ARC Genesis results

[tparm]

Room correction always sparks interesting dialog. Does it add noise, does it improve SQ, is one better than the other.... Well I don't intend to chat about any of that. But, I am posting my results using ARC in my AVM 70 for those who care about such things. The Quick Measure feature is great for making initial adjustments prior to running ARC. I used it for final placement of my subs, integrating all my room treatments, level matching, testing polarity and phase, setting room gain compensation and two PEQs in my subs. Then I ran ARC (and later added three additional speaker profiles, ARC is super flexible and easy to use once you learn the cheats) and used Quick Measure to go back and check channel levels and revel in my pretty curves. Yes my subs are turned long ways parallel to the front wall, that is how they measured the best. BTW, this speaker profile has intentional room gain boost in the lower frequencies. More detailed explanation in AVM 70 thread.

 

[Beershaun]

Thanks for creating this thread. I was planning to do the same Here are my results uploaded as a PDF.

 

[tparm]

Thanks for creating this thread. I was planning to do the same Here are my results uploaded as a PDF.

Thanks for sharing. Curious if your heights are in ceiling or up firing? The roll off ay mid-frequency is interesting, like a boundary switch is set improperly on the speakers themselves? Subs are on the money!

 

[jhaider]

I still can’t believe none of the other RC systems have had the sense to copy Quick Measure. It’s just such an obviously useful way to lever the microphone and processing they already provide.

 

[Beershaun]

Thanks for sharing. Curious if your heights are in ceiling or up firing? The roll off ay mid-frequency is interesting, like a boundary switch is set improperly on the speakers themselves? Subs are on the money!

They are in ceiling downward firing. I wonder if that is an artifact of them being relatively off axis from the mic since it's pointing straight up and they are pointing straight down.

 

[tparm]

They are in ceiling downward firing. I wonder if that is an artifact of them being relatively off axis from the mic since it's pointing straight up and they are pointing straight down.

Very well could be.

 

[Beershaun]

I remeasured using this youtube guide and found it useful to improve my methodology and results by:
1) tip on using quick measure to set your initial subwoofer levels to 70db peak (for dual) prior to measurement.
2) using the multiple measurements feature to create a "group" measurement set for larger gatherings and a "personal" measurement set for when it's just me and my wife.
3) Better understanding of where to place the microphone to best match the measurements where people are actually going to sit.
4) extending the correction frequency range up to 20khz for my L/C/R speakers because they are behind my movie screen.

Question: Have any of you been able to upgrade to the newer version of ARC Genesis that is supposed to enable automatic delay and phase measurement and correction? I am on 1.5.4 and these new features are not available to me yet, and there is no upgrade available on their website.

 

[Beershaun]

Latest results using the above methodology for folks who wish to compare.

I'm thinking I should increase the correction bandwidth for the 4 height speakers up from 5K to 10-15K to try and bring up the highs closer to target. Thoughts?

 

[tparm]

I remeasured using this youtube guide and found it useful to improve my methodology and results by:
1) tip on using quick measure to set your initial subwoofer levels to 70db peak (for dual) prior to measurement.
2) using the multiple measurements feature to create a "group" measurement set for larger gatherings and a "personal" measurement set for when it's just me and my wife.
3) Better understanding of where to place the microphone to best match the measurements where people are actually going to sit.
4) extending the correction frequency range up to 20khz for my L/C/R speakers because they are behind my movie screen.

Question: Have any of you been able to upgrade to the newer version of ARC Genesis that is supposed to enable automatic delay and phase measurement and correction? I am on 1.5.4 and these new features are not available to me yet, and there is no upgrade available on their website.

It’s a beta firmware for both the AVM/MRX and ARC, you have to upgrade both and enable beta. It works wonderfully. BTW, I set each sub to 75dB, not 70 or 72 and got better results. Also if your room is set up well I’d never extend correction to 20k, over 5,000 it begins to change the voice of your speakers. I did extend it to 10k on a profile or two for my ceiling speakers but limit my mains to 200 for 2CH and I think (going off memory) 2k for LCR on movie profile. Lastly, don’t ever move your mic more than 24” from MLP, vary height for 2-3 and 4-5 locations.

The auto delay and phase work extremely well with the new beta update.

 

[tparm]

For what it’s worth.

 

[Beershaun]

It’s a beta firmware for both the AVM/MRX and ARC, you have to upgrade both and enable beta. It works wonderfully. BTW, I set each sub to 75dB, not 70 or 72 and got better results. Also if your room is set up well I’d never extend correction to 20k, over 5,000 it begins to change the voice of your speakers. I did extend it to 10k on a profile or two for my ceiling speakers but limit my mains to 200 for 2CH and I think (going off memory) 2k for LCR on movie profile. Lastly, don’t ever move your mic more than 24” from MLP, vary height for 2-3 and 4-5 locations.

The auto delay and phase work extremely well with the new beta update.

I'm a bit shy about loading beta software on my AVR. I don't think they are as resilient as my smartphone and don't want to end up with a bricked AVR and then have trouble getting nit replaced under warranty.

