Anthem ARC Room EQ Interview with Dr. Peter Schuck and Nick Platsis

A

admin

Audioholics Robot
Staff member
Continuing our investigation of the various room correction (aka Room EQ) products on the market, we had a chat with Anthem's Nick Platsis and Dr. Peter Schuck who were kind enough to answer our questions. Anthem's Room Correction or ARC, is found exclusively in Anthem's MRX receivers and their AVM and D2 series Preamp processors. How does ARC work? Read the interview to find out.



Read the Anthem ARC Room EQ Interview with Dr. Peter Schuck and Nick Platsis

Are you a fellow Anthem user? Please share your ARC experiences.
 
F

Funboy

Audioholic Intern
Fantastic article series! Will Anthem work for other kinds of speakers - like mirage "omnipolar" or dipole / electrostatic speakers? Or because of the different dispersion pattern, is it better to leave it off for non-conventional speakers?

On a side note not to do with ARC itself, the Anthem dolby leveler is just way to aggressive, even when set to the lowest setting before off on the Anthem mrx-300. The audyssey dynamic volume works better in my opinion - both in different rooms so not a direct comparison unfortunately. If anthem / arc could address that and multiple subs (like level and phase matching before applying global eq) automatically, it would be close to perfection.

Finally, a suggestion. I use small bookshelves and large subwoofers and as said in the article: "small speakers are to be played loudly, you may want to set a higher frequency to help prevent the woofer from reaching its excursion limit." I think adding a THD+N number to the live measure with varying volume for us users so we could pick a better crossover point would be of great value.
 
chriscmore

chriscmore

Junior Audioholic
How does the Anthem correct for multiple subwoofers, of different models, in different locations around the room? It appears to simply average their different responses and average a correction?

Cheers,
Chris
 
TheoN

TheoN

Audioholics Contributing Writer
Dear Chris and Funnyboy,

We'll be looking to get some additional, follow-up info on ARC based on your specific questions. With regards to multiple subs—and let's assume the same brand and model—yes Anthem's ARC will apply it to the average. We tackled some of what you're asking in my Yamaha RX-V577 receiver review here. We also have an in-depth article on setting up multiple subwoofers here. Applying EQ to the combined output is the best and technically correct method of correcting bass response in a multi-subwoofer setup.
 
TheoN

TheoN

Audioholics Contributing Writer
Follow-up questions

Chris and Funnyboy, we regrouped with Nick and the team at Anthem. They were kind enough to answer some of the follow-up questions that were posed in the forums and via email. A big thanks to Nick and Dr. Schuck for answering our questions.
 
F

Funboy

Audioholic Intern
Thanks for the follow up! I was hesitant to use ARC with the electrostats and mirage "omnipolar" mixed system I have, but now I will get to it.
 
Joe B

Joe B

Audioholic Chief
I ran the ARC software when I first unboxed my Anthem MRX 520 receiver, Paradigm Prestige 75F's, and Paradigm center, surround, and subwoofer (from their Classic Collection). I put 250 hours on the system and decided to re-run the ARC software to see if there were differences. There were new values, most significantly for the subwoofer, so I uploaded the data, and I'm glad I did. When playing back 2 channel material (the 75F's and the subwoofer being active) the overall presentation of the bass in the music is vastly improved. This improvement in the low end presentation is also evident when listening to movies in 5.1 mode. In my opinion, re-running the ARC software after giving the system time to break in is a must. The level of improvement in the sound of the system really blew me away.
 

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