£249 (street price), ikmultimedia.com

Room EQ is an incredibly useful tool that takes care of any inadequacies in the frequency response of your control room or home studio. You’d typically run it as a plugin within a DAW, or through a system-wide app on your computer, but this software-only approach uses a computer CPU and adds latency to the monitoring system. Frustratingly, on most DAWs you have to insert the room correction as a plugin at the end of the master bus chain, and then remember to turn it off when exporting a mix, which makes it impossible to properly monitor a real-time bounce running through external hardware.

• READ MORE: Audient’s ORIA Mini review: A giant leap for hardware-hosted room EQ and monitor control

IK’s ARC Studio aims to do away with such frustrations with a hybrid, hardware and software solution. It boasts the lowest price for a complete system of this type including the more recent Oria Mini (around £350) and the Trinnov Nova found in commercial studios (£4,000 upwards).

What is ARC Studio?

IK Multimedia’s ARC Studio is a box that sits between your main audio interface outputs and monitors, offering a complete package for measuring room correction profiles and then hosting them.

Once you measure the room profile with the included microphone, you can load it up onto the Studio and work away with EQ-corrected monitors, with minimal latency. Just like competing products, there are also EQ profiles that allow you to audition your mix using virtual monitors, to see how it sounds on a car stereo, phone speakers and so on.

The hardware is simple and uncluttered. The front panel houses just two LEDs to indicate power and signal level, plus a single illuminated button to toggle the correction on and off. On the back, there are stereo XLR inputs and outputs, a USB-C port for loading and switching profiles from the computer, and a power socket. Unfortunately, there’s no digital input, so you’re stuck with an extra round of analogue-to-digital conversion inside the box that might be of lesser quality than those in the audio interface being used.

How do you set up ARC Studio?

To get going with ARC Studio, you need an audio interface with a mic preamp and phantom power. The measurement software prompts you to plug the microphone in, turn phantom on and set an appropriate level, and then place the microphone at different positions (and different heights) in the listening position while short sine sweeps are played on the monitors. I opt for the more accurate, 21-position measurement, and it is straightforward and relatively swift, at under 15 minutes.

If you’ve used Sonarworks, the ARC measurement process seems more primitive since the monitors send no ‘clicky’ triangulation signals to calculate exact points for the various measurement positions in the room. With ARC, you need to remember where you’ve been and try to be consistent, which isn’t that easy. That all said, the final profile is based on an average of the room response in all these positions, so it probably doesn’t matter as much as you’d expect.

How well does ARC Studio work?

In use, the ARC X software fares incredibly well. My room has a large desk, plus a window to one side, and neither of these aspects can be adequately fixed with the basic filters on my main monitors. ARC X takes care of the frequency response (including the difference between left and right), and I can easily select and tweak the target curve by using or modifying one of the preset ones. For example, critical listening might use the standard target curve with a full mid range, while a general listening curve with a pleasing, gentle mid scoop could avoid fatigue. Emulations of other speaker systems are also handy, most notably for checking whether kicks and basslines can be distinguished on phone speakers.

With ARC studio, there’s no faffing with switching plugins on and off. I work with the low-latency Natural Phase mode (1.4 ms latency) with no issues when tracking, and then switching to the more accurate Linear Phase mode (42 ms) for playback.

The correction is less extreme and more pleasant to listen to than my usual Sonarworks profile, with a strong phantom centre image from ARC, versus a slightly hollow result with Sonarworks.

A set-and-forget approach works best here, with the measured profile loaded into the ARC hardware and the room correction always switched on. This works splendidly, but it’s a little less simple if you want to switch between different room correction profiles (or virtual monitoring systems) as these things need to be done in the software, with the USB cable connected. In practice though, you get used to having a calibrated monitoring system where you begin to trust the translation across to other playback systems. The novelty of checking mixes on a virtual Bluetooth or phone speaker wears off to become a final quality control check rather than a regular occurrence.

The simplicity of the hardware will appeal to those who don’t really have a burning desire to keep tweaking their monitoring system, and if you already have monitoring controls on your audio interface or monitor controller (there are no fancy monitor controls or significant remote control options here, unlike the competing Oria Mini from Audient and Sonarworks).

There are a couple of frustrations with the hardware. The measurement mic is flimsy, its plastic build nearly as hollow as a Kinder egg shell. And there’s not quite enough weight in the Studio’s metal case to stop it tipping up under the weight of the connected XLR cables when placed on top of other outboard gear.

Is ARC Studio right for you?

If you work primarily on a single set of studio monitors, then the ARC Studio is a winning option, unrivalled at its price point. Load your correction profile up and happily work away on mixes that translate well to other systems, without noticeable latency or stress on your computer’s CPU.

The ARC X correction sounds natural and there’s a lot to be said for the hardware’s simplicity. That said, if you need slightly more in terms of profile switching on-device, monitor/remote control options, or a digital input, you might dream of an ARC Studio Pro. In the meantime, you’ll be better served by an Oria Mini (around £100 more for the equivalent bundle).

Key features

• Hardware / software room EQ package
• Stereo XLR inputs and outputs
• Simple LED metering on hardware
• Modes: Natural Phase (1.4 ms latency) ; Linear Phase (42 ms latency)
• USB-C port for connection to computer
• External DC power supply (included)
• Measurement mic and ARC X software included

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