Has anyone else used Play-Fi recently on this device? I was using optical in for years due to the terrible reviews, but it seems to be functional right now, at least for Tidal and Sirius (haven't tried other sources yet). Am I missing anything or sacrificing performance vs. optical in?
Sources (digital and turntable) --> Martin Logan Unison for ARC only --> digital out to SMSL DAC --> nCORE class D Amp --> KEF LS50 METAs / single SVS SB1000 Pro.
So I don't have full bass management capabilities, but you can see in the earlier posts what ARC accomplishes when it is thrown...
Agreed - in all of this, I haven't mentioned any subjective impressions, but I am getting much less mud with A/B testing and very happy with how it sounds. I am going to mess with ARC and see if I can figure out what it is doing to the signal under about 32hz - I have some ideas on how to fix that.
OK - back with my REW measurements. This is my first time using REW. I followed Amir's guide (and a few others I found online), but let me know if something seems obviously wrong, or if there is another graph that would be more useful to see (I did frequency, waterfalls and spectrograms).
I did...
I ended up taking off the high pass on my mains, removing the port bungs and messing with some other things and I think I got a better overall curve. Here it is now, with and without AVAA.
WITHOUT AVAA (large nulls at 100 and 200)
WITH AVAA (reduced nulls at 100 and 200, flattened peaks)
Here are my ARC genesis frequency curves with the AVAA on and off and the unit in the front left corner a few feet from the sub (I still plan to play a bit with positioning). It looks like it totally takes care of the null at 100hz, but makes the one at 50hz slightly worse, which I can't figure...
Yeah, it worked fine when it was on, but if it ever was powered down or needed to restart, getting it to power back on took about 15 minutes of tapping/ holding the power button and hoping for the best. They ended up sending a brand new unit instead of repairing and the new one has been fine.