Active Room Treatment (ART) by Dirac

[kawauso]

I do plan on it, when I sit in front of this system now I have a hard time getting anything done I just get lost I read somewhere about center support range and moving the low support for the center from 50Hz to 80Hz. Clarity improved for me when I tried it so I tried the sub thing and the results were the same, a touch more clean/clear. When I got to my decorrelated playlist I noticed the other bonus for the subs. It was a win/win plus less dry which for me was another win, let freedom ring (a little bit anyway).

ART already sounded good from the start, but it’s great to see that fine-tuning the settings brought it even closer to your personal preference.

You can really tell how much you’re enjoying it.

I also remember reading your comment about experiencing an Atmos-like, enveloping sensation with ART even though your speaker layout isn’t a native Atmos configuration, which is fantastic.

 

[JRowland]

ART already sounded good from the start, but it’s great to see that fine-tuning the settings brought it even closer to your personal preference.

You can really tell how much you’re enjoying it.

I also remember reading your comment about experiencing an Atmos-like, enveloping sensation with ART even though your speaker layout isn’t a native Atmos configuration, which is fantastic.

If you like to experiment like I do try this one in stereo, I’m sure there are some production tricks but just close your eyes and see if you hear your surrounds.

 

[kawauso]

If you like to experiment like I do try this one in stereo, I’m sure there are some production tricks but just close your eyes and see if you hear your surrounds.

I listened to ZHU x Skrillex x THEY – Working For It in stereo with no upmixing, and the soundstage extended all the way to the sides.

With ART (Dirac) turned off, I could still sense some width, but it didn’t extend as far to the sides.

I’m not entirely sure why this happens, but it’s interesting.

 

[JRowland]

I’m not entirely sure why this happens, but it’s interesting.

Like the baby in the OutKast song, all over the ceiling for me with no height speakers. Audyssey did not present in the same way, it did not do as good of a job for me anyway.

 

[agentcooper]

I limited my subs upper support to 70 Hz except for the LFE channel.

Are you talking about self support here? Or support from other speakers? I can’t tell from the context and I’d like to try what you’re doing. Thanks.

 

[ban25]

There are no SACD drives for PC or Mac. So you have to acquire an old Sony (or Oppo) networked Blu-ray player that plays SACDs. Someone wrote a script that turns either into a SACD server on the network when you plug in a USB thumb drive into the player. I then use a program called sacd_extract from Github to connect to the player (ip address of player needed) from my Mac and transfer the files to my Mac’s HDD. I then put them on a large SD card that I plug into my Panasonic UHD player, which plays MPCM to the Denon receiver. I activate the Atmos speakers with Auro-3D. Beautiful with ART. The DSDs are perfect 1 bit copies of the SACD. Seperate files are created for stereo and multichannel. The single track of Bitches Brew in multichannel is about 2.5GB so you can imagine the resolution of the recording

You can also do it with a PS3, which is what I've done. Maybe a bit easier to source.

Archiving Super Audio CDs (SACDs) With an Old PS3

Archiving Super Audio CDs (SACDs) With an Old PS3: These days, MP3 is the king of music file formats. This is great for portable players with headphones of normal (or even decent) quality. However, once the equipment starts scaling up in quality, it is possible to start hearing the resul…

www.instructables.com

 

[mmares056]

Played around today removing support for various speakers and measuring the difference. Here are two sweeps of the C channel:

• C is supported by itself, L+R, SL+SR, subwoofers
• C is supported subwoofers

ART gets it done either way! One can see the different filters created to achieve the same result. (But the graphs are messy and I didn't take screenshots.) I didn't do any subjective testing along the way,

Is one way better than the other? No idea!

I do know that after monkeying around a lot, I listened to some demo material and...huh...did I mess something up? One effect in particular that was fantastic before and spanned a wide expanse behind me seemed to move up front. We'll see if I need to revert back or start over, but for now heading down to watch something with the fam. (Probably "Phoenix" (2014))

Edit: nevermind about the above problem. It was an AVR thing. For whatever reason it was not seeing the Atmos signal. I noticed it said “Dolby Surround.” A simple on/off and that impact is back in the correct spot

P.S. One annoying thing about Dirac: when loading a previously saved project, why does it have to calculate the filters again? Seems like those are just some values it could save along with the rest of the project .

This has been my experience too. Minor if any, difference in the frequency response.

Yesterday, I did experiment with a different support level parameters and I like the dynamics of these parameters so far. These parameters keep each speaker on its own group and use -18dB self-support. It seems that by doing this it maintains speaker cross-support, and it doesn't reduce the speaker's own contribution to the final FR.

 

[levimax]

You can also do it with a PS3, which is what I've done. Maybe a bit easier to source.

Archiving Super Audio CDs (SACDs) With an Old PS3

Archiving Super Audio CDs (SACDs) With an Old PS3: These days, MP3 is the king of music file formats. This is great for portable players with headphones of normal (or even decent) quality. However, once the equipment starts scaling up in quality, it is possible to start hearing the resul…

www.instructables.com

Trying to find the right used PS3 (they are a vanishingly small percentage of all PS3's sold) is extremely difficult and expensive if you do manage to find one. The players needed for the USB drive hack method are plentiful and cheap.

 

[AudioJester]

Do you guys think ART is a finished product? Or will it continue development?
Would it ever go higher in the frequency range?

 

[Dj7675]

Do you guys think ART is a finished product? Or will it continue development?
Would it ever go higher in the frequency range?

Beta of ART with Storm was up to 300hz. Not sure if they intend on going back to that or not. I used it up to 300hz and didn’t notice issues with it, but I would think that there could be issues with it.

