Room correction systems

Paolo_M

Guys,

I'm working in a bedroom and I don't think any amount of treatment will get it to being a perfect listening environment. Echo/reverb effects are quite low now after some DIY treatment (including thick kind sized matresses).

I've been looking into ARC and ERGO.

Opinion appears divided on these.

Here's what I've found after an evenings reading:

People selling, promoting or generally having a vested interest in acoustic treatment say it's bunkum.

People that have tested and used it say that it can help to get a small, poorly (or non professionally) treated room up to a usable standard.

The sellers/manufacturers seem to have a similar story.
They acknowledge that it cannot solve flutter echo (obviously), but does work in the frequency and phase domains to resolve frequency balance issues for a specific point or points in a room, particularly in the low end.
Even that Ethen W guy acknowledges it's using for resolving difficult bass frequency issues.


What the general opinion here? Anyone tried it?


I'm asking 'cos ARC is going for €225 at the moment which is quite reasonable. You wouldn't get very much professional treatment for that kind of money.
Even if you did invest later ARC seems like it could still be useful to enhance that further.

What say you?

Quiggers

I would rely solely on these apps, maybe a decent set of headphones and the new VRM box from focusrite would be money better spent.

Have you done any acoustic analysis on your room, ie worked out the modes.
the filers used to correct modes in these apps are quite sharpe and if the room is 90% treated, the apps can add that final 10% but tuned bass traps and treated mirror points will make a far greater difference. But you need to know your problems before trying to fix them. Setting up a test mic at your listening position and playing a swept sine wave and recording the result will show them up in the frequency domain, but some problems are time domain based, an impulse response will show this up, delays caused by multiple paths can comb filter what you hear as you mix. SoundOnSound has tons of articles on this and a forum.

Also to find your modes
http://www.mcsquared.com/metricmodes.htm

madtheory

Ya it's just measurements with eq automated, so you can just DIY with measurements and eq. But only after you've done as much acoustic treatment as possible (seems like you have?), got the right speakers, positioned everything optimally etc. Small rooms will always have problems but they can be reduced to a comfortable level.

Paolo_M

madtheory wrote: »

Ya it's just measurements with eq automated, so you can just DIY with measurements and eq. But only after you've done as much acoustic treatment as possible (seems like you have?), got the right speakers, positioned everything optimally etc. Small rooms will always have problems but they can be reduced to a comfortable level.

I'm in temp accommodation so I cannot fit anything permanent to the walls.
I will be moving soon but I've to work with this for now.
The treatment is ghetto, large matresses, rolls of rockwool etc.
I'm using HS80s and they are positioned reasonably well, bit too close to the walls but it is a bedroom sized room.
I've checked the room response using RoomEQ with an SPL meter and it's not too bad, but the lows are a bit all over the gaff.
Any attempts I've made at manual EQ corrections do not really work.
ARC and ERGO seem to run fairly complex algorithms (including phase) to develop their frequency adjustment EQ curves.
I was just thinking it might help get the likes of me to get to a usable state while I'm still in this house, €225 seems reasonable price to pay.

madtheory

Paolo_M wrote: »

ARC and ERGO seem to run fairly complex algorithms (including phase) to develop their frequency adjustment EQ curves.

Nope, it's just a normal eq (OK, it's narrow notches) with phase shifts as a side effect, the phase shifts are not part of the attempt to "correct". It's simply not possible to timeshift individual partials to correct for the room.

If you've calculated the Axial, Tangential and Oblique modes, you'll know that the main ones below about 250Hz are simply not fixable because of the room dimensions and how they interact. If it's all stud partitions that problem is mitigated a little, that's why the calculated modes will not be exactly the same as the measured ones.

From your description, it sounds like you need to make lots of RW3 panels, as dense and as numerous as possible. That will be a vast improvement on mattresses, and they're more portable. Cover them with batiques or something, so they're pretty. Would also cost less than €225.