Foxenfurter
Active Member
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.
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.