Comments for Anthem Room Correction (ARC) for the Anthem D1 and D2 SSP at http://www.hometheaterhifi.com , comment 1 to 15 out of 15 comments http://www.hometheaterhifi.com Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:29:55 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-1010 The target can be tweaked to the point where the calculated response is not on line with the target response (i.e., you tweaked too much)! As an example, the ARC software calculated my front mains to have a crossover of 45, the center to be 115, and the surrounds to be 100. This surprised me, as I have the excellent Paradigm Studio Reference v4 speakers, and the large center channel. However, I have it on top of the TV and up in the air, so this might make sense. The sub crossover was calculated to be 120. I was concerned that this might allow a little too much directional info into the sub, so I manually changed the targets to be 80 for each speaker. The ARC software re-calculated the response curves, and they still fell almost perfectly on line with the targets. However, dropping the targets more than 80 for the center and surrounds caused the curves to fall too much away from the targets. So, there is some room to play with the targets. According to Anthem, as long as the calculated curves fall nearly right on the target curves, you should be okay with your manual adjustment of the targets. The software is truly amazing, as is the sound from my D1 and Paradigm speakers. Hope this answers some additional questions! - Tim Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:40:42 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-969 I have been a happy user of the now non existing TAG McLaren Room correction for years. Just recently bought a Onkyo 885P. I have also bought the Audyssey Pro calibration equipment. I can only echo the view of all posters before me. Audyssey pro took the life out of music, the high frequency roll off was too severe and it could not be turned off. None should mess with the frequency range above 5k. I hope ARC allows more manual tweaks, how much can one tweak the target curve? - Marton Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:12:45 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-874 I find it interesting that everyone has to justify their purchases. I am an Anthem dealer (as well as Integra and NewCastle)and recently used ARC for my room. It is such a significant improvement to the overall sound of the (of an already awesome pre-pro) system that I am now able to sell more Anthem equipment because people can hear the difference in a dramatic way. ARC offers a "real world" solution to a problem every one of us has to deal with. For all of you Audyssey enthusiasts, find a local Anthem dealer and go hear the difference for yourselves. You'll will want to get a second job so you can buy a D2 or AVM-50 - Schindo Sun, 13 Jul 2008 13:20:29 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-817 I have been using Audyssey MultEQ XT in my Integra DTC 9.8 for about 6 months. As in your Anthem review, I am absolutely in awe of what Audyssey can do to what was already a fine sounding room. I would never again have a system without room compensation. For slightly more than the price of the Anthem upgrade, I am shortly going to be doing an Audyssey Pro upgrade to the Integra to tweak it even further. It is difficult to do a direct comparison between the sound of built-in Audyssey and the built-in Anthem room compensation systems, because they are inseparable from the pre/pros in which they reside. So, we have to try to compare their technologies. The Anthem system has a very fine pedigree involving Floyd Toole and the Canadian research labs. Audyssey does, too, with Tom Holman and his team who have, like Toole, done extensive research into what sounds good. The Audyssey guys claim to have manually treated and corrected thousands of rooms before they invented Audyssey to automate much of the process. Both Anthem and Audyssey have come up with a target response curve that is based on research into listener preferences. I wonder if and how the curves differ. Also, Audyssey goes to great lengths to note that their system works in the time domain as well as the frequency domain. I have not seen a similar claim by Anthem. Audyssey does attenuation only, removing the peaks. Anthem does boost or attenuation, as necessary. I also note that Anthem implements IIR filters, while Audyssey uses FIR filters in their DSP. How significant this is is anyone's guess. You make a semantic distinction between room correction and room compensation. Actually, both systems are even more than that. I agree that the room is overwhelmingly the most important element in the sound of our systems, and it has been, except for occasional lip service, all but totally ignored my most reviewers until recently. Why, because there was not much anybody short of an acoustician could do about the room, other than throwing in traps, diffusers, absorbers, etc. trial and error. But, in operation, either Audyssey or Anthem are actually compensating for the room, the speakers, the speaker cables, the amps, the interconnects, and the analog output stages of the pre/pros themselves. Basically, this is the entire signal path from the room compensation chips inside the pre/pros to the microphone and back to the pre/pro. The actual compensation is for the net result of all of these, because that is what the calibration microphone hears. My guess is that many, but not all, the sonic signatures of components like amps, cables and even speakers that high end reviewers like to wax rhapsodic about are considerably reduced by a system that has electronic room compensation, such as these two fine systems. I considered the Anthem D2 myself. It is widely respected, but I got the Integra because the Anthem did not support HDMI 1.3a. Have they done this yet? If so, they have a real killer sounding pre/pro. If not, they've still got work to do. - C. Weber Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:05:01 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-778 I had a Denon with Audessy MultEQ and I will admit that I preferred the option off as described by the 1st poster BUT I then bought the stand alone Audyssey Pro Sound EQ which is in a different category! Now with the Pro Sound Eq I can't live without it and it does an excellent job on radio, dvds, cds and regular tv! The on/off red putton shows you just how good it sounds with it on. I also own the Anthem D2 but have not had the chance yet to buy the ARC and do an A/B comparrison. I do plan to buy the ARC just out of curiousity and give it a try. Regardless of which one is better and even if the Audyssey Pro Sound EQ is better at about 4 times the cost, its nice to see Anthem continue to add on to an already outstanding product (D2). At the price that the ARC sells for, all D2 owners that don't already have the Audyssey Pro Sound