Room Correction Plugin and the Cubase Control Room

Sorry this is long, please help if you can.

Even though my control room was built and treated specifically for that use, I have always felt there were issues especially in the high end due to reflection off the 6 foot wide splayed live room window to the left of the console/workstation.

Over the last week I did a substantial rework of my control room so that I could switch between 3 pairs of NS10s with a Sub, Truths, and some early 80s JBLs mounted in a soffit as the hyped rock pair within monitor selection within Cubase 10s control room.

While listening to some music from the WDM speakers send on my computer (NOT thru Cubase) I wasnt liking what I heard and found that there was room correction functionality within Windows under properties specific to each set of speaker.

I hooked up an earthworks omni, ran the correction test for each pair of speakers and > I was floored at the difference. My room sounded great, a night and day difference. Awesome. >

The thing is that while typical computer audio such as from the built in dvd drive, spotify, browser, go thru the Microsoft WDM driver “speakers” outputs each containing their own correction profile, then to 3 pairs of outputs of my RME 5296 card feeding the monitors, the Cubase control room stereo outs go straight to the RME outs without WDM room correction.

I did a little research and found a suggestion here that said buy IK ARC 2.5 and run it as an insert on the Cubase Control Room Stereo Out (not master buss) so that the correction will feed to monitors but not be applied to exported mix downs.

Perfect I thought and pulled the trigger purchasing the ARC 2.5 software. Minutes later I realized I may have screwed up.

While Cubase allows you to switch within the software between multiple sets of monitors each feeding the Stereo Out (not master buss) I realized that its a shared insert allowing only for a correction profile for one pair of monitors used when doing the calibrating in ARC.

Questions:

Am I correct in what I am assuming this or is there a way to have a different ARC plug instance (profile) tied to each control room monitor output?

For those familiar with ARC Is there a way to store and switch between multiple monitor profiles in ARC? while it will suck to have to switch that as well each time I switch monitors via control room buttons, at least it would work correctly.

I’m suspecting that I may need to send a feature request to steinberg for a independant inserts tied to each monitor output rather than just the stereo out.

Maybe I am wrong and missing something. Fingers crossed. Here’s hoping.

Hi,

You can set different Inserts to the dedicated Monitor busses.

In the MixConsole’s right-zone open the CR tab. In the bottom, open the Inserts. Open the Monitors tab in the CR. Add a plug-in. This plug-in is assigned to the currently selected Monitor. Switch to B, and here you can add different plug-in. Switch to C, and you can add another plug-in.

1 Like

Martin This is exactly the answer that I was hoping for. Was not apparent from looking at it and couldnt find it in the manual. Great news!

Once you insert ARC in each output path, you might forget about it (out of sight, out of mind). Then when you start tracking next you’ll have lots of latency until you remember ARC is running. You need to fully disable, not just bypass, the insert to get rid of the latency.

Also you should get much better results than the Windows correction since it will be based on real measurements of how the speakers sound in the context of your room.

I`m using arc for years. Define your main output as empty and connect your rme output to control room. Then insert arc as insert effect in the control room Panel on the right side. Your output (Monitors) while be affected by arc, your mixdown not cause it is rooted to the masterbus.
I got no latency difference switching arc on and off.

Great comments, thanks for this. Can’t wait for it to arrive, ordered it from IK website last week and anticipation is killing me.

The latency thing will take a bit getting used to disabling. When you say fully disable do you mean remove from insert completely or disable the insert rather than the plugin?

Disable plugin by alt-clicking on the plug-in’s on/off button. (NOT just clicking bypass or plugin on/off button).

Well you only need to be concerned with that when recording overdubs realtime.

Also you really won’t need to remember to disable it. If it needs to be disabled, the delay will be obvious & you may find your singer curled in a ball on the floor clutching their headphones. Now remembering to turn it back on…

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

That’s odd.

I use ARC 2.5 and have no issues with latency. Plugin Manager lists the latency as “3”, which I assume means 3 Samples?

In any case it’s not noticeable.

Hugh

Hi,

just to jump into the discussion here - a slightly different issue - when using ARC with the Control Room:
If you use multiple monitors (A, B, C…) you have to insert ARC into the insert slots of all of them individually.
Since the connected monitors will most likely require DIFFERENT Corrections in ARC it would be helpful if ARC remembered them after closing Cubase. But it does not. When you reopen the project, ARC will start to work with just the Monitor A Correction setting on ALL monitor channels. You can change that when having started cubase of course and then it works. This is annoying and just ARC related. Cubase is not to blame.

Regards, Ernst

Ernst, thanks for this. I am amazed that each instance of the plugin does not retain its settings within the project. That’s like using an eq plugin that gets reset each time you close the session. NOT GOOD. If that is truly the way it works I have to admit I am very disappointed in their implementation.

Have others who replied earlier seen this behavior?

I had a discussion with IRMultimedia about the issue. The point was that they never thought about a DAW-Internal control room feature with the monitor switch being a part of the DAW (which leads to more then one instance of ARC in the DAW with different room correction settings). In setups with an external monitor switch of course one would have to change the correction curve in ARC everytime we switch the monitors!
BTW. in earlier versions of ARC this worked perfectly…

Just to clarify: When you CLOSE CUBASE (not only the project) and reopen it, all ARC instances will be set to the same room correction curve!
You can also check to insert ARC as a plugin (just for showing the issue) into several normal audio channels and select different correction curves. Then store the project, close cubase and reopen… all ARC instances will be set to the identical room correction curve!
Point is: ARC cannot remember multiple instance’s settings… terrible! (their reasoning can be read in my previous post…)

Update: From what I learned above and on IK forum and conversations with support there are still some issues for using it like cubase control room users would like as ARC saves the last monitors correction used globally, not within the session.

I spoke with support about running multiple instances of ARC in the Cubase Control Room each with their own correction. They told me that it was on roadmap for ARC 3 but they had no target date for release. I expect since it took 6 years to go from 2-2.5 it may be a while.

Thank you, hikarateboy,

I was getting just the same answer back at least a year ago. Well… so we have to remember each time we start cubase to set the correct room correction settings in every single arc-instance. Not handy… at least it works.

Sonarworks works as it should. Recomended.

I don’t need to do that at all. I have two different sets of monitors JBLs & Yahamas. In the Control Room’s Monitor Inserts I have 2 different instances of Sonarworks, one for each monitor pair. I just checked and when I open the instance on the JBL’s Inserts it shows the Calibration Profile for the JBLs and similar for the Yahamas as you can see in the attached.

Thats awesome for you, but for those of us with ARC2 we still do. Then again I havent looked to see if there has been an update since that last posting. Understanding from IK support is that the plugin makes those settings available to save with the session not cubase.

:blush:
Oh, sorry I didn’t notice the comment was ARC2 specific. I think Sonarworks used to have that same problem.

I suppose that means those shopping for room correction should follow shomynik’s advice. :smiley: