[DAWgEAR]

The current issue of Sound on Sound reviews it as well. I'd say they give it a "reasonably favorable review with some qualifications".

I have several bass traps in my room and they have improved things to some extent. Experimenting with speaker positioning and mix position location made a HUGE difference. Beyond these measures, ARC further improves my ability to hear what I'm doing while mixing. It's pretty significant.

As long as one does not have illusions that ARC is a substitute for other measures, I think it is very useful. I doubt that ARC will make a horribly skewed room sound great, but it can make an OK sounding room easier to mix in.

To summarize, first optimize the speaker and mix position placement (free!), then go for broadband absorbtion to the extent that space allows, then, if necessary, ARC is the icing on the cake.

I tried a lot of different combinations of placements etc., and in my experiments ARC sounded best when the room was reasonably good sounding to begin with. The more "work" ARC had to do, the less satisfactory the results.

Is it worth the asking price? I would easily spend that amount to buy a better preamp, compressor, converter, plugin, monitor etc. if it made a similar kind of improvement in my final mixes. As long as one understands what it can and can't do, I think it is a very useful addition.