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ARC ROOM CORRECTION

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Jan Loosman

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ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostTue Jan 18, 2011 5:11 pm

My organ is located in the lower part of my split level living room. It is a long small room with a part of the ceiling lowered (2m). I have used noise damping foam at the lower part of the ceiling and behind my organ. Despite the isolation ,I still have to do a lot of revoicing of my sample sets to correct the roomnodes/resonances. When I make a recording, I record the organ with the voicing suited for my room. Playback in other rooms will, because of this voicing, give wrong results. The only voicing I want to perform is to suit my taste. On the internet I found some solutions to (digitally) correct your room or studio. 1e the KVR Ergo. This is an external sound card with room correction but it lacks 64bit drivers for the sound card. 2e JBL MSC1. This device has to be plugged in between the output of the sound card and the input of the amplifiers. The software works with windows 64bit. The disadvantage is the extra AD-DA conversion in the device to apply the filtering. 3e IK multimedia ARC. This is a 32bit plugin for DAW applications like Reaper, Sonar etc. The 32bit software to measure the room works perfectly in windows7 64bit and the 32bit plugin with the correction works very well in my Reaper 64 bit. There are many 64bit DAW’s that accept 32bit plugin’s! ARC comes with a omnidirectional microphone. Your sound card must accept balanced 48V microphone inputs. So I decided to take the plunge and I ordered the ARC VST plugin. I connected the mike and performed the measurements suggested in the manual. I was amazed to see the measured frequency curve of my room. It looked like the Swiss Alps!! Then I put the ARC plugin in the path behind the SIR2 reverb plugin (N.B. I always record the organ before entering the plugins and then apply reverb. during the mastering). I expected the sound to be about the same but with less nodes. The result blew me away!! The bass ranks tightened and the midrange opened and became much more transparent. I could hear details like the tracker noise and the overblowing oft the pipes much better even with full registrations. The only drawback is that the sound tends to be a bit more bright. You can apply the HF roll off filter(fixed!) supplied with ARC or use a equalizer VST like I did so I can follow my own taste. It feels that all my sample sets have had a major upgrade. I could not hear any increase in latency. So it is possible to correct room defects while playing your favorite organs. Does anyone has the same experience?

Jan Loosman
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mdyde

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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostTue Jan 18, 2011 5:31 pm

(Topic moved here.)
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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organtechnology

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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostTue Jan 18, 2011 11:26 pm

Jan,

Why not use the other Hauptwerk configuration, called MIDI in HW3, to record your favorite sample set, in its original voicing, using headphones? This takes the room completely out of the equation. I believe you can voice an organ one way in the (stand alone) configuration and another way in the (MIDI) implementation. You will need to reset the MIDI channels in MIDI to the console values. Then when you want to play outloud you use the Standalone and when you want to record use the MIDI configuration. They are really just two different setups for Hauptwerk and not tied to MIDI or standalone. I use MIDI with stand alone and keyboards with the MIDI.

Pax,

Thomas
Complete Hauptwerk™ systems using real wood consoles, PC Sound Engines, Dante Audio for Home or Church. info (at) organtechnology.com http://www.organtechnology.com
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Jan Loosman

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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostWed Jan 19, 2011 3:45 am

Thomas

You are right , I can do that but I often make recordings with organists of my church, and I only have one headphone.
Also the ARC corrected, unvoiced samplesets sound so much better then voiced samplesets(without ARC!). Taking the room out of the recordings really makes a big difference.

regards Jan
Last edited by Jan Loosman on Wed Jan 19, 2011 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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pwhodges

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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostWed Jan 19, 2011 5:23 am

In general, acoustic problems in rooms are caused by reflections and standing waves. These can only be properly corrected by suitably tailored acoustic treatment. In some rooms (not all) electronic correction can make a reasonable job of it at a single listening position - however, it is not unlikely that the sound at other positions is actually made worse.

This, of course, is fine for many applications; but it is as well to be aware of the limitations of the technique before they come back to bite you.

Paul
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Jan Loosman

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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostWed Jan 19, 2011 6:29 am

With ARC you can make measurments on the organ bench and also on the visitors bench and even combine these.
You can save different measurments in presets. Acoustic treatment of your room can remove standing waves but i am not shure if it can correct the frequency response of your room. Different revieuws of ARC on the internet, say that acousticaly treated studios still benefit from ARC treatment. The frequency respons of my room is now almost flat and the sound of my organ resembles now more the sound of listening through headphones. You might also consider the costs of damping material v.s. ARC vst and also consider WAF (wives acceptance factor) of acoustic foam v.s. a plugin.

