Master your room

When mastering with T-RackS you’re making very important decisions about audio processing of the overall balance of the music you’re working on, and, most important, you’re making the very last audio intervention before public distribution. If you make a bad decision at this stage there will not be the possibility to fix it after.

There is another key factor in a correct mastering and mixing process that is often underestimated: your room acoustics. Unfortunately the sonic signature of the room can make even the best monitors to sound unreliable because of the aberrations and irregularities the room is creating.

Even the most experienced engineer with the highest quality equipment can ruin a mix, or even more easily, a master, because of the unreliability of the listening environments. There are factors that cannot be compensated by “training” or “learning the room.”

For example, poor room acoustics can create very narrow peaks and dips in low-frequency that are very difficult to detect with the naked ear. In fact bass notes, for example, will never sound consistent, even if they are recorded evenly, so on certain notes you’ll think you have too much bass, on other notes you’ll find the bass disappearing.

For these reasons the room acoustical quality should be considered as important as the quality of all other chain links in your audio production studio, from bedroom studios to high end facilities.

In order to improve sonic accuracy of a room you can apply acoustical treatment to the walls, floor and ceiling, and this can be done up to very high quality results, but for very high prices. These solutions typically include treatments done with various mixed elements, absorbers, diffusers, bass traps, floating floors and so on.

Another convenient solution is to use IK's ARC System, the acoustic correction system in a plug-in. In developing ARC System, IK Multimedia has teamed up with the leading provider of sound equalization solutions, Audyssey, for the production of an innovative, low-cost and mobile solution to correct the distortion problems caused by room acoustics.

ARC System delivers the most advanced solution to acoustical problems for any DAW-based studio. Combining a professionally calibrated microphone, standalone software that captures sound information and calculates proper room correction, and a multi-platform plug-in, this technology will improve how your studio sounds forever.

ARC System features the revolutionary Audyssey MultEQ® technology, which measures acoustical information throughout the listening area in your studio. It then combines this information to provide an accurate representation of the room’s acoustical problems. The equalization solution then corrects for both time and frequency response problems more effectively and efficiently than any other room correction EQ on the market. The result is a clear and reliable representation of your mix. Regardless of the acoustical issues in your studio, what you are recording, mixing or mastering becomes immediately clear and reliable and your studio sound will improve forever.

T-RackS 3 and ARC together form an ideal system, working together to allow the T-RackS 3 user to trust what he or she is hearing, which is truly the most important factor.

Get more information on ARC System.