room-correction
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Dirac claims its software can improve the sound of any headphones
The best headphones aren't perfect. In fact, I doubt that any company will ever make a set that are entirely without flaws. That's not because one of them does anything wrong per se, but mostly due to the fact that everyone's taste is different. Even when you find a set you really like, you probably wish there was a little more bass or a little less treble or you had the ability to manually tweak the EQ in a way that made a noticeable difference. Companies like Sony, Jabra, Sennbeiser and many more have apps that allow you to make adjustments, but even then, if you're like me, you still want more.
IMAX taps Audyssey MultEQ for room-correction
Even dedicated theaters like those IMAX uses (well, at least some of them are dedicated) need a little help when it comes to achieving the best sound. Take a look across the consumer AV receiver landscape and you'll see that various flavors of Audyssey's MultEQ technology is pretty popular for measuring and correcting the artifacts that arise in real-world rooms. Small wonder then, that MultEQ (no doubt a pro variant) has been selected by IMAX to help iron out problems with in-theater sound. Who knows, maybe we were distracted by the armrest-gripping visuals, but we've never had a complaint about IMAX sound. Still, we'll take any improvements we can get once the technicians start running through IMAX theaters with mics and test tones in 2010.
Room correction finally trickles down the Anthem lineup
Until now, if you were a "separates-only" sort of person with a yen for Anthem gear, the only way to get room correction for your audio was to spring for a Statement D1 or D2 preamp-processor. And wouldn't you know, the "Statement" name doesn't come with a budget price. But now the Anthem Room Correction (ARC) feature has come downstream to the AVM 40 and D50 preamp-processors. Granted, with Anthem gear "downstream" is a relative term, but we've to figure that if you're going the separates route then pricing isn't the biggest concern for you. One thing we do like seeing is that this new functionality is being made available to all AVM 40 and 50 owners as a retrofit. Now when was the last time your "future-proof" receiver got an upgrade like that?
Sound and Vision takes a shine to Anthem's Room Correction
The lucky folks at Sound and Vision Magazine put Anthem's ARC-1 Room Correction System to test and liked it pretty well. It was evaluated in combination with the top o' the line Statement D2 processor, so the bar set by the associated gear was pretty high. Setup of the $399 add-on -- gratis if you've got a D2 -- sounds pretty straightforward: connect a PC running the ARC-1 software to the Anthem processor via RS-232 and use the included mic to gather some tone sweeps. From there, bumps and wrinkles in your in-room frequency response curve are smoothed out and multichannel levels, crossovers and delays are all set up. The correction (and the rest of the D2's performance) got a solid endorsement from the audiophiles at S&V: they liked it enough to leave it engaged at all times for both music and movie performances.[Thanks, Rob]
Anthem brings room correction add-on to its Statement lineup
Well-heeled audiophiles who have already bought into Anthem's Statement A/V processor lineup have one less reason to stray from the brand now. The component-producing division of Paradigm Electronics (best known for loudspeakers) has introduced its ARC-1 Room Correction System. The listening room is often the single weakest link in your audio system, and used in conjunction with an Anthem Statement processor, the ARC-1 will help tame room effects automagically. Sounds like a feature built into just about every AVR these days, but as you'd guess from Anthem's high-end pedigree, here it's implemented with separates and priced accordingly. A cool $399 (estimated) will get you the ARC-1and a calibrated mic to go along with it.