PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/arc/
$700... does it really slove room problems? anyone tried yet?
thanks

In almost all cases, you'd be better off spending the $700 on acoustically treating your room. Didn't try it myself, but Hugh Robjohns did a review of it for SOS (I forget which issue) and came to the same conclusion, I think.

The big thing is that while it might be beneficial in getting a more even frequency response (and even then, only for a small part of the room — wherever you decide to put the measurement mic!), it won't do anything to cure time-domain problems, which are much worse than frequency-domain problems.

Say you've done a mix, but because the low-end response of your monitoring system and room is exaggerated, it ends up being bass-light elsewhere. This can be fixed with a simple shelving EQ in a properly treated room.

BUT!

Badly compressed/gated/expanded bass instruments, kick drums etc. (a likely outcome of poor time-domain response in your monitoring environment) cannot be corrected in this way (without resorting to extensive multiband dynamic processing, etc.)

Cheers,

Chris

To be fair to it though...

If your room is as treated as it can practically be but you still have frequency-domain issues, then it does an excellent job (to paraphrase Hugh's opinion of it — like I said, I haven't used it myself).

Cheers,

Chris

chriskorff thanx for the info.
cheer

NO.

there is no substitute for a properly treated room.

ya...such a waste of time of the programmer. first i thought i can fix my room problem with it...

This software was probably developed to jump on the bandwagon of recent monitor speakers which feature DSP analysis stuff to auto-equalize to the room (Focal monitors for example). But like ARC, these can only be really useful for minimal adjustments in an already treated room - they cannot work miracles.