Hearing your recording room..

[Relic]

Oh snap! This is a good engineering thread!

Like a worth while debate on here has ensued!

 

[thedreampolice]

and it does help any room, even an untreated one. But it is no substitute for a properly treated room.

You can have an opinion and its all good man, but your opinion is not based on actual facts about the product. Even the article you point to of Ethan, who is brilliant likes ARC.

ARC is simply a different product and not ONLY a correctional EQ as you think it is. But I will stand by what I said that you are saying an audio product does not sound good and you have never heard it. Sorry I have heard it many times in many studios and I can come up with many engineers that swear by it, names that you would know.

In fact I will just quote your own article.

"Listening to a variety of music there was no question that the sound was improved when the MultEQ was engaged. In a nearly square room like Kal's, reducing the large modal peak via EQ removed the boominess that was apparent in all of the music tracks we auditioned. Improving the bass also increased clarity in the low midrange by contrast, since the low mids were no longer masked by the excess bass."

 

[daproduct]

as for me, i think i'll go with some 2" foam pyramids/wedges, some corner cubes, and some bass traps for the corners of my office/studio.. beyond that, maybe a few sets of consumer speakers to a/b at most... cost? roughly 400... does a lot more for one than a room eq in the long run if you ask me, and it leaves material left over to do a little bit for an isolation booth if you need it.
i'll personally avoid the extra little extra gimicky shit until my music starts selling enough to buy toys!

 

[7thangel]

and it does help any room, even an untreated one. But it is no substitute for a properly treated room.

You can have an opinion and its all good man, but your opinion is not based on actual facts about the product. Even the article you point to of Ethan, who is brilliant likes ARC.

ARC is simply a different product and not ONLY a correctional EQ as you think it is. But I will stand by what I said that you are saying an audio product does not sound good and you have never heard it. Sorry I have heard it many times in many studios and I can come up with many engineers that swear by it, names that you would know.

In fact I will just quote your own article.

"Listening to a variety of music there was no question that the sound was improved when the MultEQ was engaged. In a nearly square room like Kal's, reducing the large modal peak via EQ removed the boominess that was apparent in all of the music tracks we auditioned. Improving the bass also increased clarity in the low midrange by contrast, since the low mids were no longer masked by the excess bass."

how can a room correction product sound good? and where did i state it sounded bad?

'my' article, states what it is and what it isn't, which is why i linked it. i have no horses in this race, i'm not trying to convince anyone to spend money on this product like it's a quick fix for an untreated room. from the get go i stated i wouldn't get it and that it's no substitute for a treated room. hell, i mentioned that it's best used in a room that is already treated. it is interesting that you did a selective quote, did you miss this?

To be clear, I am not opposed to the use of EQ to reduce the one or two lowest modal peaks in a room. Conventional broadband bass traps are less effective once you get below about 50 or 60 Hz. So even if an equalizer or DSP device cannot reduce ringing, just lowering a peak's level and the amount of its ringing (if not reducing the decay time) improves the sound in a very real way. Indeed, I have 40 RealTraps in my own living room home theater, but I also use the one-band cut-only EQ built into my SVS PB12-Plus/2 subwoofer to tame the worst modal peak around 40 Hz by a few dB. Top

The MultEQ is certainly effective as an equalizer, and since it adjusts itself automatically it has the potential to be easy to install and setup correctly. However, Audyssey does not sell this device to end users, but rather requires you to hire a professional installer. It is also very expensive for an equalizer.

In contrast, for about $150 you can buy a Behringer parametric equalizer and use the freeware Room EQ Wizard software to automatically control the EQ from your own computer. Even if you buy a separate computer just for the EQ, the total cost is still lower and you "own" the hardware and can recalibrate your system whenever you want without paying a professional installer. The Room EQ Wizard also performs a very thorough room analysis, showing much more information than the software bundled with the Audyssey MultEQ.

Finally, I'd like to reiterate a point I have made many times in my acoustics articles and web forum posts. The frequency response in domestic size rooms changes drastically over very small distances, even at low frequencies. Therefore, unlike bass traps that always improve all locations, any EQ that improves the response at one location is sure to make it worse elsewhere, even a few inches away

nevermind that you're conveniently ignoring my statement about studio building pro's and acousticians who have told me and others about arc and other auto room correction products and their shortcomings.

again, i have no horses in this race but here's a couple of links, and you'll see a theme, even from those that like arc (the same goes for krk ergo), and that is a treated room

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/bass...timedia-arc-system-vs-acoustic-treatment.html
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-m...k-multimedia-arc-vs-krk-ergo-vs-jbl-msc1.html
http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/s...34969&Words=ARC&topic=&Search=true#Post740255
http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/s...46874&Words=ARC&topic=&Search=true#Post747495
http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/s...88948&Words=ARC&topic=&Search=true#Post791096

those links also give insight to what folks should be looking out for if they spend the money on arc

and finally once again, i wouldn't spend money on this, i would prefer to spend it on improving my space/room and finding other solutions.

 

[thedreampolice]

Its all good man, not trying to beef. Maybe I misunderstood you at first when you called it a glorified graphic eq.

But I do agree, but money in to the room first. And I think Relic has done that already, so the next step is get ARC.

No worries!