Room correction in noisy environment (ARC, Dirac, Minidsp, REW)


I live around downtown Dallas in an apartment where there's a considerable amount of traffic and people noise (thanks Katy Trail Ice House).  I find it very difficult to find the "quietest" time to run my ARC correction.  Will this background noise dramatically affect the outcome? Is it even worth trying?
dtximages
To answer your question, for the most part, unless the street noises are significant, they are not going to make much practical difference on room correction since the volumes used in correction will still be significantly louder.


Speaker size: unless the speaker has a very large radiation area, the size does not matter significantly, except to make them hard to place, and some speakers are better with more distance to allow for driver integration.

Room correction is an attempt to fix things that are wrong ... and just that, an attempt. It can help, but not a panacea, with the systems that take readings at multiple locations being better but again not perfect.  How much work are you willing to put in?

People look at room correction often thinking mainly bass, but they actually work better through the mid-range up to their limit, say 5-8KHz. At higher frequencies, the speaker (on and off axis) dominates alone what you hear, and room correction can attempt to compensate for anomalies in the speaker response that reaches you, but still an attempt.

Down in the bass frequencies ... under a few hundred hz in a typical room, the room and where the speakers are in it is everything. At a given position, frequency response can jump up and down 10db. Room correction will soften this, but not fix underlying issues. You are better off getting RoomEQ, Arta, etc. and measuring at your listening area while moving the speakers around to get the flattest response in the base, and then using room correction to fix what is left ..... or take the next step and learn about bass traps, absorbers, diffusers, etc.


Room correction is often better than nothing at all, but not as good as doing it properly.



Thank you for all the input. I understand that room correction is not a fix all.  I have a very tough room and using absorbers, traps, and diffusers is not an option.  My aim is to get as close to "better" as possible.  

I simply wanted to know if the ambient noise was a total failure.  You answered my question when you mentioned the test tone noise should be significantly louder than ambient noise.

Did you run your room correction? If so, how did it go? (I've spent a lot of time building acoustic treatments for my houses through the years, and measuring the effects.  Plus I live near Dallas, and am just interested.)
I tried to run Audyssey in the bedroom and it kept erroring out saying too much ambient noise.

I also tried ARC in my main living room but my wife got up out of bed yelling at me to turn it off so no, I have not successfully completed a room correction process yet unfortunately.

Where are you located around Dallas?  What room corrections have you tried?
I live in Royse City, on the other side of Rockwall. 

I ended up building my own panels about 5 years ago, and again this past year when I moved. I have two sizes, 2'x4' and 16"x4'. All wrapped in different colors of burlap I picked up at a fabric store. Wish I could upload pics. I use REW and a UMIK mic to measure with. With the panels, I am getting good response reduction from 500Hz to 6.5KHz, with 20db reduction from 1.5KHz to around 4.5KHz.

I had a Marantz AVR with Audyssey, but hardly used it. I don't think it handled my speakers well (Magnepans). I currently have a MiniDSP DDRC-88A and use Dirac Live and bass management features. I'm happy with how it all sounds, but I'm really happy with the fact I can measure and get a quantitative result so I know it's not all in my head!