REW was easy but the results were bad. Worse than uncorrected, I would not use it. I was not surprised — I am no expert but I have always believed that looking at amplitude response only is no good. The transfer function is a complex function (complex in the mathematical sense, it has two dimensions), and looking at only amplitude and ignoring phase is like saying, to get from Chicago to New York you drive 800 miles, which direction? Never mind, just drive 800 miles.
I didn’t try anything else, because I had a strong recommendation for Acourate from a friend whose engineering sense I respect, a development manager at Microsoft I worked with.
I wasn’t really difficult. Just rolling up my sleeves. I consider Mitch’s book essential:
The project took a few days, maybe a week, of dedicated time.
Once I have learned it, I have done other rooms in an hour or two (including finding the mic).
The software is not bad, the reason I and others talk about the learning curve is that it is a rich tool kit that can do many things. I didn’t want to learn everything audio, just wanted to do this, Mitch’s book led me through it. Would have taken less time if I had followed the instructions from the beginning and not tried to take shortcuts — it’s a guy thing.