Vandersteens on active speakers and room correction

I don't know who Johnny Rutan is, but I assume he's experienced at doing this sort of thing, and that kind of proves my point, that the biggest benefit of ARC systems isn't the EQ so much as the sub configuration. It's not easy. I wrote about those difficulties here:


https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-to-not-buy-subwoofer.html


I personally have avoided EQ anywhere but in the subwoofer until recently. I don't use ARC with Roon, just some tailored PEQ settings I wrote about here:


https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-snr-1-room-response-and-roon.html


Tune your system for your own preferences, but having massive peaks and nulls in the bass is to me far worse than any sound quality issues I've noticed with Roon, which so far I haven't.  Of course, sub placement, room treatments all matter, as does the basic phase, delay, level settings.

As for the rest of ARC, I am with Floyd Toole in the sense that I like my speaker sound, I don't want an ARC system to attempt to deliver a perfect presentation and I think some systems work much better than others. Consumers too often believe that because it's computers and math the results must all be the same, which is far from true.  Humans pick the algorithms and targets and parameters of importance, they just automated quite personal tastes.  Whether they match yours is another story.


Best,

E

I have to say that when it comes to convenience, automatic room correction is super hard to beat, especially in configuring a subwoofer.

The M5 amps I heard sounded really really good. I was quite shocked a speaker maker could also make a great amp.  Wish they sounded that good for $2k instead though. :)

I'm not a Vandersteen fanboy per se, but last time I was at a show near LA, the Vandersteen's were the best sound of the show.  In particular, they sounded really good inside a cramped hotel room, a feat few others could accomplish and I chalk this up to exactly this feature, being able to tailor the bass output.

Of course, they were driven by top notch electronics, but I swear it was practically the only room in which I could hear the electronics at all. Everything else was noise.

Best,

E