EQ or any other similar product really should get the ARC to see what they are missing! IMO its money well spent if you consider sound quality an important aspect to your music/HT experience! - P. Dufour Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:16:45 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-771 The really cool thing about ARC1 is the ability to see(in high resolution) the response of my speakers in relation to the room. Actually , moving the front mains by 1 foot forward increased the response at 500 hertz by 5dB(ARC1 corrected this). I am happy to see that my speakers (ELAC FS600 series) have very good response in real world conditions. ARC1 still made my system MUCH BETTER though. - Alvin Ong (Philippines) Tue, 27 May 2008 17:40:19 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-768 I have a D2 and have just installed the ARC software. After a few minor teething problems (it turns out the height of the microphone, as described by Brian, is very important) have achieved some very good results. I have in the past also used the TACT system and so far my comments are that they both appear to work to make a speaker work better in the room. The big difference that I note is that in the same room that the TACT was used in, I am getting (maybe too much) mid bass ( which may be due to the room gain issue). In general, I think that this is at least equal to the TACT and in some important musical ways - maybe a better system. - psvan Sun, 25 May 2008 22:45:40 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-764 I would be interested in a comparison with the Lexicon MC-12EQ or Meridan 861 "room correction" facilities. It would be wonderful if somehow all the high-end room correction systems could be compared, but I believe that at least some others at Secrets are familiar with the Lexicon. Most of the other respected room correction systems are more (or significantly more) expensive than the Anthem system. It would be interesting to know their comparitive strengths and weaknesses. - Richard Thu, 22 May 2008 22:59:26 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-760 Reading all the technical info here their product sounds very similar to the Audessy research that came out of USC. Its exciting to see this concept starting to be realized and accepted in the commercial and consumer world. I was pretty amazed at what Audessy did to my system. Evertyhing is clearer, the image is wider and more specific. I dont find the air has been removed as the first poster said.... I think you are doing your receivers a disservice by not comparing to the Audessy MultEX Pro setup with a calibrate mic or even the lower grade stuff. Otherise I enjoyed the review... Cheers, Sean - Sean in NC Tue, 20 May 2008 14:36:13 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-759 Well, in terms of the most ubiquitous flavor of Audyssey, the embedded MultEQ XT, in my opinion it is not in the same league as ARC. I’ve found MultEQ XT manifests a subtle change in the sound, mainly smoothing out the bass in just about every scenario I’ve heard it in, but little else of particular note. ARC on the other hand, as I said in the review, made a PROFOUND difference, not only in bass (improved even over MultiEQ XT), but more dramatically in the vocal range where Audyssey seemed to do little. HOWEVER… proponents of Audyssey will point out that their stand alone EQ/MultiEQ Pro PC software would be a more appropriate comparison, and with that I would agree (we are still working on getting one for review). Indeed MultEQ Pro, as compared to the embedded MultEQ XT, offers much more sophisticated setup, higher precision filtering, includes a much better mic, etc, but for what its worth, anecdotally speaking, I would think that the “core values” would be consistent, so I would expect the results to be better, but not “radically different” from XT. - Brian Tue, 20 May 2008 11:18:48 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-752 The most well known and well recognized as the current best is the Audyssey correction system. A comparison - at least in overall impression - would most definitely be valuable to all your Secrets readers. - Aficionado Fri, 16 May 2008 11:57:31 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-751 One of the reasons many great Canadian speaker companies(Paradigm, Axiom, PSB, Mirage etc.) got their start, was through the use of the the NRC and its anechoic chamber. Although these companies now have their own facilities, originally the whole purpose of this was to produce speakers that were as transparent and flat as possible. I find it kind of ironic that the only people who are not particularly enamoured with these so-called "room correction" programs are many in the hierarchy of the speaker companies themselves. If the purpose for speaker design was to produce as accurate and natural sound as possible, wouldn't it be much more effective dealing with the room acoustics themselves than tampering with the sound that disrupts the original intent of the speaker design itself? - Ron Fri, 16 May 2008 07:05:54 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-750 I've been using Tact RCS 2.0 since 1996 (later upgraded to 2.0S) and Lyngdorf TDAI2200 (the divorced 1/2 Tact) last year, and the effects are nothing short of spectacular - I can pin-point a specific instrument/vocal in an exceptionally 3D soundstage not possible w/o room correction. I also had a brief encounter with Tact TCSII and the surround is more coherent than anything I heard. I would be interested in knowing how ARC compares to either. - Alex Thu, 15 May 2008 22:41:43 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-749 How does the ARC compare to the outboard Audyssey Sound Equalizer? I have a Parasound C-2 and was considering the purchase of the Audyssey Sound Equalizer but your article makes the Anthem D-2 with ARC a tempting upgrade. - Farrell Tyson Thu, 15 May 2008 17:25:58 +0100 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/surround-sound-processors/343-a-secrets-ssp-review.html#comment-747 I have a pre/pro with Audessy MultEQ "Room Correction" and I have found the exact opposite to be true. Enabling Audessy seems to be throwing a blanket on the sound, disabling improves it. Mostly, I think this is due to the high-frequency range of the audio spectrum. In the low frequencies, the Audessy is great, bass is much cleaner, it removes the flabby distortion. Also Audessy improves image specificity, I can locate instruments in the sound stage much more precisely. But, it seems to remove all "air" from the sound, and muffle things. It sounds like ARC fixes this, by allowing the user to eliminate processing above 5kHz for example. Is there any chance Audessy could learn from this and release an improved version of their software, ideally through firmware upgrade, etc, to allow a similar limiting of the range of correction? - Jeremy Thu, 15 May 2008 14:17:11 +0100