their mixes and you'll see that they could benefit from it if they took their heads out of their butts and tried to be open-minded engineers instead of scientists that talk the talk yet can't walk the walk. There have been a few that tried it and failed....ok, so it's not for everyone. But I just can't see why anyone would just read about something that *may* sound too good to be true and just write it off as "impossible."
 
There are many things in life that may not make sense to us or look good on paper. The thrill of experience to me makes things so much more worth while, I'd be missing out on aspects of life and success if I just listened to people or believed totally what I've read. If I listened to friends, some family members and artists telling me to cut my hair because I'd never make a dollar with my music, I wouldn't be where I am today.
 
If I listened to the so called car know-it-alls that told me Corvettes were junk, break down like crazy and are terrible on gas, I'd not have the enjoyment I've had with my car since 2001 without a single major repair that is NOT garage kept and lasts a week on a single tank of premium fuel.
 
If I listened to the seasoned pro's that told me Pro Tools was the industry standard for a reason, I wouldn't be here on this forum, I wouldn't have the friends I've made here, I wouldn't have the business partnerships I've made here, and I'd be looking at an ugly DAW that in my opinion, falls way short of what Sonar can do FOR ME using Sonar's worst build.
 
And last but not least, if I believed what I read as well as what I've heard from credible people I respect and look up to that have bashed ARC into the ground that have never tried it, I would have a room full of ugly room correction in my man cave that I would have to explain all the time to people that come TO MY HOUSE as well as not having my monitor issues fixed. I'd also not have the business I have now because before ARC, though I like to say I was a fair engineer that was hit or miss, I was actually a VERY good engineer that just couldn't hear correctly to make the right calls. There was NEVER anything wrong with me or my knowledge. I just couldn't hear correctly. When you can't hear correctly, you can't make the right calls. When you can't make the right calls, you're not a very good engineer even though in reality, you very well could be if you were placed in the right environment.
 
At the end of the day, I can respect anyone's opinion and when I say that, I mean it. But, I CANNOT respect an opinion of someone who has never tried or experienced this for themselves that may seem to go out of their way to try to make others think it's all hype. Think about it. How credible does it make a person? If I sat here and told you Reaper sucks because what I read about it didn't impress me to where I feel I can get the same results out of Adobe Audition, am I not out of my tree if I never try Reaper to see for myself?
 
How can I tell you hybrid cars are not all that based on what I may read if I've never owned one? How can I tell you that Apple Cider Vinegar does NOT work for curing night cramps because medical science has no proof of it? Yet I can tell you from experience, 2 teaspoons of ACV with a little honey will take your cramps away in less than a minute. How credible is my opinion on something if I have never physically tried it and have formed my opinion solely on what I've read while others praise the thing from experience? It would make me look bad...period. Again, I'm honestly speaking in general terms and am not singling anyone out. I just can't for the life of me, understand how anyone can form a negative opinion on something they have never experienced for themselves, yet decide to fight tooth and nail with those who have had success. It just makes no sense to me at all.
 
-Danny

Noise reduction works best on signals that don't have a lot of noise, and room correction works best on rooms that aren't too bad to begin with.

I used to be in bitflipper's corner about room EQ but that was because I was working in big studios. And yes, you could equalize for a sweet spot but if you sneezed, you were outside the zone and everything got screwed up again. Besides, equalizing a room with horrible acoustics just ends up giving you a heavily-equalized room with horrible acoustics.  

However...I that ARC is very effective, BUT to a great extent it's because the people using it have near field monitors. NFMs already take a lot of the room out of the equation because you're getting so much more direct sound than reflected sound. By analyzing the room, ARC cleans up the reflected sound so it doesn't fight with the direct sound as much. As a bonus, it will pick up if your speakers have any obvious deficiencies.

Bitflipper is also right about the averaging thing, but that's another reason why ARC is more effective. It trades off having one sweet spot that's totally perfect for a much wider sweet spot that doesn't compensate as completely. That's a logical tradeoff to make if you're mostly hearing the direct sound from the speaker.
 