 

[mmares056]

From the graphs, it looks like the combination of MultEQ-X and MSO is already capable of producing a flat and sufficiently good sound.
However, in terms of overall sound quality, there appears to be a clear one-step, or even two-step, gap compared to ART.
In addition to the reduction in decay, the consistent low-frequency phase alignment across the LCR channels also seems to be a major factor contributing to the exceptionally clean and natural sense of resonance.

ART's advanced time domain performance algorithm is what separates ART from the rest IMO. With MultEQ-X I could never achieve optimal subs to main phase/time alignment equally for my LCR. I had to compromise on one or the other. With ART phase and time alignment is exceptionally good amongst all the speakers.

 

[AudioJester]

Beta of ART with Storm was up to 300hz. Not sure if they intend on going back to that or not. I used it up to 300hz and didn’t notice issues with it, but I would think that there could be issues with it.

Getting to the room transition point would be awesome. But I guess above 100Hz, a lot of the cancellation signals etc. may become audible?
If it could go up to the room transition point would make some other expensive solutions eg Cardioid almost redundant/uneccesary?

 

[KenMasters]

Looks very good, does the different low FSL-setting effect the decay times?

Not that I can see.

 

[Denon545]

I limited my subs upper support to 70 Hz except for the LFE channel. For me on top of keeping left and right sides separate it improved the directivity even more. I’m using very little support currently and this increased the spread which I notice is what effects that “wet” or “dry” feel. So tune for taste seems visible as well looking at the corrected spread?

I’m using a lot of different music content, for Atmos a good one for me has been Slump by OutKast from the Aquemini album. Towards the end a baby is crying and there is movement that changes (less or more) for me depending on my settings. Another is the Billie Eilish song I Didn’t Change My Number from the Happier Than Ever album. I learned of this song through this forum (I’m a classic rock and metal fan typically) on one of the bass threads, lots of decorrelated lower frequency action in the chorus that gets progressively more intense each chorus. Cutting the upper support for the subs from 150Hz to 80Hz first then 70Hz made the “outside of your head/body” bass more pronounced for me. This song has a mono bass line that continues to tickle your feet/chest/head while the decorrelated content hits from all around, it’s a really neat feeling that I like very much. I don’t do movies or really TV so until I try that I’m not sure how badly, if at all, any of this is affecting the video enjoyment part of this hobby a lot of folks like.

Just wanted to say thanks for posting this!

I changed my subs FSH from 150hz down to 80hz, and that really tightened up the sound for music. It seems to also gain clarity too. It never sounded bad at 150, but it’s even better at 80. I didn’t quite go to 70hz like you mentioned as I thought 80 would help keep the fullness to the sound that I enjoy.

Cheers!

 

[smygolf]

As far as a finished product - they need to sort out infra.
Even if it means that all below 20hz are not being processed.

 

[smygolf]

Just wanted to say thanks for posting this!

I changed my subs FSH from 150hz down to 80hz, and that really tightened up the sound for music. It seems to also gain clarity too. It never sounded bad at 150, but it’s even better at 80. I didn’t quite go to 70hz like you mentioned as I thought 80 would help keep the fullness to the sound that I enjoy.

Cheers!

Damn, now i need to try it out

 

[AudioJester]

Damn, now i need to try it out

Let us know what you think.
I seem to be endlessly tweaking ART, in reality not much gain from out of the box settings

 

[kawauso]

Getting to the room transition point would be awesome. But I guess above 100Hz, a lot of the cancellation signals etc. may become audible?
If it could go up to the room transition point would make some other expensive solutions eg Cardioid almost redundant/uneccesary?

If ART were to extend control into higher frequencies, some people might feel discomfort with localization or imaging. That said, it would be nice to have an option to extend the upper limit of control to around 300 Hz.
Since cardioid speakers can control a fairly wide range, roughly from 100 to 1000 Hz, having such an option would not make them unnecessary.
I haven’t heard an active cardioid solution, so I can’t comment on that, but passive cardioid car-audio solutions using 15-inch woofers have a unique appeal.

 

[dlaloum]

So, more adjustments and more measurements...

I added the 2nd sub - my Setup now has 2 x Gallo TR1 subs (spec is 24hz -3db)

I previously theorised that having 4 full range speakers for by base layer, capable of 24Hz and 35Hz per respective pair... additional subs might be redundant.

Well - I think that I was wrong... the waterfall charts are showing dramatic improvements - I will post those later.

I still need to play around some more with the Target Curves... both manual and shelves/handles.

From the descriptions by Dirac, I feel that the handles are likely to more gently adjust the speakers natural response, than the manual target curves, that more aggressively attempt to make the system comply...

I also may (time, and silent access to the house permitting) do some measurements of equivalent DL and DLBC configurations

 

[levimax]

So, more adjustments and more measurements...

I added the 2nd sub - my Setup now has 2 x Gallo TR1 subs (spec is 24hz -3db)

I previously theorised that having 4 full range speakers for by base layer, capable of 24Hz and 35Hz per respective pair... additional subs might be redundant.

Well - I think that I was wrong... the waterfall charts are showing dramatic improvements - I will post those later.

I still need to play around some more with the Target Curves... both manual and shelves/handles.

From the descriptions by Dirac, I feel that the handles are likely to more gently adjust the speakers natural response, than the manual target curves, that more aggressively attempt to make the system comply...

I also may (time, and silent access to the house permitting) do some measurements of equivalent DL and DLBC configurations

I have seen a lot of very impressive before and after waterfall charts. How do you like the sound with ART?