IK Multimedia’s monitor correction technology is now available in a standalone hardware box.
IK Multimedia’s ARC was one of the first affordable speaker correction products. The principle is simple: sine sweeps are played back through your monitors, and into a measurement mic placed at or near the listening position. An EQ curve can then be calculated to compensate for deficiencies in the response of the loudspeakers and, more importantly, the room.
In the first few iterations of ARC, the corrective EQ curve was applied in a software plug‑in. This approach has many advantages: it’s cheap to implement, easy to change on the fly, and there’s no hard limit on the complexity of the curve that can be applied. It also has some obvious down sides, such as speaker correction being available only in your DAW and not to other programs, and the potential risk for mixes to be bounced through the plug‑in.
But what’s the alternative? Well, the correction could be done in a standalone, systemwide app, as is possible with Sonarworks’ SoundID Reference, for example. Alternatively, it could be implemented in a dedicated piece of hardware that sits between your interface and your speakers; or it could be integrated into the speakers themselves.
IK branched out onto the last of these paths late in 2022 with their iLoud Precision MTM speakers, which have ARC built in. IK’s existing measurement mic and software tools are used to calculate a correction curve, but this can be uploaded into the speakers’ own DSP to fix the sound at source. They’ve now followed this up with a standalone hardware processor called the ARC Studio. Simultaneously, the ARC software itself has been updated to version 4.
ARC Story
Apart from the MTM implementation, ARC is now available in three progressively more costly variants. You can still buy the software alone, for use with a third‑party measurement mic. You can buy the ARC software with IK’s own MEMS measurement mic, as before. Or you can opt for the full package with MEMS mic and ARC Studio hardware, which was supplied for review. The ARC software is compatible with macOS and Windows, and is authorised using a serial number.
The MEMS mic looks much like any other measurement mic, except that it is pointed forwards in use rather than upwards. It has a standard XLR connector and needs to be used with a conventional mic preamp, which is not supplied. The ARC Studio box, meanwhile, has the same rectangular form factor as a typical small desktop USB audio interface; and, indeed, it has a USB Type‑C port on it. I was surprised and a little disappointed to find, however, that it can’t be bus powered: you’ll need to use it with the supplied wall‑wart PSU at all times. The rear panel also sports analogue input and output pairs on XLRs, and although the internal processing is digital, there’s no digital audio I/O. Nor is there any provision for bass management, speaker switching or monitor control. The front panel of the ARC Studio is simplicity itself, with LEDs indicating power and signal present/clipping, and a single button to toggle correction on and off.
The ARC Studio hardware is a no‑frills box with analogue XLR ins and outs, a USB socket for communication with the ARC software, and a DC power input.
Like many manufacturers with a large software product portfolio, IK Multimedia have developed their own ‘hub’ app for downloading, installing and authorising products. I had some trouble persuading this IK Product Manager program to download the ARC software, but once I’d managed to get hold of the installer, everything was plain sailing. It actually installs two separate programs: ARC 4 Analysis, which carries out the room and speaker measurements and generates appropriate correction curves, and ARC 4 itself, which controls the ARC Studio box. The ARC plug‑in is also installed, and could be useful for correcting secondary monitors even when you have the ARC Studio on your main pair.
Reading The Room
The ARC 4 Analysis app holds your hand pretty tightly through the process of measuring your room. IK’s publicity material says that version 4 features an “all‑new algorithm”, and in order to get the best from this, it’s now recommended that you measure at 21 separate points spread across three different height layers around the listening position. This isn’t as arduous as it sounds, though, because absolute precision in mic placement isn’t crucial, and there is the option to use fewer points if you’re in a hurry. Once the process is finished, you can name and save the resulting curve ready to be loaded into ARC 4 and the ARC Studio.
The standalone functionality of the ARC Studio unit itself is as basic as its I/O. In essence, it can store one ARC 4 setting, which is retained even when your computer is switched off or the USB cable disconnected. In normal use, though, you may want to retain the USB link and keep the ARC 4 software running in the background, as it’s needed to access most ARC Studio features.
Once you open up ARC 4, the first thing to do is to load in the profile that ARC 4 Analysis has created. This can be edited and adjusted in various ways, some more ill‑advised than others. ARC 4 Analysis measures the left and right speakers separately and creates separate curves, but these can be combined into a single averaged correction curve, which is probably desirable unless you’re working in a very unbalanced room. One very useful facility is that you can use ‘window blinds’ to exclude either end of the frequency spectrum from the correction. This will, for example, stop ARC 4 attempting to apply huge bass boosts to small monitors that aren’t capable of putting anything useful out at 40Hz. It’s now possible to switch between natural and linear‑phase equalisation. A nice touch is that you can choose from a library of images of different monitor types to remind you that a particular profile is associated with a particular set of speakers.