I wrote a review of the original system for Harmony Central that some might find helpful in terms of understanding how the system works.

Low frequencies are the most prone to anomalies and problems. If you can afford to treat only one aspect of your room, then get some bass traps; also deaden any reflective wall opposite where you're monitoring. Then ARC won't have to work so hard, and the results will be even better.

OK,  you guys got me sold on the ARC system. Here's my question. I have my recording desk against the wall  and the side wall to my right is about 2' away. From the front wall to the back wall is about 12'. To the left of me is open. Here's my question. What is the minimal amount of room treatment I would need to work well with the ARC? ( Keep in mind I'm married and she's really mean)

Good read on your review there. One thing you'd find different today is if you were to do this:

In order to try and “break” the system and see if I could uncover a flaw, I decided to do two separate sets of measurements, with the same set of speakers but with the mics “sampling” the room at very different positions (albeit following the rule of symmetrical placement and proper level-setting). Surprisingly, the measurement curves were virtually identical.

It would indeed be a much different outcome. Depending on what version of the software you used would dictate this. They fixed quite a lot of issues after the first build as well as a few builds after that. However, they also broke quite a few things in the later revisions. I know this from trying them all while taping my room and measuring things up as perfect as possible yet getting different results from some of the later software. Some of it didn't make much of a difference while others, you could get a difference if you had a little more tilt to your mic.

The big change in the actual correction improvement was with build 1.1 for me. Phasing issues were under control as well as an over-all better correction experience. 1.1.1 was to me, the best of all of them and to this day, what I would use to do the actual correction procedure with. Then I'd update to the latest version. I'd still be using 1.1.1 today actually, but it will crash Sonar X2 repeatedly. 1.3.1 fixes it...but I wasn't crazy with the correction results of 1.3.1.

If anyone sees any crashing with ARC 1 and you're using 1.1.1, just update to 1.3.1 and you'll be ok. No need to do any additional corrections. Not to compete with Craig here, but I too have written an artical on ARC if you care to read it.

http://issuu.com/Wusik/docs/wsmapr201296dpi/37

I don't know about any of the aesthetics, but I shared what worked for me as well as how I went about it.

-Danny

@Barczar,

I'll try to answer your question indirectly.

Whatever room treatment you can reasonably do is defintely a good thing, especially if you also record live audio in the room. Most small rooms don't have a desirable sonic fingerprint, so you want to minimize the amount of sound the room imparts to live recordings by reducing reflections.

I estimate that I have at least 50%, probably more, of my walls covered with 2" Auralex panels. All first reflection areas are covered, including behind the monitors and on the ceiling. First reflection areas are all those areas of the wall or ceiling that if someone else holds a mirror against them, you can see your monitors in the mirror when you are seated in the mix position.

I have bass traps in three of the corners. I can't put one in the fourth corner because the door is there, and I don't really have room anywhere else for more.

That is the maximum amount of physical room treatment I feel I can fit in, and it definitely makes a positive difference. But the room is still far from perfect, especially on the bass end of the spectrum, which is why I use ARC, because with ARC, my mixing/mastering environment is at least as accurate as almost any professional studio, and probably better than some if they don't use ARC.

In ballpark numbers, I have $500/pair monitors, $500 in room treatment and $500 in ARC (you can get it for significantly less now), so for $1500 dollars, I have the same sound as studios that spent 10 times as much or more. I call that a great bargain!

More specific to your set up, if at all possible, first experiment with different positions in the room for your monitors, so that the bass response is the most smooth and natural without any help from anything else. Your situation with only two feet to the wall on the right and an open left side is definitely not ideal. I'm guessing you'd get better results with the monitors located such that the side walls are fairly symmetrical with them, yet still as far away as possible.

In my own case, I moved my monitors from the short wall to the long wall to achieve this, and it helped a lot. Due to other factors. my desk placement is still not exactly symmetrical with the monitors, which makes the left and right monitors sound a bit different from each other. But ARC straightens that out beautifully, the imaging is superb with ARC turned on.

Hope this helps somewhat.

