• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Active Room Treatment (ART) by Dirac

markus

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Sep 8, 2019
Messages
712
Likes
824
The subwoofer needs to be LINEAR so a correction algorithm can be done. So it needs to be loud enough to not compress/make noise with ports etc. - then ART should be able to do a useful correction.
You mean "linear" as in "linear time-invariant"? That's what rooms, electronics and even "wobbling" SVS subs (largely) are.
 

IamJF

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Apr 27, 2023
Messages
558
Likes
666
Location
Austria
You mean "linear" as in "linear time-invariant"? That's what rooms, electronics and even "wobbling" SVS subs (largely) are.
Yes! They are as long as you don't drive them to hard.
What happens quickly when you aim for loud home cinema! (or very loud - ATMOS reference level) You need very capable woofers when you calculate your levels with very deep tunings when ported.
 

napfkuchen

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2022
Messages
366
Likes
491
Location
Germany
Yes! They are as long as you don't drive them to hard.
What happens quickly when you aim for loud home cinema! (or very loud - ATMOS reference level) You need very capable woofers when you calculate your levels with very deep tunings when ported.
(Un)fortunately (?) my neighbors are still far from the necessary reference level (dead and/or deaf), so the comfortable listening volume is usually around 80 to 90 dB SPL. Thanks for all the answers, I'm wobbling now. :cool: (be sure to get the ATMOS edition, it's a good experience)
 

IamJF

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Apr 27, 2023
Messages
558
Likes
666
Location
Austria
I like the dialoge about 65dBSpl. So it's easy to hear but everything is not too loud.
Someone here did a SPL recording of cinema sound and dialog was at 75dBSpl and loud effects at 105dBSpl - that's exactly ATMOS reference level.
So you can expect 30dB dynamics from speech level -> 95-100dBSpl ist still the level your speakers have to produce at the listener in your room. And woofers should be able to do 10dB more? At 20Hz ...
 

Vacceo

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 9, 2022
Messages
2,701
Likes
2,857
(Un)fortunately (?) my neighbors are still far from the necessary reference level (dead and/or deaf), so the comfortable listening volume is usually around 80 to 90 dB SPL. Thanks for all the answers, I'm wobbling now. :cool: (be sure to get the ATMOS edition, it's a good experience)
Listening above that in a sustained way will probably hurt you. THX spl reference volume is 85db with 20 extra db for peaks, so your current pressure seems quite adequate. :)
 

dlaloum

Major Contributor
Joined
Oct 4, 2021
Messages
3,189
Likes
2,457
I like the dialoge about 65dBSpl. So it's easy to hear but everything is not too loud.
Someone here did a SPL recording of cinema sound and dialog was at 75dBSpl and loud effects at 105dBSpl - that's exactly ATMOS reference level.
So you can expect 30dB dynamics from speech level -> 95-100dBSpl ist still the level your speakers have to produce at the listener in your room. And woofers should be able to do 10dB more? At 20Hz ...
The Dolby LateNight mode may suit you well!
 

IamJF

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Apr 27, 2023
Messages
558
Likes
666
Location
Austria
The Dolby LateNight mode may suit you well!
Nah - my woofers are sufficiently dimensioned and "housemates" are brave ;-)

But I really don't understand all the whining about dialogue and dynamics when every BD player or amp can help with that.
 

dlaloum

Major Contributor
Joined
Oct 4, 2021
Messages
3,189
Likes
2,457
Nah - my woofers are sufficiently dimensioned and "housemates" are brave ;-)

But I really don't understand all the whining about dialogue and dynamics when every BD player or amp can help with that.
Dynamics is the ability to instantly go from quiet to loud or back... which is what all amps do (or are supposed to!)
BD players - provide a direct feed of the recorded channels for your AVR to then process.

Not sure what you mean about a BD player being involved in dialogue?
 

IamJF

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Apr 27, 2023
Messages
558
Likes
666
Location
Austria
Not sure what you mean about a BD player being involved in dialogue?
You can restrict dynamics with dolby night mode in every BD player and Receiver I know. It's just named differently sometimes. And many people don't know about it ;)
 

dlaloum

Major Contributor
Joined
Oct 4, 2021
Messages
3,189
Likes
2,457
You can restrict dynamics with dolby night mode in every BD player and Receiver I know. It's just named differently sometimes. And many people don't know about it ;)
In the AVR, late night mode is only available when loudness management is enabled... and unlike previous generations of "loudness" features, it appears to work differently, and there is little documentation out there telling you what it does exactly...

This might provide a hint:


From that Dolby Page:

Dolby Dialog Intelligence is a technology that detects speech/dialog, extracts it and measures the extracted speech using the ITU-R BS.1770 algorithm. It is an industry-proven method for dialog/speech loudness measurements. The process of using an algorithm to extract and measuring the loudness of the speech, is commonly referred to as a speech-gated loudness measurement. This is compared the BS.1770 measurement which employs a relative-level gated or level-gated loudness measurement which only measures the "loudest parts" of the program.