ARC 4 offers numerous emulations of monitors and consumer playback systems.Different people have different ideas about what constitutes the ideal monitoring balance, and whatever your own preferences, ARC 4 probably has you covered in its Target pop‑up. As well as the obvious Flat setting, this allows you to impose bright or warm tilt EQs, a Dolby Atmos Target curve and more. You can also store and load your own custom curves here.
A second pop‑up provides access to another ARC feature: speaker emulation. The idea is that, having painstakingly corrected the flaws of your own speakers and room, you can then introduce those of another system, such as the ubiquitous Yamaha NS10 or a consumer device like a TV or smartphone. It would be wishful thinking to expect too much from this, and it’ll never make a cheap pair of monitors sound like a £100k mastering rig, but it can certainly be useful for checking mix translation.
Changes made in ARC 4 are heard immediately, but if you want to update the single setting that’s stored in the ARC Studio for standalone use, you’ll need to hit the Store button. This initialises a sync process that takes a few seconds.
Battle Of The Acronyms
My current main monitors, which I like very much, are Genelec 8330A actives paired with the matching 7350A subwoofer. These belong to Genelec’s Smart Active Monitors range, meaning that room correction curves can be measured and written to the speakers themselves using the GLM Speaker Management Kit and GLM software. I was interested to see how closely ARC 4 replicated the curves that GLM came up with — and despite the fact that GLM only expects you to measure at a single point rather than 21 separate points, the answer was ‘almost exactly’. There were only two areas of difference, both down to the ways in which the two systems operate rather than to measurement error. First, because the SAM system is aware of and can talk directly to all the speakers in a setup, it is able to directly handle bass management and also to phase‑align the subwoofer with the satellites. This is not possible with ARC Studio, which has only left and right stereo outputs, not that the difference was very obvious in my room.
Second, in typically cautious Genelec style, GLM and the SAM system applies only subtractive EQ, and will not boost where there’s a dip in the room response. There are sound reasons for this — boosting eats into headroom, and if you have a null due to a room mode, no amount of boosting will fix it — but, equally, there are times when being able to add a couple of dB somewhere in the spectrum can be beneficial. The curves that ARC Analysis came up with did feature small (as in 1 or 2 dB) boosts in the midrange, and consequently sounded a touch more assertive than the GLM correction. Neither was really better, and I quickly adapted to whichever I happened to be using at the time. The extra stages of A‑D and D‑A conversion introduced by adding the ARC Studio into the setup were not noticeable to my ears.
From analysing your room to choosing virtual monitors and custom responses, it’s all completely intuitive and I never once felt the need to search for a manual.
Not having used previous versions of the ARC software, I can’t say how much better the new algorithm is, but I can report that the user experience is very slick. From analysing your room to choosing virtual monitors and custom responses, it’s all completely intuitive and I never once felt the need to search for a manual. As for the ARC Studio hardware, it’s designed as a no‑frills plug‑and‑play box and it does exactly what it needs to, albeit with the millstone of that wall‑wart PSU. It’s by far the most affordable standalone hardware monitor correction system that I know of, and at the price it would be churlish to expect ribbons and bows. But at the same time, I do think there’d be demand for a more upmarket version with features like digital I/O, monitor control, bass management, a headphone amp and the ability to store and recall separate profiles for two sets of speakers. In fact, such is the pace of development at IK that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that something like that was already in the works. In the meantime, ARC Studio 4 does exactly what it’s intended to, combining the independent, set‑and‑forget nature of a standalone hardware box with the flexibility of software. Truly, the best of both worlds.
Alternatives
The obvious rival for ARC is Sonarworks’ SoundID Reference. This can operate as a plug‑in and as a systemwide app, and can also interact directly with some speakers and audio interfaces, but there’s no current equivalent to the ARC Studio box. Other hardware solutions are typically much more expensive, much less user‑friendly, or both...
Pros
- Slick, easy‑to‑follow analysis procedure.
- Offers both the flexibility of software and the convenience of hardware.
- Much more affordable than other hardware options.
Cons
- ARC Studio unit can’t be bus‑powered and has no digital I/O.
Summary
The ARC Studio package combines a simple but effective hardware unit with powerful, intuitive software tools. If your monitors don’t already have room analysis and correction features, it has the potential to make a big difference.
Information
ARC Studio £309.99; ARC 4 software and mic £205.99; ARC 4 software only £154.99. Prices include VAT.
ARC Studio $299.99; ARC 4 software and mic $199.99; ARC 4 software only $149.99.
When you purchase via links on our site, SOS may earn an affiliate commission. More info...
When you purchase via links on our site, SOS may earn an affiliate commission. More info...