P.S. I'm married too, but my wife isn't mean. I'll bet your wife isn't really mean either.

Hey  Ptheisen,  thanks for the tips.   I know I need some kind of room treatment but I wasn't sure how much. I don't have a choice where my desk goes so I can't move it.  But I am thinking of at least getting some treatment on the wall behind my monitors, the ceiling above me, and the wall to the right of me. I could get by with that for around  $500.00. Between that and the ARC it should be an improvement.

And you're right. My wife is not mean, I'm pretty lucky!

I was going to test ARC 1 in X2a to see if I had the same problem Danny reported.  Then I discovered something weird on my system.  The ARC dll was in my 64-bit Program Files area, but X2a showed it as "ARC (32-bit)" in the VST effects list when I right clicked an effects bin.
 
I've used ARC 1 without issue in Sonar 1 but I don't think I've ever given it a try with Sonar 2 yet.  Does ARC 1 come as 64-bit, for starters? 
 
Danny, is there any chance this might be the source of your crashing?  I think I should probably download and re-install at this point, unless ARC 1 is only 32-bit (in which case I guess it's time to use my Jam points and upgrade to ARC 2).  Any suggestions?

I just finished playing with ARC2.  Was delivered today. I measured (not perfectly precise, was limited on time). just wanted to play with it for a bit. It definatley made a difference. My room is just a spare bedroom which I treated with foam. I sent the dimensions to Auralex, and they sent me back a suggestion of how to treat the room and suggested types of foam.  I added the foam and there was a noticable pressure difference in the room and I saw my mixes get better, but still lacking.  even the hour I spent playing with ARC2, I listened to a mix I thought sounded great in that room, applied the ARC plugin and found it didn't sound so good.  I made some changes to the mix, got is sounding pretty decent again, and dumped it to a wave. Applied a bit of complression and boost11 just to get the volume up and took it to another computer to listen, and it sounds pretty good, very similar to my music room with ARC2. I was using Sonar X2a 64 bit, so it works just fine with 64 bit. I read some other folks got very precise in their measurements and I think I am going to follow thier lead on this a re-measure. Another thing I noticed, is once the room is flat, there were lots of things I had trouble hearing or bringing out in the mix without ARC, and now pretty easy to hear them. Reverbs are more audible and sublte changes are more noticable.  It is a bit different to here the flat mix, i am planning to load some songs which are similar to use as a reference. I had the tendency to make them sound like I would want them sound on my stereo and they need to be flat. That is bad habit I will have to break and relearn.

So far I am happy, but again I haven't had a lot of time to tinker with it. I am feeling good about the purchase. Now I just need to figure out where to buy some talent and I should be on my way! :)

Thanks all for all of you help and suggestions. This forum is the greatest!

dmbaer


I was going to test ARC 1 in X2a to see if I had the same problem Danny reported.  Then I discovered something weird on my system.  The ARC dll was in my 64-bit Program Files area, but X2a showed it as "ARC (32-bit)" in the VST effects list when I right clicked an effects bin.
 
I've used ARC 1 without issue in Sonar 1 but I don't think I've ever given it a try with Sonar 2 yet.  Does ARC 1 come as 64-bit, for starters? 
 
Danny, is there any chance this might be the source of your crashing?  I think I should probably download and re-install at this point, unless ARC 1 is only 32-bit (in which case I guess it's time to use my Jam points and upgrade to ARC 2).  Any suggestions?

Hi David,
 
Yeah if you get a chance to test ARC 1, I can't get any version after 1.1.1 to work correctly in Sonar to where it literally loads up with the correction. It's enabled, loads up fine and shows my correction, but will not literally PLAY the right correction until I open the plug for the first time. As I open it, you hear the correction being applied to the project. It's so weird. Now 1.1.1, doesn't do this at all and works fine...it just won't work in X2a at all. I get a crash when a project opens that has it in there. So ARC 1 is toast for me in Sonar X2 unless I use ARC 2.
 
