Frank207be
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Is there anyone in this forum with 4 subs using -24dB support in both the subwoofer group and towards all other speaker groups?
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Active Room Treatment (ART) by Dirac
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EngineerNate
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Glad I use randomized passwords everywhere.
I tried it once and compared to my default which is -18 for everything. Honestly I could tell no difference so have reverted back to -18 for all except left subwoofer self support at -24. No particular reason except the support subs are all more powerful than my number 1. I didn't do 0dB ref level stress testing, however.
ThELiZ
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ART corrects only up to 150Hz. Dirac Live takes over from there and I’d imagine the advice is the same as when just doing it standalone.
Dirac Live also applies in the 20Hz to 150Hz range - overlaid on top of ART...
Yes... but as the single feature that has the greatest impact on sound quality, why would you?
In the net gain/loss equation, Dirac provides the greatest gain...
The electronics quality, SINAD, THD, IMD these are all solved problems - they are all sufficient to be beyond thresholds of audibility - Software speaker/room adjustment / treatment becomes the next most important thing... Dirac Live improved midrange clarity, vocals/dialogue, and imaging in my setup - even when setting the Target curve to match my speakers measured frequency response (ie: minimising EQ, but still allowing Dirac to do its thing in phase and impulse )
You can set the curtain to 150Hz (or lower) if you mean just have the ART feature. I find giving it 100Hz or an octave to transition (handoff to Dirac Live as Joss Walker says) sounds better than shutting it off at 150Hz.
Or alternatively define a target curve that follows the native frequency response curve of the speakers - thereby minimising EQ, while keeping the impulse/phase benefits...
Frank207be
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Thanks for sharing. Guess my room is quite problematic as I adjusted my 5.5dB boost ART curve to -24 and immediately noticed the difference between the -18 curve. In the evening I also adjusted my 2dB boost curve from -18 to -24 and brought the 5.5dB boost curve back to 4dB. Happy days!
Miniyouuuu
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What is you speaker layout? How many speaker/subs do you have?
That decay in the ART low bass is nice, but assume require many speakers canceling each other at very specific ranges.
In my 2.2 layout I got these improvements:
No EQ (and no subs):
2 subs and EQ (by MSO)
Dirac Live:
In my case with just 2 main speakers (MoFi SP10 ME) I can’t improve higher than 150hz frequencies.
ThELiZ
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My results were running just a 2.0 system.
I think it would help if you showed waterfall from 10-200Hz, not full spectrum. It’s hard to see what’s going on in the area ART handles.
And 60dB scale
I tried -24dB, but as @middlemarch says, could not really hear any difference from -18dB even at reference level. It also measured pretty consistently with -18dB. My best guess is that this is room/system dependant, so might not work quite the same for all.
EngineerNate
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Where do you change the support levels? I found the sliders at the bottom to adjust range but it wasn't obvious to me in the UI where level was adjusted.
Dirac set my mains to support 50hz to 150hz automatically. Two questions on that. 1. Does Dirac set that range by default or does it take into consideration the measured capabilities? 2. Is the -18/24 support setting adjusting the maximum amount of LFE that gets sent to the mains? Since ART isn't a traditional high pass on the mains, it's not entirely clear to me how to ensure I'm not overdoing it wrt their capabilities.
Dirac set my mains to support 50hz to 150hz automatically. Two questions on that. 1. Does Dirac set that range by default or does it take into consideration the measured capabilities? 2. Is the -18/24 support setting adjusting the maximum amount of LFE that gets sent to the mains? Since ART isn't a traditional high pass on the mains, it's not entirely clear to me how to ensure I'm not overdoing it wrt their capabilities.
90sNintendoKid
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I've been experimenting a lot of speaker EQ on my Denon 3800H over the last 3 months. I've been using Dirac ART and OCA's A1 Evo Acoustix.
I noticed people in this thread mentioning that they can't hear a difference between different support levels etc.
I'd like to highlight that over the last 3 months of experimentation, I've learnt that post EQ measurements alongside my subjective opinion are important.
For example, to me Dirac ART sounds great and so does A1 Evo Acoustix using the same target curves. After post EQ measurements I realised that Dirac ART doesn't follow my target curve as closely as A1 in the bass frequencies. In fact at the moment, it's not close at all.
I've still got more experimenting to do with Dirac ART and A1 and this prompted me to buy an additional Minidsp 2x4 HD so that I can try out 4 subwoofer outputs into 2 Minidsps and try MSO with ART and A1 (I realise that MSO suggests a single subwoofer input and running a single subwoofer output would defeat the purpose of ART, I'm just doing this for fun and experimentation).
I noticed people in this thread mentioning that they can't hear a difference between different support levels etc.
I'd like to highlight that over the last 3 months of experimentation, I've learnt that post EQ measurements alongside my subjective opinion are important.
For example, to me Dirac ART sounds great and so does A1 Evo Acoustix using the same target curves. After post EQ measurements I realised that Dirac ART doesn't follow my target curve as closely as A1 in the bass frequencies. In fact at the moment, it's not close at all.
I've still got more experimenting to do with Dirac ART and A1 and this prompted me to buy an additional Minidsp 2x4 HD so that I can try out 4 subwoofer outputs into 2 Minidsps and try MSO with ART and A1 (I realise that MSO suggests a single subwoofer input and running a single subwoofer output would defeat the purpose of ART, I'm just doing this for fun and experimentation).
To change support levels click on 3 dots that are by each speaker group. That opens the menu where you can set which other groups support a given group together with support range and support levels. At least that is how it looks on Mac.
Dirac sets the support range by taking into account measured response - the only way it would know capabilities of the speakers.
For the last question, the setting is -1 to -24dB, with -24 being highest support level (despite negative number). You can set support that sub group provides to other groups differently through three dot menu that opens up. If you have capable subs, support level should generally be higher than for other speaker groups.
In scenario with capable subs, ART seems to prefer them for low end support to other speakers. I think one of the reasons for clarity that ART provides is that it tries to offload other speakers and use them at higher SPL in the range where they are really capable to contribute with low distortion and without breaking much sweat.
From the Dirac ART set up guide, click your mouse on the 3 dots in a support group. The sliders adjust the same as punching in the numbers for FS low and high, the level is set per group (-18 is default).
1. I don’t know, all my speakers can hit 50Hz and the default is no lower than that. Hopefully someone with speakers that can’t do that can answer if ART adjusts their system or not. Art does put a curtain on the FS high for my weaker sub set to 120Hz so it can adjust for performance based on the measurements for sure.
2. -1 means the filter for that support won’t try very hard to correct problems whereas -24 means that support filter will try as hard as it can. If you look at each support filter and what it is doing per group if there are boosts (correction above the 0 line) and you lower the support level of that channel the boost will decrease. LFE is controlled by the subwoofer group 1 settings so how much lfe goes to your mains can be viewed with show filters for subwoofer 1 group.
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