CARA modelling : the best for German speakers

Cara is a worth wild investment is you have some time to spend learning how to use it. It also helps if you are a little interested in acoustics since it makes the process as well as the result enjoyable.

It's a German program and that probably explains a lot. (hyper detailed, adjustable everything, but not easy or straight forward for first time users) Does well in finding locations that smooth the frequency response, and sometimes this is not where you would expect. Doesn't do anything for soundstage / image location unless by chance that matches with frequency location.

The best thing to do with it is learn the program and then do a bunch of runs with different limits on the location of speakers and listeners and increasing room complexity. Since it gives a score for each location it is very useful to model and compare configuations (long wall vs. short wall) that would involve lots furniture moving in real life. I also liked what it does with asymetrical placments for which the standard rules of thumb don't apply.

Cheers

It's a very useful tool, but someone once said a fool with a tool is still a fool. Please don't take that the wrong way, my point is that you still have to use some common sense when using this program--it's not an automated "here's what you need to do with your room" kind of program. I have been able to make disasterous room that measured well on the CARA--I was trying to do this by the way and see if I could trick the program. I was able to, but if you use some basic acoustical principles along with this program it will get you on your way to a better listening environment much faster than you could do by ears alone. However, in the end to get the best results you should do the modelling, then acoustical measurements, and then final tuning by ear. It's too complex to do all of this by ear--it would take most decades to accomplish these things by ear.

As to CARA's complexity. It's not so much the detail in measuring--although this is important (garbage in garbage out), it's really the way they deal with 3 D objects. For example a slopped ceiling means you have to build a 3D slopped object and hang it from a flat ceiling that is at the crest of the ceiling. Not the most intuitive way of doing things, but the CARA help file is EXCELLENT! And even something that is not intuitive is pretty easy to accomplish if you read the help section.