As for your dll in the 64 folder, it just might have defaulted there when you installed it. If you get ARC 1 version 1.3.1, there is a 64 bit version that installs with it. Just make sure you don't put the 32 bit version in your 64 scan in Sonar or it will load the wrong one in Sonar 64. I had to put the 32 bit version in my Program files (86) Steinberg Vstplugins folder and the 64 went into the Cakewalk Vstplugins folder. (not the (86) program files)
 
ARC 1 version 1.3.1 works....it just doesn't run my correction until the plug is physically opened for the first time on the bus. I literally see the graph move on it as it opens and then the correction is applied. Versions between 1.1.1 and 1.3 were even worse for me. With those, in ANY version of Sonar, the correction will not load unless I literally open the plug and click on the right correction in the ARC menu. It shows as my correction being loaded when I open the plug in the bus, but I have to click the menu and load it anyway. So at least 1.3.1 isn't that bad...I just have to open each instance of the plug for it to apply it right. I almost want to make a video of it so you can see/hear what I mean. IK support has been absolutely useless. I've had a ticket open for years to where *I* would be the last one to post in it, and they would just close the ticket without even replying back at times.
 
It's like this. I save a project with it on using two instances in two different busses. One for my A7's, one for my NS10's. All is well..save the project and exit. Reopen the project, press play...something sounds funny and I get two kinds of artifacts, they are always different. ...like there is either no correction on my monitors or something sounds phasey, yet my master bus is sending to the ARC A-7 bus with ARC enabled.
 
From there I just double click on the plug in my bus, the graph it shows literally moves by itself (the eq curve part) and it corrects the sound from just opening it automatically. Switch to my NS-10's using my monitor switcher while changing the master bus to the ARC NS-10's bus with the NS -10 correction loaded up....they sound weird. Double click the instance of ARC on that bus, the graph moves into position and correction is applied automatically and they sound as they should. They stay working for the remainder of my projects being open. But as soon as you close and reopen, same issue.
 
So far ARC 2 works very well in all versions of Sonar...so I'm good there. I just don't quite trust it as the low end seems a little tighter to me and when I hear things through it, I want to add bass. I want to be able to listen and just know what to add without compensating or "getting used to" something. ARC 1 gave me exactly what my ears heard and I've been really successful with it. When something ain't broke....I dont' try and fix it. I dunno, maybe one of those really nice bakers can do me a little favor and see if they can fix it for me if it's nothing major. LOL! Works fine in X1 though. 
 
-Danny

Danny,
 
I tried to duplicate your issue but faced a set of challenges.  I reinstalled ARC 1 (latest version freshly downloaded) making sure I installed both 32 and 64-bit versions.  I got two dll-s placed in the expected locations.  The install seemed to do what I instructed.
 
At first, when I ran Sonar, ARC showed up in the menus as "ARC (32 bit)".  Indeed, when I inserted it into the master effects bin, my task manager showed a new application (Arc) that started up.  It almost certainly it was getting the 32-bit version being executed.  But all my other IK 64-bit plug-ins showed up correctly.
 
So I tried to re-order the VST scan folder list so that the 64-bit VST folders came first.  It appears that cannot be done.  Next attempt was to rename ARC.dll under Program Files (x86) to be ARC-32bit.dll.  Now, after a VST reset, VST rescan and machine reboot (that appeared to be required to get this all to work), I finally am seeing ARC without the "(32 bit)" qualifier in the Sonar menus.  Also, the task manager does not show a separate application when I insert in into a project.  Finally!!!
 
So, at last I have something that should duplicate your setup.  And Sonar does not crash when I open a project with ARC 1 in it.  Thank goodness for small favors.
 
But this makes me question the judgement of the CW developers.  If you're running 64-bit Sonar, would it not make sense to scan 64-bit VSTs first?  Or, why not allow the user to specify the order of the directories in the scan list?  As is, it seems one cannot have both a 32 and 64 bit version of the same VST installed, or you're always going to get the 32-bit version recognized.  There may be a very good reason you'd like both on hand, but you'd rarely want the 32-bit version used when running it in Sonar.
 
Very puzzling.