Guide · audiolaz Room
Room correction for Roon with your phone
Measure, build the filter, install it in MUSE. audiolaz Room does all three: it measures your room with your phone or a calibrated microphone, builds a convolution filter, and installs it into Roon’s own DSP by itself, on a ROCK, a Nucleus, a Linux Core or Roon on the same Mac or PC. Loading the filter no longer goes through the Roon app on a Mac or a PC.
Updated . audiolaz Room is in beta.
Roon is one source among others: the audiolaz corrector also takes AirPlay, Spotify Connect, UPnP and every app on a Mac (every source).
Before you start
Roon, a phone, a computer.
- Roon with MUSE, its DSP engine: the filter goes into its Convolution, zone by zone.
- A phone with a browser. It is the microphone and the remote; nothing to install on it.
- A computer on your network that runs audiolaz Room: a Mac (Apple silicon or Intel), a Windows PC, Linux, a NAS or a Raspberry Pi. It need not stay on afterwards.
- Optionally, a calibrated USB microphone: a Dayton iMM-6C, a miniDSP UMIK-1 or UMIK-2. Add its 90° calibration file in the app; audiolaz Room recognises the microphone from it (which one).
Then, in Roon: Settings → Extensions → Enable next to “audiolaz Room”. Your Roon zones then show in the app.
01Measure
Three measurements at your seat.
Pick the Roon zone in the app. Put the phone at your listening position, at ear height, on a stand or something steady, and set Roon to a loud listening volume. Nobody sits in the seat while the sound plays.
By default, three short measurements: your seat, then 50 cm to the left, then 50 cm to the right, at the same height. A bad one (too quiet, a knock, a clipped signal) is refused on the spot, and the app says why.
How far up each microphone corrects
An iPhone
The whole range by default, the correction fading out from about 13 kHz. Above that their treble is less sure: the app says so, advises a measuring microphone for the treble, and keeps a range that stops at 4 kHz one tap away.
A calibrated USB microphone
The whole range: fully up to 18 kHz, fading out by 19 kHz. It also reaches lower in the bass, and lets the app align left and right in time.
Another phone
From 40 to 500 Hz, the bass; above, it leaves the speakers alone.
By default, boosts stop at 2 dB with a phone and 3 dB with a calibrated microphone, and cuts go to 12 dB.
Speakers with controls of their own (treble, midrange…)? With audiolaz Room Plus, tune them live before measuring: pink noise plays on one speaker, then the other; turn a control, and the score at your seat says at once whether it got better.
02Read the result
A score out of 100, before and after.
audiolaz Room draws the response at your seat before and after, against its target, and gives the room a score out of 100: how closely the response follows the target over the corrected range. “After” is a prediction, made from the same measurements.
Most of what you hear is in the bass. The room modes make some notes swell at your seat while others cancel; the filter calms the ones that swell and leaves the cancellations alone.
Measuring, the result, its score and the curves of the four sounds are free.
03Choose a sound
Four sounds, added after the correction.
Neutral, Balanced (bass +3 dB below 80 Hz), Warm (bass +7 dB) or Analogue (round and soft). Each is added after the correction, not instead of it. The sounds you tick are all installed, so changing your mind later costs nothing: in Roon, each is a DSP preset you pick by name, from any Roon remote.
With audiolaz Room, the expert settings go further: the corrected range, the slope above 1 kHz, the largest cut and boost, the bass, and a target curve of your own, imported from a REW export, a .targetcurve file or plain “frequency dB” lines.
With audiolaz Room Plus and a calibrated microphone, one more preset: the wider image. The sound stage opens beyond the speakers and voices stay in the centre; it is made for one seat.
04Install it in Roon
Into MUSE, by the app itself.
audiolaz Room writes the filter into the Core’s Convolution, in the zone you measured, and switches it on. Your sounds become Roon DSP presets, with “No correction” beside them at the same level. Where Roon runs decides how:
A ROCK or a Nucleus
Through the Data folder that Roon OS shares on your network. The app stops Roon Server from the ROCK’s own web page, as Roon’s help asks before its database is touched, writes the presets, then starts it again. Checked with audiolaz Room on a Mac and on a Windows PC.
A Linux Core
Roon Server on Audiolinux, a NUC…: type the Core’s root password once in the app. It sets up its own access, then forgets the password; it is written nowhere. If the Core does not let root in with a password, the app shows another way, under “Without password”.
Roon on the same Mac or PC
When Roon runs as the Core on the computer that runs audiolaz Room, there is nothing to set.
Roon on another computer
The app hands you the filter and shows where it goes: in Roon, MUSE → Convolution → Browse. Load “No correction” the same way, to compare at the same level.
Roon reads its settings only when it starts, so the app pauses the music and restarts Roon: about 40 seconds without music. Each step is backed up first; if one fails, the previous configuration is put back.
The level is handled too. A filter can raise peaks into clipping, so Roon needs some headroom. The app works out the Headroom Adjustment and sets it when it installs the filter, so Convolution on and off play at the same volume; when you load the filter by hand, it tells you the value to set.
05Check
Measure again, filter on.
With the filter on in Roon, measure again. The app lays what it measured over what it predicted, and gives the room its new score next to the one before and the one predicted. If the score falls short, it says what to look at: that the filter is on in Roon (DSP → Convolution), and that nothing changed in the room. This check is free.
Then listen: switch between your sound and “No correction” in Roon. Both play at the same level, so the only thing that changes is the correction.
Why it matters
No trip through the Roon app to load the filter.
Roon plays convolution filters; it does not measure the room. Loading a filter is a desktop task: Roon’s help says it “must be done on a Mac or Windows computer”. A ROCK or a Nucleus accepts no other software, so the usual path is a measuring program on a computer, a filter you design and export, then the Roon app on a Mac or a PC to load it.
audiolaz Room takes that last step itself: it installs the filter into the Core, ROCK and Nucleus included. It still runs on a computer of yours (a Mac, a Windows PC, Linux, a NAS or a Raspberry Pi), and you drive it from your phone’s browser. What it removes is loading the filter through the Roon app.
What each step needs
Free to measure. A licence to listen.
Each licence is bought once, for the computer that runs audiolaz. Prices are announced at launch.
audiolaz Room
The filter you install at step 4: your sounds and “No correction”, bass optimisation at your seat (with a calibrated microphone), the expert settings and your own target curve, and the install into Roon, by the app or by hand.
audiolaz Room Plus
All of Room, plus our own convolution engine (in test), which the app sets up on your own Linux Roon Server (not a ROCK or Nucleus) or on a Mac, playing to the DAC plugged into it: a Roon zone of its own, where your sounds and “No correction” switch in one tap, at the same level, and compare blind on Linux. The same corrector takes your other sources too: AirPlay (Apple TV included, picture and sound in sync), Spotify Connect, UPnP and every app on a Mac. Also live tuning of your speakers and the wider image (with a calibrated microphone).
Always free
Measuring, with a phone or a calibrated microphone; the result, its score and the four sounds’ curves; comparing your two speakers at 1 m; the measurement that checks the filter (steps 1, 2 and 5).
More on the two licences: questions and details.
Plainly
What it will not do.
- It does not damp your room: a cut lowers a resonance at your seat; a metre away, it rings as before.
- It cannot fill a null: where two sound paths cancel, boosting only heats the amplifier. Boosts stay small; the cuts do the work.
- It does not fix a bad speaker. It tells you if your two speakers differ.
- It is best at your listening position; a metre away, less so.
Read next
More on room correction.
A question this guide does not answer?