The program loudness and dialog loudness measurements are based on the entire program/media and meant to provide an estimate of the loudness for the program/media as a whole. Short-term loudness is another loudness metric based on BS.1770, but using a 3-second window instead of the entire program and a relative-level gate is not used. It provides more of a localized measure of loudness in the program for the time the short-term loudness is measured, and defined in recommendations.

Loudness Range (LRA) is often use dto gauge the dynamics off a program or media. It is a statistical metric based on the short-term loudness values of the program, and meant to give an indication of the range of loudness a program has measured in LU.

This is useful in cases where media has multiple components, say background music and dialog. It's reasonable that a human listener would expect loudness of the dialog to be the anchor of how loud media is judged to be.


So I think that loudness + late night might be doing a lot more than just compression...
 

KaMatthi

Member
Joined
Feb 13, 2022
Messages
25
Likes
5
I did a visual analysis as well. Not professional but here's the break down.


For SPL:

Looks like it's: DL-ART (gold) > DL+MSO (purple) > DBLC (green) > No EQ (blue)

1) DL-ART flattens peaks and addresses the Nulls/dips.
2) DL+MSO flattens peaks and mitigates dips but they exist.
3) DLBC, flattens peaks but does not address the dips

View attachment 293302
Wouldnt it be more efficiently to use MSO prior to Dirac ART? I would assume, you could harmonize your dips and nulls more effectively with MSO and using afterwards ART? At least this is what I experienced so far.
 

tjcinnamon

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Mar 20, 2021
Messages
547
Likes
228
Wouldnt it be more efficiently to use MSO prior to Dirac ART? I would assume, you could harmonize your dips and nulls more effectively with MSO and using afterwards ART? At least this is what I experienced so far.
In my option in yes. But perhaps dedicate a single sub to purely “support” duty depending how far down your mains go.
 

Daka

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 6, 2021
Messages
332
Likes
219
Am I correct thinking - with ART settings being -24dB max support setting that means it would play opposite polarity sound at certain lower output so the outcome would be cancelled sound by 24dB?
So would that mean it would be good to have lower output subwoofer closer to you that could perfectly handle those duties like KEF kc62 since it doesn’t need to match output to main bigger subwoofers?
 

jtatknox

Member
Joined
Sep 7, 2021
Messages
73
Likes
58
Wouldnt it be more efficiently to use MSO prior to Dirac ART? I would assume, you could harmonize your dips and nulls more effectively with MSO and using afterwards ART? At least this is what I experienced so far.
No, Dirac Live Bass Control would be the better solution.
 

azzy_mazzy

Member
Joined
May 31, 2020
Messages
71
Likes
76
Am I correct thinking - with ART settings being -24dB max support setting that means it would play opposite polarity sound at certain lower output so the outcome would be cancelled sound by 24dB?
So would that mean it would be good to have lower output subwoofer closer to you that could perfectly handle those duties like KEF kc62 since it doesn’t need to match output to main bigger subwoofers?
from my understanding that value is for the algorithm to suggest how much it should be using a certain support group and doesn't directly translate to dB levels.
 

Daka

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 6, 2021
Messages
332
Likes
219
from my understanding that value is for the algorithm to suggest how much it should be using a certain support group and doesn't directly translate to dB levels.
-24dB being the highest support whilst -6dB lowest The only way it would make sense is this being a target of how much SPL it will try to cancel using the support group. From what I’ve seen ART won’t cancel the sound entirely but lower its level to the point you won’t hear it. Otherwise they could use ambiguous low medium high levels of support.
 

azzy_mazzy

Member
Joined
May 31, 2020
Messages
71
Likes
76
-24dB being the highest support whilst -6dB lowest The only way it would make sense is this being a target of how much SPL it will try to cancel using the support group. From what I’ve seen ART won’t cancel the sound entirely but lower its level to the point you won’t hear it. Otherwise they could use ambiguous low medium high levels of support.
that would make sense but in their documentation they do use it as "ambiguous low medium high levels of support"
here they are if you want to read them and come to your own conclusion
 

Daka

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 6, 2021
Messages
332
Likes
219
that would make sense but in their documentation they do use it as "ambiguous low medium high levels of support"
here they are if you want to read them and come to your own conclusion
In this guide they specify:

Controls the amount of support the speakers in this groups gives to the main speaker.
-1 dB will contribute a minimal amount, -24 dB will contribute a maximal amount.

Default is -18dB. So that would be strength of cancelation. Hence coming back to my original question - since some already indicated first sub gets LFE and rest are doing support work (not dissimilar to current DL bass management) - having small capable subwoofers (kc62) close to you (<1m) might perhaps do the trick? They would have enough output to handle -18db under 80Hz (and remain non localizable, since Dirac mentions close support speakers should have a lower level setting)
 

Oddball

Active Member
Joined
Apr 2, 2024
Messages
103
Likes
98
Location
EU
I am with you - after reading all the ART threads and other information available, no clue whatsoever as to how it that going to work for my system. I guess that is just what is out there and there won't be much more. Many people are trying to adjust their systems for ART support but I have no idea on which basis are they doing that.
 
Top Bottom