 

[Beershaun]

I loaded up the beta software and ran ARC Genesis with the new version including automatic distance and phase adjustment. Here are the results.

 

[peng]

Can we see some REW graphs please? The posted ones so far are the predicted FR with RC. The actual ones may look very different, and without adjustments/tweaking they may not look good at all. In my case it took out the deep bass even more so than Audyssey did. Audyssey usually would flatten the room gains, ARCG actually lowered the deep bass resulting in a wide dip for me. I am going try the deep bass boost feature and see what happens. Hopefully it will do the trick.

 

[Beershaun]

Can we see some REW graphs please? The posted ones so far are the predicted FR with RC. The actual ones may look very different, and without adjustments/tweaking they may not look good at all. In my case it took out the deep bass even more so than Audyssey did. Audyssey usually would flatten the room gains, ARCG actually lowered the deep bass resulting in a wide dip for me. I am going try the deep bass boost feature and see what happens. Hopefully it will do the trick.

You can adjust the deep bass with the room gain and deep bass settings in ARC. Also you can run the "quick measure" function to get a real time in room response measurement.

 

[peng]

You can adjust the deep bass with the room gain and deep bass settings in ARC. Also you can run the "quick measure" function to get a real time in room response measurement.

Thanks, I did that but still couldn't get it even close to what I could achieve using the app with Audyssey but it is good enough at this point. Still would like to see REW graphs instead of those created by ARC that always look good.

 

[Beershaun]

Thanks, I did that but still couldn't get it even close to what I could achieve using the app with Audyssey but it is good enough at this point. Still would like to see REW graphs instead of those created by ARC that always look good.

Yes. Understand your point about the after graphs being clearly simulated. Re better bass another suggestion is to watch Gene Delasalla's YouTube video on tweaking ARC Genesis. He had some recommendations on adjuithe target curve including the new subwoofer phase and delay settings

 

[peng]

Yes. Understand your point about the after graphs being clearly simulated. Re better bass another suggestion is to watch Gene Delasalla's YouTube video on tweaking ARC Genesis. He had some recommendations on adjuithe target curve including the new subwoofer phase and delay settings

I watched that video. Have done the delay and auto phase, all look impressive but the results aren't great. It's good enough, time to enjoy some movies and concert video.

 

[peng]

Yes. Understand your point about the after graphs being clearly simulated. Re better bass another suggestion is to watch Gene Delasalla's YouTube video on tweaking ARC Genesis. He had some recommendations on adjuithe target curve including the new subwoofer phase and delay settings

I didn't want to post my ARC results until I have enough time to learn enough to be sure I have done most, if not everything right. After almost a week, I am now confident I am at that point, after reading, re-reading the manuals, watched quite a few videos including a couple of good ones. Note: The most helpful video I found is the one linked below, but he also did not check the results with REW or similar software. None of the You-tube video including Gene's had done so. It is my belief that they would be surprised if they did measure the actual response in their room.

So here are the results, and I picked the best one achieved after multiple runs for 5 and 7 positions. All with no smoothing at all.

You can see that without using the bass boost feature (also room gain), the AVM took the deep bass down a lot for whatever reasons. Using the deep bass boost adjustment, I got the deep bass below 50 Hz back but overall, I could not tweak it better than what is shown below but would try harder again in the near future. For now, I want to start enjoying the new gear watching some good movies. Suffice to say, Audyssey, with a lot of work tweaking it with the App achieved much smoother results, though I highly doubt the ears/brains can tell which one is better sounding. Prior to using the deep bass feature though, I immediately felt it sounded worse than the Denon and that's why I decided to take some REW results to find out what might be happening. I am only talking about bass below the Schroeder frequency, so I limit the graphs to 300 Hz for comparison.

 

[peng]

I still can’t believe none of the other RC systems have had the sense to copy Quick Measure. It’s just such an obviously useful way to lever the microphone and processing they already provide.

Hello, have you reviewed ARCG and checked the results by measurements such as using REW? I did search hometheaterhifi and could not find any, except one from May 2019 that was not by you and it was more like an introduction/product info. I am trying to find a review that include REW (or similar) measurements, found none so far.

 

[jhaider]

Hello, have you reviewed ARCG and checked the results by measurements such as using REW? I did search hometheaterhifi and could not find any, except one from May 2019 that was not by you and it was more like an introduction/product info. I am trying to find a review that include REW (or similar) measurements, found none so far.

I have not, unfortunately. I never requested to review one of their immersive processors, because they don't include Auromatic. That disqualifies them from my consideration. If they add it I'll be sliding into their email box because except for that necessary-to-me feature being omitted the line looks compelling.

I think I have some old measurements (FuzzMeasure not REW, but close enough) of an old system with an MRX 300 (ARC gen 1) but I'd have to look and I'm not sure how relevant they'd be to ARC Genesis.

My only use of ARC Genesis so far has with the MartinLogan Unison streaming preamp and MartinLogan Forte streaming integrated. I think the late model AVR/P's have more DSP horsepower though.