Jan
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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostMon Jul 18, 2011 6:20 am

This week i became the proud owner of the Pioneer sc-lx 83 multichannel receiver . It is situated in the same room as my organ (see first post in this topic) but on the opposite wall. This receiver has a very sofisticated room correction built in (MACC )..it corrects the frequencie curve's, standing waves, reflection's and also the phase. Al the major brands like Denon, Yamaha, Pioneer etc have this sort of room corrections built in. I did the measurments and then started to listen. I listened to some multichannel SACD's with classical (organ), jazz an blues music. Switching between corrected and uncorrected modes i again realized how much better the corrected sound was then the uncorrected . The woollines of the midrange dissapeared and the bas was much more tight. You can pinpoint easily the position of the musicians.
These days we have this technologie to improve the sound by correcting discrepancies of your listening room.. You can easily lift the quality of your music and your Hauptwerk organs to a much higher level. Martin maybe you can put this sort off automated roomcorrection on the request list for future enhancements of Hauptwerk?

Regards Jan Loosman
Last edited by Jan Loosman on Mon Jul 18, 2011 10:05 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostMon Jul 18, 2011 6:33 am

Hello Jan,

Martin maybe you can put this sort off automated roomcorrection on the request list for futur enhancements of Hauptwerk?


I think that for now, rather than add a great deal of additional complexity and processing to Hauptwerk, we'd prefer to leave that kind of functionality to dedicated hardware, for those that want to use it. Sorry!
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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Jan Loosman

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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostMon Jul 18, 2011 10:12 am

Hello Martin

Thanks for the quick answer. I understand that it is verry complex and not a prime thing to implement in Hauptwerk.

Regards Jan
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Jan Loosman

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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostWed Aug 29, 2012 4:07 am

ARC version 2 is now available
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/arc/
I upgraded version 1 to 2
The new version is 64 bit and gives a more precise frequeny and phase correction of your room with improved clarity.
I am using ARC 2 for a few days now and the soundquality improved further compared to version 1.
A great program! if you have a acoustically difficult room and are unable to treat it with foam, bastraps etc.
See also the topic about rudimentary voicing.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9362&hilit=rudimentary&start=15

regards Jan
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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostSat Sep 01, 2012 1:55 am

Jan Loosman wrote:ARC version 2 is now available
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/arc/
I upgraded version 1 to 2
The new version is 64 bit and gives a more precise frequeny and phase correction of your room with improved clarity.
I am using ARC 2 for a few days now and the soundquality improved further compared to version 1.
A great program! if you have a acoustically difficult room and are unable to treat it with foam, bastraps etc.
See also the topic about rudimentary voicing.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9362&hilit=rudimentary&start=15

regards Jan


Here's the best correction program I know of. The default is FIR filters which have too much latency for HW, but you can also create IIR filters, which would work.

www.acourate.com
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Jan Loosman

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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostSat Sep 01, 2012 2:18 am

With Arc latency is no issue. I haven't experienced any latency increase and i use Arc always when playing Hauptwerk.

Regards Jan
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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostSat Sep 01, 2012 7:35 pm

Jan Loosman wrote:With Arc latency is no issue. I haven't experienced any latency increase and i use Arc always when playing Hauptwerk.

Regards Jan


Hi,

Then it uses IIR filters.

Windows 7 has room correction. It was designed by Jim "jj" Johnston, one of the most knowledgeable audio engineers these days. I haven't tried it, but it's likely to be quite good.

http://home.comcast.net/~retired_old_jj/
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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostTue Sep 04, 2012 7:02 am

Image
This is a print screen of ARC 2 in my sytem. The brown line is the measured frequency of my room and the white line the corrected as heard on the organ bench (straight as an arrow and much better then ARC 1.
ARC 2 is tailor made for DAW based Hauptwerk instalations.
Most of the Hauptwerk consoles are situated in living rooms so bas traps or acoustic foam are not an option.
Also if you have to perform a lot of voicing to correct roomnodes/resonances then you wil alter the sound of a samples set.
For example if you attenuate a subbas pipe with 6db then you also attenuate the harmonics of that pipe with 6db thus altering the sound of that pipe. If you have to perform a lot of (volume)-voicing then you wil alter the sound of the sampleset.
So correcting roomnodes is better performed with ARC or other equalizers outside Hauptwerk and not whitin the Hauptwerk voicing!
The advantages of ARC2 over ARC1 are 64 bit performance, more precise correction and better sound quality.
ARC 2 also has a built in tone controle so you can alter brightnes/bas to suit your taste.
ARC 2 gives also a perfect integration of subwoofers with main speakers.
My installation is a 6 channel Yamaha RX-V4600 receiver with KEF R300 speakers on the console and a MJ Acoustics reference 1 subwoofer. Look at the hump between 50 and 100 HZ i think it may be partly caused by frequency doubling of the sub and the frontspeakers. ARC 2 measures the hump and corrects it.
With ARC 2 not only home installations but i think also Sample set producers can benefit from straight frequency curves behind the mixing consoles.

Regards
Jan Loosman
Last edited by Jan Loosman on Mon Oct 01, 2012 6:36 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: ARC ROOM CORRECTION

PostTue Sep 04, 2012 7:34 am

This product doesn't have any provision for surround. Does the licence, and the software itself, allow you to get round this by running multiple copies simultaneously with different parameters for different sets of speakers?

Paul
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