Automatic Room Correction has won the Subwoofer Wars

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).

I will argue that these are not either or but instead of. One really interesting thing I’m reading here is how many are only looking at ARC as EQ.

ARC subwoofer integration is in addition to EQ. It sets up the crossover slopes and delays and this is where most have the biggest problems.  The point of the EQ choices not necessarily being great varies with ARC vendor.  Some make better choices than others.  JL Audio and Dirac are two of the one's I tend to like the results of, but all will properly set the crossover settings.

Optimum placement of a sub is always a good idea.

If you are robbing your subwoofer of power with DSP, then there must be frequency aberrations at the listening position that need to be fixed.

Kind of sort of.  Sorry to introduce nuance here.

Not all ARC is the same, not by a long shot.  Early ARC attempted a flat response and it sounds awful, so I can completely see why if you heard that you'd be of the opinion it steals power.  JL Audio and Dirac are examples of ARC that no longer make these fatal flaws. I encourage you to listen to them if you can.

Still, we don't have the luxury of doing everything right.  We can't all have 2 subs, room treatment, and a choice of anywhere in the room to place them.

In my mind, for each listener and their home there's some combination of this that will be ideal.  If you can't do all, do 2 of them.  If not, resort to EQ alone.

For instance, I can't have 2 subs, and I can't pick a location.  It's really 1 place or no sub.  What I can do is add room treatment and EQ.  Result is marvelous and much better than doing nothing.

Despite all of this nuance, ARC is still the best fastest way for a new sub user to configure the crossover, delays and levels.
Best,

Erik

I have ARC with my home theater system and also vastly more sophisticated and capable DEQX DSP with my two channel music system.  I have never been impressed with ARC, but the DEQX is a totally different matter. To begin with performing speaker correction before performing room correction is quite important to the final result.  I believe the total effect of the DEQX DSP is a big enough SQ improvement to outweigh any downside including an extra AD/DA for analog sources. Also it allows me to triamplify my my DIY fully horn loaded speakers for even more SQ improvement.