IK Multimedia ARC Studio and ARC X - Full Review

ARC Studio with ARC X will correct the interaction of your studio monitors and room.

The result is a much flatter mixing environment that helps to eliminate problems like phase smearing, bass build-up, standing waves, and more issues that can lead to poor mixing decisions that cause your tracks to sound bad when played on other devices or in other spaces.

ARC X corrects these issues so you can be confident in your recording, mixing, and mastering decisions. It doesn’t make your room and monitors sound “better”, it makes them sound ACCURATE.

The ARC Studio is standalone hardware that lets you load a profile from ARC X software. Once you load the profile of your room to the ARC Studio, you do not need to use the ARC X software or plugin to get the correction. It’s basically “set it and forget it“. You can always turn off the correction directly on the ARC Studio unit to compare.

Since ARC Studio comes with ARC X software you also have the option to use the Plugin version of ARC X. Place the plugin on your Master Output as the last plugin, and remember to bypass it before you bounce your mix. However, if you are using ARC Studio, (and therefore not using the plugin) there is no need to bypass anything since the correction is going directly to your studio monitors.

Besides offering room and monitors correction, ARC X also provides over 20 virtual studio monitors and consumer speakers to hear your mix through.

So if you want to hear what your mix would sound like played through an iPhone, TV, or high-end studio monitors, you can do all of that from your current studio monitors.

Watch the video below to see the entire setup process of the ARC Studio and ARC X