Lunatique
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2008
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Some of you have seen photos of my studio and know that it has extensive acoustic treatment, and my reference monitors are Klein + Humeel O300D's. I always knew that despite having built my studio from the ground up and having read books on studio design/construction, consulted experts, and really working at achieving the most accurate and neutral sound in my studio, it still had peaks and nulls. So after researching for a while, I finally decided to get the IK Multimedia ARC System, and I'm happy to say it met my expectations. My studio now sounds about as accurate and neutral as I could possibly make it. The awesome thing is that the ARC can be used in any kind of room, and will dramatically improve the sound quality, even if you don't already have any acoustic treatments in place. I won't correct any severe time-domain issues your room might have, but in terms of frequency response and stereo imaging, it really helps, and is especially a blessing for those that can't use acoustic treatment for whatever reasons (spouse approval, limited space, budget). You might think your speakers and your room sounds fine, but until you put it to the test, you're likely wrong (and it always seemed strange that audiophiles spend all that money on gear, but the room is totally untreated and the gears never sound like their real potential). ARC will show you just how skewed your room and speakers actually are and then correct them.
There are other products that do similar things like the KRK Ergo, JBL MSC1, dbx DriverRack, Samson D-1500/D250...etc. I chose the ARC because it's not tied to hardware and it also tests your room in a manner I find most useful. The only caveat is that it is a software plugin, and if you are not running a computer-based audio rig, then you will not be able to use it (unless you want to use a hardware plugin host like the Muse Recpetor or other similar hardware products). For those of you with computer audio rigs, you can host VST plugins in J River Media center (version 14 and up), Media Monkey, Winamp...etc.
So anyway, onto my experience with the ARC.
My initial experience with it sucked--the damn thing kept crashing when I tried to save the preset on computer #1. On computer #2, the test tone would just stop making sound for no reason, and I could never get through the whole testing process without it becoming silent at some point. I tried to download updates from IK's website (after registering the product and signing in to my account), and it gave me nothing. I looked in the user's area in downloads, nothing. The download page won't even load. Looked in support area, nothing. And I kept trying until I got fed up and just downloaded a friggin' cracked version, and you know what--it f-cking worked. I hated having to do that, but often I had heard that cracked versions fixed problems with the legit versions, and in this case it was true. Anyway, I paid for my Goddamn copy so I feel no f-cking guilt about this. (And no, you can't just download a cracked version and use it, since it has to use the dedicated testing mic that comes with it, as the software is calibrated to the mic's specific properties.)
So off I went and did some tests. The first couple of presets I saved didn't sound right to me--it was kind of limp and the bass was powerless. I was really disappointed. Then the next day, I did a couple more tests restricting the listening area to just normal head movements my body makes while I'm mixing/monitoring--that means, I didn't tests spots all around the damn chair and where the keyboard and mouse are and just concentrate on the area about the width of my shoulders and about the same front and back of where my head would be. I also adjusted the settings on my monitors (K+H O300D's) to get closer to the test results the ARC showed. This time, it worked really well--the result sounded very neutral and flat.
I had thought my room was already very well treated as I built my studio from the ground up and researched hard on the acoustics, design, treatment, consulted experts, read books...etc. Those of you that have seen photos of my studio know how extensive the treatment is, with superchunk basstraps up the wazoo, all the important reflection points taken care of, good room dimensions, ideal listening position, and so on. But what ARC revealed (and what I had already kind of known when I did my own tests with a sound pressure meter) was that there were spikes and dips and the two speakers did not sound the same (probably due to furniture placement and other factors). I had a big spike at 45Hz, a dip at 60Hz, and a few other smaller spikes and dips in the bass region, which resulted in a bottom heavy but visceral and punchy sound. The problem is, it colored all the material that way. I had a dip at 2Khz, and the treble was hyped, which resulted in a fatiguing and bright sound. Here's ARC's testing results and correction:
After I applied the correction, the bass spike was tamed and the mids filled in and the treble wasn't so hot anymore. I used to think t maybe the "neutral" sound of the O300D's were a bit hotter than what's comfortable to me--that my ears aren't used to hearing really flat frequency range around the area that caused fatigue, but now I know--it was the room making things sound that way, and what I heard wasn't neutral at all. With the correction, all the excessive brightness went away, and everything just sounded smooth and natural. The bass was still authoritative and punchy on material that was mixed that way, and it was smooth and soft on material that was mixed to be smooth and soft. I thinks that's a sign that a sound device is neutral and flat--it reproduced the material faithfully, instead of coloring everything with a similar sonic footprint.
Prior to the correction, I also knew that the phantom center was a bit off due to the way I have the furniture and one side of the wall having a window behind the broadband absorbers. Now withe the correction, the center was dead on and the stereo imaging was very clean and even between the two sides. ARC allows you to turn on time-delay correction and when I tried it, it moved the phantom center almost all the way to the left, so that wasn't going to work. But when I turn it off, everything's just fine.
I spend a lot of time later doing comparisons of correction on and off, and I even used the before/after curve ARC provided to further tweak some very minor spikes and dips that ARC couldn't completely smooth out in the bass region, and the extra EQ made the K+H's sound even smoother and tighter controlled (I used Easy-Q, a free high quality EQ for that, but you can use any high quality EQ--preferably a linear phase EQ such as FabFilter Pro-Q, Voxengo CurveEQ, Redline EQ...etc for minimum phasing and distortion). I think I'm finally hearing how the K+H's are supposed to really sound, after owning them for three years and using them in three different home studios.
For a few hundred bucks, I really think the ARC is worth it. It has confirmed my suspicions about the deficiencies of my already well-treated room, and it has redefined for me what neutral and flat and smooth really means. It even changed my opinion about my headphone collection. I used to use the K+H's as some kind of benchmark for accuracy to judge my various headphones, but now I realize I had been unfair to some of them when they were actually much more neutral and accurate than I thought they were (such as the HD650)., and certain ones are actually more skewed than I thought they were (such as the Denon D7000).
I also did a preset for my smaller multimedia speakers/sub, which I often use when I'm not doing critical work--like just watching a movie or something, and it worked really well. All the muddiness was gone, and the sound opened up and become much more clear.
So there you have it. I spent the money and I was ready to be disappointed, since I can be a skeptic just like everyone else here, and I'm glad I wasn't disappointed. You can point and laugh and say "bull" and I really couldn't care less, because I took action and found out for myself if it worked or not, and you just have to either go on saying it's all bull without having actually tested it yourself, or you try it and see how it will transform your room and speakers. If you have tried it and didn't like the result, I highly recommend you do the test again but don't follow the diagrams in the manual. Limit the testing spots to just the area within your body's width and a head front/back of your listening position, because when you are doing critical monitoring, that's the area you'll be restricting yourself to when you're doing critical work anyway--that sweet spot. Don't test a large area all over your big console mixer or the width of a sofa, since the result would be a compromise and won't be very good.
There are other products that do similar things like the KRK Ergo, JBL MSC1, dbx DriverRack, Samson D-1500/D250...etc. I chose the ARC because it's not tied to hardware and it also tests your room in a manner I find most useful. The only caveat is that it is a software plugin, and if you are not running a computer-based audio rig, then you will not be able to use it (unless you want to use a hardware plugin host like the Muse Recpetor or other similar hardware products). For those of you with computer audio rigs, you can host VST plugins in J River Media center (version 14 and up), Media Monkey, Winamp...etc.
So anyway, onto my experience with the ARC.
My initial experience with it sucked--the damn thing kept crashing when I tried to save the preset on computer #1. On computer #2, the test tone would just stop making sound for no reason, and I could never get through the whole testing process without it becoming silent at some point. I tried to download updates from IK's website (after registering the product and signing in to my account), and it gave me nothing. I looked in the user's area in downloads, nothing. The download page won't even load. Looked in support area, nothing. And I kept trying until I got fed up and just downloaded a friggin' cracked version, and you know what--it f-cking worked. I hated having to do that, but often I had heard that cracked versions fixed problems with the legit versions, and in this case it was true. Anyway, I paid for my Goddamn copy so I feel no f-cking guilt about this. (And no, you can't just download a cracked version and use it, since it has to use the dedicated testing mic that comes with it, as the software is calibrated to the mic's specific properties.)
So off I went and did some tests. The first couple of presets I saved didn't sound right to me--it was kind of limp and the bass was powerless. I was really disappointed. Then the next day, I did a couple more tests restricting the listening area to just normal head movements my body makes while I'm mixing/monitoring--that means, I didn't tests spots all around the damn chair and where the keyboard and mouse are and just concentrate on the area about the width of my shoulders and about the same front and back of where my head would be. I also adjusted the settings on my monitors (K+H O300D's) to get closer to the test results the ARC showed. This time, it worked really well--the result sounded very neutral and flat.
I had thought my room was already very well treated as I built my studio from the ground up and researched hard on the acoustics, design, treatment, consulted experts, read books...etc. Those of you that have seen photos of my studio know how extensive the treatment is, with superchunk basstraps up the wazoo, all the important reflection points taken care of, good room dimensions, ideal listening position, and so on. But what ARC revealed (and what I had already kind of known when I did my own tests with a sound pressure meter) was that there were spikes and dips and the two speakers did not sound the same (probably due to furniture placement and other factors). I had a big spike at 45Hz, a dip at 60Hz, and a few other smaller spikes and dips in the bass region, which resulted in a bottom heavy but visceral and punchy sound. The problem is, it colored all the material that way. I had a dip at 2Khz, and the treble was hyped, which resulted in a fatiguing and bright sound. Here's ARC's testing results and correction:
After I applied the correction, the bass spike was tamed and the mids filled in and the treble wasn't so hot anymore. I used to think t maybe the "neutral" sound of the O300D's were a bit hotter than what's comfortable to me--that my ears aren't used to hearing really flat frequency range around the area that caused fatigue, but now I know--it was the room making things sound that way, and what I heard wasn't neutral at all. With the correction, all the excessive brightness went away, and everything just sounded smooth and natural. The bass was still authoritative and punchy on material that was mixed that way, and it was smooth and soft on material that was mixed to be smooth and soft. I thinks that's a sign that a sound device is neutral and flat--it reproduced the material faithfully, instead of coloring everything with a similar sonic footprint.
Prior to the correction, I also knew that the phantom center was a bit off due to the way I have the furniture and one side of the wall having a window behind the broadband absorbers. Now withe the correction, the center was dead on and the stereo imaging was very clean and even between the two sides. ARC allows you to turn on time-delay correction and when I tried it, it moved the phantom center almost all the way to the left, so that wasn't going to work. But when I turn it off, everything's just fine.
I spend a lot of time later doing comparisons of correction on and off, and I even used the before/after curve ARC provided to further tweak some very minor spikes and dips that ARC couldn't completely smooth out in the bass region, and the extra EQ made the K+H's sound even smoother and tighter controlled (I used Easy-Q, a free high quality EQ for that, but you can use any high quality EQ--preferably a linear phase EQ such as FabFilter Pro-Q, Voxengo CurveEQ, Redline EQ...etc for minimum phasing and distortion). I think I'm finally hearing how the K+H's are supposed to really sound, after owning them for three years and using them in three different home studios.
For a few hundred bucks, I really think the ARC is worth it. It has confirmed my suspicions about the deficiencies of my already well-treated room, and it has redefined for me what neutral and flat and smooth really means. It even changed my opinion about my headphone collection. I used to use the K+H's as some kind of benchmark for accuracy to judge my various headphones, but now I realize I had been unfair to some of them when they were actually much more neutral and accurate than I thought they were (such as the HD650)., and certain ones are actually more skewed than I thought they were (such as the Denon D7000).
I also did a preset for my smaller multimedia speakers/sub, which I often use when I'm not doing critical work--like just watching a movie or something, and it worked really well. All the muddiness was gone, and the sound opened up and become much more clear.
So there you have it. I spent the money and I was ready to be disappointed, since I can be a skeptic just like everyone else here, and I'm glad I wasn't disappointed. You can point and laugh and say "bull" and I really couldn't care less, because I took action and found out for myself if it worked or not, and you just have to either go on saying it's all bull without having actually tested it yourself, or you try it and see how it will transform your room and speakers. If you have tried it and didn't like the result, I highly recommend you do the test again but don't follow the diagrams in the manual. Limit the testing spots to just the area within your body's width and a head front/back of your listening position, because when you are doing critical monitoring, that's the area you'll be restricting yourself to when you're doing critical work anyway--that sweet spot. Don't test a large area all over your big console mixer or the width of a sofa, since the result would be a compromise and won't be very good.