Review: IK Multimedia ARC System (Mac/Win)

Oct 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Mike Levine

           
 

A SOFTWARE-BASED SYSTEM TO CORRECT YOUR STUDIO'S ACOUSTICS

Although I was surprised that ARC wasn't immediately improving my mixes, my contact at IK wasn't. He said that my ears were accustomed to my room's normal acoustics, and that it would take a while for me to get used to ARC's corrected sound.

Magic Bullet?

Overall, my opinion of the ARC System is mixed. I was impressed with its ability to apparently clean up the sound in a room, but I was disappointed when that didn't translate into substantial mix improvement. To be fair, there are other factors that affect how a mix turns out (mixing skill, ear fatigue, lack of objectivity, and so on), which certainly could have come into play. Still, I mixed close to ten full-length songs with ARC, over a number of weeks, and never saw significant changes in how my mixes translated.

A key question you have to ask yourself is: would you rather put the money you'd spend on the ARC System toward traditional acoustic treatment? If you're on a relatively tight budget and have a really bad-sounding room, ARC might be a cost-effective way to quickly improve the sound in your studio. But if you can afford physical acoustic treatment, I still think that's the best way to go.

Mike Levine is EM's executive editor and senior media producer and the host of the twice-monthly Podcast “EM Cast” (emusician.com/podcasts).

PRODUCT SUMMARY

room correction system
$599.99

PROS: Can substantially improve playback in an untreated room. Good documentation. Target Curves allow further sound tailoring. Measurement process easy to complete. Allows for wide sweet spot.

CONS: Must turn off ARC processing before bouncing on some systems. Playing back bounced mix through ARC processing requires extra steps. Must switch EQ curves when switching monitors.

IK Multimedia
ikmultimedia.com