My Review of Acourate Room Correction

[Knuck]

I decided to write a mini review of Acourate to share my success and perhaps enlighten others, who are not familiar with this software and who have less than ideal rooms, to consider the potentially daunting world of room correction. I am not a professional reviewer so please forgive my lack of "audiophile terminology". These are my real world perceptions. I have no connection to Acourate other than being a paid client.

 

I strongly believe in the benefits of physical room treatments. My listening room, however, offered limited options in this area as it has lots of glass, hardwood and a wife. The sound lacked definition and focus. I started using Dirac and received decent results until I discovered Acourate by AudioVero. I have been using it for quite awhile now and have achieved excellent results. Although there is a learning curve, Acourate is intuitive to use and there are lots of useful tutorials to help with setup and use. I am by no means an expert with the software but have been improving steadily. I have created filters that work well with Jriver and Foobar convolvers and am going to move onto HQplayer, which requires the creation of mono filters, which, thanks to the help of Acourate's creator Uli Brueggermann, is a simple process. I have found Uli to be very responsive to questions and a pleasure to deal with. Acourate also allows you to create digital crossovers which I understand from other users significantly improves SQ. I am in the process of learning how to do this so I cannot comment on this feature at this time. I will update this review when I have a chance to implement them.

 

 

It is easy to discern the sonic differences between using and not using the Acourate filters. In Foobar simply load the convolver or remove it. Initially I was concerned that adding filters would create a veil over the sound. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the opposite was true. Instead of blurring the music the Acourate filters resulted in a significantly more focused and detailed sound. For example, without Acourate, vocals sounded spread out. In my Secret Life by Leonard Cohen, without Acourate, it sounded like Cohen's voice came from the entire area between the speakers and sounded like it was on top of Robinsons' voice. With Acourate, the location of the singers became identifiable. Cohen was no longer singing over Robinson. They were in different locations on the stage. As a result, I could discern more detail from both voices. This of course holds true for the instruments as well. For example, in The Bill Evans Trio's Waltz for Debby, without Acourate the piano spread across the entire stage and sounded on top of the guitar and later the percussion. With Acourate the piano now had its own space separate from the guitar and percussion making it easy to identify where on the stage each instrument was located. In My Foolish Heart, Acourate allowed much greater detail. I could now clearly hear the tinkling of glasses, which was almost indiscernible without Acourate. I am pleased I discovered Acourate and now that I have it in my system I could not imagine listening without it.

[armani-thomas]

A lot of those improvements you mention, is also what I have experienced with Dirac, so how will you describe the difference between the two?

[Knuck]

A lot of those improvements you mention, is also what I have experienced with Dirac, so how will you describe the difference between the two?

 

Unfortunately my memory isn't what it used to be so I'm not really in a position to provide a detailed comparison. I haven't used Dirac in almost a year. They are both excellent products and originally I was satisfied with Dirac but there were some compatibility or feature issues that required me to look elsewhere. I can't remember specifically what they were but I recall communicating with Dirac technical support, who were very responsive, but couldn't resolve my specific issue. It may have had to do with integration with various software players and/or calibration issues. Dirac is a much simpler product to use but Acourate is more powerful.

 

As far as SQ, its been awhile but to the best of my limited recollection, Acourate sounded slightly clearer for lack of a better term, not that Dirac was fuzzy by any means. I did do AB comparisons at the time and found my results with Acourate to be better but only slightly and I would have been happy with either product. My decision to go with Acourate over Dirac was more a usability decision that an SQ one.