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IK Multimedia Arc 3 System

Foxenfurter

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I have recently bought the Arc 3 system. It has the same name and version as that of the Anthem Amplifiers and initially I thought that they were the same, but they are not.

I have the iLoud micro monitors and IK gives you money off if you have registered products worth over 100 euro. You can by the package with or without the MEMS microphone, which you can buy separately for about 85 Euro. With the discount I bought the software and mic for about 140 GBP.

Installing is a bit of a faff because you have to do it via their product manager, however you can install 2 10 devices.

Essentially you get the measurement app and a vst plugin to apply the filters.

To do the measurements using the MEMs microphone you will need a mic stand, microphone cable and microphone preamp. I did the measurements using my Motu 2. Make sure you turn on phantom power and turn off monitoring (or else you will get lots of lovely feedback).

The app is gives you use-case for primarily for different studio desk sizes, but there is also a home theatre use-case.

Measurement is straightforward, but does involve 21 measurements essentially in a cylinder around your head or listening position, so repositioning your mic stand is a bit tire-some.. Give yourself about an hour and try and find a quiet time slot.

I measured on my laptop, which is noiseless and transferred the measurement to my desktop, which is quiet but not noiseless. I then tried adding the VST plugin to Equalizer APO and copied this into PEACE to run it. At this point I started running into problems as for every 10 seconds of music I would get 2 seconds of white noise overlaid over the music.

IK Forums responded quickly and suggested it may be a licence authorisation issue, nope. So I tried using Cakewalk DAW and added the plugin there, it worked fine, but not much use as a system-wide plugin.

In the end I have got it working on a combination of Pedalboard2 and VB cable. Set music to play to VB Cable Input. Then in PedalBoard 2 add inthe ARC 3 VST and wire in the VB Cable output to ARC and ARC output to my Dac. This approach would work well for other VST plugins like tube pre-amps.

So now I have everything playing, activating the VST UI everything is set to flat. Sound level is down about 8 db, and seems a lot cleaner (or brighter) than I am used to.

I am using a Fostex sub-mini with my iLouds, and looking at the measurements I am just beginning to realise what a bass-head I am!

Anyway I have found that the sound seems a lot cleaner, I can't hear any distortion but I have tweaked the profile to add back a bit of bass and dial back the treble a bit. There are a few comments on the forum that the treated sound is too bright, but I am prepared to accept that my study with sub is quite boomy.

Faults
With measuring, you have to measure 3 vertical planes with 7 measurements in each plane. However the sequence of these measurements is fixed and means more movement of the mic stand then necessary

Playback
adding EQ to the sound is quite limited.
There are only 4 custom profiles and they can't be re-labelled.
When you re-load you always go to the default preset
Latency - Pedalboard 2; ARC and the Motu all add latency this can be problematic for gaming and live music recording. I am currently trying to tweak this.
 

Berwhale

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Thanks very much for posting your experiences with ARC3. I have a pair of MTM's on the way and i'd noticed that this entitled me to purchase ARC 3 for 80EUR. I already own a UMIK-1, so i'll be using it with that (I don't have an interface to use with the MEMS that will come with the MTMs).

I'm a bit disapointed to hear that you've failed to get the plug-in to function correctly with EqualizerAPO as this is how I would like to use it. I think i'll buy it anyway and have a go myself (I found your post on Gearslutz where you explain how you set it up :))

Are these the instructions you followed to get it working the way you have it now? https://www.ikmultimedia.com/faq/in...wP2NhdGVnb3J5PTExJnRvcGljPWFyYy1zeXN0ZW0tMw==
 
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Foxenfurter

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I wish I had found those instructions, :facepalm: I worked it out for myself. But the steps are essentially these. I would be interested to know if you have better luck with equaliser APO then me. Pedalboard2 works fine for listening, and with the ARC UI closed the system load is very low, but I wasn't able to get the latency that low before distortions set in, and this isn't the odd tick, pop or bit of silence it is like a blown amplifier.
 

Berwhale

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Hi @Foxenfurter, I finally got around to purchasing ARC 3. I bought only the software, as I already own a MiniDSP UMIK-1 calibrated measurement mic. I was able to use Jam points (which I assume I recieved for registering my MTM's) to bring the cost down to 70EUR (~£60.50).

Prior to purchasing ARC 3, I did a test setup of VB-Cable and Pedalboard2. I got them working with iLouds TR5 Metering VST, however, I was not keen on having ARC rely on old software, especially Pedalboard 2 which doesn't appear to be being actively developed or supported.

I found some instructions for a similar setup using Voicemeeter Banana and the Cantabile VST host software here: Using the ARC2 Speaker/Room Optimization VST with Windows Audio via Cantabile Lite and Voicemeeter Pro Inserts (Video) - Cantabile - Cantabile Community (cantabilesoftware.com)

After a bit of trial and error, I managed to get this working with my UMIK-1 and ARC (I really need to read the Banana manual). I have taken an initial set of measurements and calculated the correction. Frankly, it sounded terrible, but I had the target set to 'flat' and i'm really not sure I have everything setup properly yet. I'll reserve judgement until i'm more confident with the software.
 
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Foxenfurter

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Yes I tried other hosts and Cantible Lite worked pretty well. I actually liked the sound I got from mine particularly with the the Hamron type boosted bass profile. However I am having to switch between headphones and speakers when working from home and have been using my squeezebox system for that as I have to use a work laptop. So I have been trying to get closer to this sound using REW and Inguz in LMS.

I also bought a cheap - I mean really cheap ( <25 GBP) measurement mic - https://www.gear4music.com/Recording-and-Computers/SubZero-M100-Reference-Microphone/3DW7. You have the UMIK, which is probably better and remeasured everything in REW. The curves looked pretty similar to what I got via ARC. I tried generating filters following advice for Roon, but didn't like the sound seemed way to tinny to me. So I have then manually set an EQ and imported it to Inguz for LMS. I re-wrote the Web Interface a couple of months ago, with some testing and feature requests from @Apesbrain and it is now quite nice to use.
 
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