Automatic Room Correction has won the Subwoofer Wars

I DO have reservations about using EQ to "correct" the ROOM north of the bass region. I can explain the distinction between the two if anyone is interested.

A distinction shared by Toole which I have to agree with.  Don't get crappy speakers and then try to fix them. 

So yes, the DRC systems really do help in setting up subs. (And as Erik said, this is independent of the EQ features.) Even more important is the measuring mic, its software, and the patience to learn how to use them.

And that's my point. 

I hope the OP will forgive me, but it seems this thread has already gone in bit of a different direction already.  It would seem to me, despite being somewhat contrary to audiophile common sense; that flush to wall/corner mounted drivers (preferably flat, concentric and with 1st order crossovers) coupled with room correction might be most advantageous.

Well, Roy Allison, Peter Snell and Klipsch certainly agreed with some of these elements in general (minus perhaps the room correction).

Though the post was more about adding a sub than bass in general, your point is well taken.

I’m seeing the title of this thread as clickbait.

Sir, do you not understand my role here?? :-)

It was meant to be a discussion, in earnest, about how easy ARC systems have made subwoofer integration and, my point, that the advantages for the average audiophile outweigh the negatives.

Look at how easy and how little complaints there are in Audiogon. I think that overall, ARC has proven itself quite useful and more of us should look at them as a good solution.

If anything, this thread was prompted by another I started about how hotly debated subwoofer solutions, and bass in general are.  ARC is the great simplifier.


Best,

Erik

TBC:  "By hand" I meant with measurement tools and adjusting ourselves instead of letting an automated system do it.

I certainly don't think anyone can configure a sub properly without measurement devices and experience.

We got here by Duke pointing out that consumer room correction, at least currently, (to our knowledge) does not take into account reflected/directly energy when doing level balancing, and hence while it can correct for phase/amplitude, it lacks a degree of freedom in setup.

Ahhh.  Well, Toole dislikes them, but I think that over the last decade it's gotten better. 

Personally, I do all my own EQ.  However!!!! Teaching a noob is a lot of work, and a lot of debate and a lot of different answers. 

ARC I think, over the last few years, has gotten better, and yields better than average audiophile results.

Could Duke or myself do better by hand?  Absolutely.

"Windowing" the impulse response to look at only the initial part shows us the frequency response of the direct sound with little or no contribution from the room.

Yes, but this windowing feature also limits the lower boundary of the FFT. The smaller the time window, the higher the minimum frequency of the FFT, and as pointed out, get low enough and the room is unavoidable.

But the entire premise of ARC is to actually correct for room behavior, so not sure how we got here. We want / need the room in measurements for ARC to work.

Quasi-anechoic measurements ( i.e. simulating a speaker without a room ) is the opposite of what we are looking for here.

Best,

E

The premise/purpose of the Fourier transform is simple: Any recorded sound can be broken up into discrete sinusoidal components. For instance, a square wave, no matter how perfectly square, can be decomposed into odd-order harmonic sine waves, despite the original square wave looking anything but sinusoidal.

It is not magical however, and the results will vary based on the portion of the recording analyzed.

FFT is also not a substitute for all digital signal analysis. You don’t need FFT to tell you what a visual inspection of an impulse response will, such as looking for reflections and time aligning speakers. Nor do you need FFT to create an algorithm to automatically set speaker delays.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform


Where the Fast Fourier Transform really transformed acoustics was in the nearly infinite resolution. We went from band limited (octave, 1/3 octave, etc) measurements to resolution bounded only by the sample length on the low end and the Nyquist frequency on the top. Outstanding.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency


And of course, let’s not forget the waterfall plots.

Best,

E

If you are robbing your subwoofer of power with DSP, then there must be frequency aberrations at the listening position that need to be fixed.

Kind of sort of.  Sorry to introduce nuance here.

Not all ARC is the same, not by a long shot.  Early ARC attempted a flat response and it sounds awful, so I can completely see why if you heard that you'd be of the opinion it steals power.  JL Audio and Dirac are examples of ARC that no longer make these fatal flaws. I encourage you to listen to them if you can.

Still, we don't have the luxury of doing everything right.  We can't all have 2 subs, room treatment, and a choice of anywhere in the room to place them.

In my mind, for each listener and their home there's some combination of this that will be ideal.  If you can't do all, do 2 of them.  If not, resort to EQ alone.

For instance, I can't have 2 subs, and I can't pick a location.  It's really 1 place or no sub.  What I can do is add room treatment and EQ.  Result is marvelous and much better than doing nothing.

Despite all of this nuance, ARC is still the best fastest way for a new sub user to configure the crossover, delays and levels.
Best,

Erik

not for me. it is a band aid at best and robs your subwoofer of power at worst.
It is no substitute for optimized subwoofer placement (within reason).

I will argue that these are not either or but instead of. One really interesting thing I’m reading here is how many are only looking at ARC as EQ.

ARC subwoofer integration is in addition to EQ. It sets up the crossover slopes and delays and this is where most have the biggest problems.  The point of the EQ choices not necessarily being great varies with ARC vendor.  Some make better choices than others.  JL Audio and Dirac are two of the one's I tend to like the results of, but all will properly set the crossover settings.

Optimum placement of a sub is always a good idea.

I also should have said that how the ARC (generic) treats the rest of the bands is not what I mean to bring up, and this behavior is a lot more varied and subjective.

It is in the subwoofer integration though that almost all ARC systems are better and easier than your average music-phile with nice speakers.

TBC: By ARC I mean the acronym generically, not a particular brand. There are at least 4 brands of automatic room correct systems which include subwoofer integration.

Adjusting the arrival time and levels of a sub to match the main speakers is trivial for these systems to do but in addition to that what they do far far better than your average audiophile is the crossover slope /phase matching and bass EQ. It is that most audiphiles have no idea what this is, that it matters, that they’ll have to learn and adjust for it that makes a new sub hit or miss.

This just does not happen with most modern ARC (generic) systems.