Automatic Room Correction has won the Subwoofer Wars


Just thought of something while perusing the chats, and finding yet another "help me, I bought a subwoofer and it sounds bad" threads. 

You know what we rarely if ever see?  "Help me, I used ARC to set up my subwoofer and it sounds bad."

I think this is a strong testament to how effective these systems are to integrating a sub into an existing system, and why I'm no longer trying to help others improve as much as pointing them towards ARC as better options.

While ARC does a lot more than subwoofer integration, I think we have to admit that for most it's pretty much been a panacea.
erik_squires
Dannad wrote: " Does ARC do this? I don’t know, but it is certainly possible. "

I would be surprised if automated room correction algorithms are that sophisticated. But perhaps they are... I must admit that my knowledge of the topic is apparently outdated.

" If we are talking low bass, then the latency can be minimal."

I recall seeing where latency on the order of 16 or 18 milliseconds was a bragging point for a subwoofer-specific DSP system. That corresponds a one wavelength delay at ballpark 60 Hz, relative to the mains (and more than one wavelength north of 60 Hz). Maybe that 16 milliseconds figure was on the high side relative to what’s being done today?

"you either have timing information that is created by two speakers... On the other hand, a lot of spatial cues are volume based... "

My understanding is that localization cues (sound image locations including soundstage width) are primarily conveyed by the first-arrival sound, influenced somewhat by early lateral reflections. And that good ambience (soundstage depth, envelopment, spaciousness, immersion, "you are there") without degradation of clarity calls for a very clean first-arrival sound, followed my minimal early reflections, which in turn are followed by a fair amount of relatively late spectrally-correct reflections, which hopefully then decay neither too quickly nor too slowly fairly uniformly across the spectrum.  (These aren't the only things that matter, but are among them.)  

Duke
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.
I’ve been using a TacT RCS 2.2Xaaa, in my system, since the 90’s.    Not much has changed, since then.     FFT is called that, because it is and can discern between direct and reflected sounds.      Read the ’How REW makes it’s measurements’ section (page 5), here:   https://www.roomeqwizard.com/REWhelp.pdf        Especially, the fifth paragraph, of that treatise
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.
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).