Room Correction For Newbie, 2 Channel Hifi, Any Advice Please?

[Mr.Paws]

Hi I was wondering if anybody could offer me any advice. I have a fairly basic hifi system consisting of an Arcam A39 amp, Arcam IR DAC, Kef R500 flootstanding speakers, HTPC with all my CD's ripped to flac files connected to the DAC using Kodi to play them on. Also have a CD player connected to the DAC that I never really use.

Never had a problem with this system thought it sounded brilliant until I moved house and have it in a much smaller room. The low frequencies from the speakers are just a bit much at times. The amp has no eq controls. Don't really want to get rid of it would just like to use some kind of room correction. Could buy a later Arcam amp with Dirac built in, but these are pretty expensive, are the same power as my A39 and in my experience of Arcam amps (not really high end) they usually sound very similar. My A39 is really not much better sounding than my old Alpha 9, until you really turn the volume up.

I'm fairly tech savvy, just wondered what is the easiest option, are there any guides. Have no intention of getting a sub. Just wondered if it b would be some kind of Minidsp with Dirac, or software based.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mr.Paws]

Just like to add that I'm aware of other amps that offer built in functions. Just really happy with the Arcam and KEF combination.

 

[staticV3]

Hi @Mr.Paws! Welcome to ASR.

A WiiM Pro or Pro Plus would give you a nice UX with automated room correction, at the expense of EQ capabilities.

Its fully adjustable 10-band Parametric EQ is still more powerful that most AVRs and plenty good enough for reigning in your system's bass response, but more advanced room correction involving FIR DSP is not possible with it.

In contrast, a miniDSP 2x4HD would give you more adjustability, but the UX isn't as nice and it's a more barebones piece of kit.

At a later date, you could purchase a DIRAC license then update the 2x4HD's firmware to run DIRAC on it.

Either way, a UMIK-1 microphone should be part of your upgrade.

 

[Timcognito]

Lot of discussion here FYI

The ultimate low cost solution for room correction?

Hello to all of you from ASR, I've been following you for about three years and this is my first post...I'm using Google translator, so excuse my English... I wanted to let you know that IK Multimedia has just introduced a new dedicated product to environmental correction, called: "ARC STUDIO"...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Multicore]

You can do room correction on the PC. I use EqualizerAPO for this.

 

[pogo]

Add the new Bluesound Node with Dirac Live and you are fine.
The Arcam IR DAC can be omitted and if you need more inputs, you can add up to four remote Bluesound HUBs.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

You can do room correction on the PC. I use EqualizerAPO for this.

Yup. You can also do Dirac on a PC or Mac.

 

[Mr.Paws]

Thanks for all the information, lots to think about. So you can use the Umik microphone with a Wiim Pro, just read about them and it mentioned apple devices. The Dirac software sounds good as does the Minidsp with it. Just wondered if the Dirac software works with Kodi or would need to look at a different interface. Thanks for all the info though. Loads of devices never knew about.