Dirac ART on Marantz AV10

[Paul McNeil]

I recently was able to add Dirac ART to my Marantz AV10. What I'm wondering is whether it would be predicted that any difference could be measured, using REW, between Dirac with Bass Control only, and Dirac with additionally ART.

I have made REW measurements (stereo mode) of the two conditions, and without Dirac equalization. I don't see any SPL difference between Dirac with Bass Control and with the upgrade, Dirac ART (see graph below). What besides SPL, if anything, should I be looking at in the REW measurements that might reveal a measurable difference between the two?

Subjectively, after only limited listening time, I would say that Dirac with ART improves clarity of dialogue and instrument separation (music), over Dirac with Bass Control only. Here's a link that explains what Dirac ART is supposed to do....https://www.dirac.com/live/art-technology/

 

[masterhw]

Decay would be where ART is making the biggest difference.

 

[Geertidow]

What kind of setup do you have? How many speakers and where are they placed?

 

[Paul McNeil]

What kind of setup do you have? How many speakers and where are they placed?

I have side and rear surrounds, and 4 height channels, and two subwoofers (left and right front corners). So 7.4.2, I think!


Marantz AV10 (pre/pro)
NAD M25 (amp)
McIntosh M205 (amp)
Carry Cinema 5 (amp)
Revel Performa F226Be (l/r)
Revel Performa C426Be (center)
Revel Performa F126Be (surrounds)
Klipsch (back surrounds)
Marin Logan (front and back, left and right, Atmos height)
Two SVS 13 Ultra Cylinders (subwoofers, both with amplifier upgrade, one front corner)
One SVS 17 Ultra (the other front corner)
Oppo Bluray player
Music Hall turntable
Roon nucleus
Sony Bravia OLED XR-83A90J

 

[Geertidow]

That is a longer list than the total inventory of my house! Sounds nice.

 

[Blueprint]

DLBC does its work in the frequency domain. ART, in the time domain. There should (will) be very little appreciable difference in FR graphs between DLBC and ART. Waterfall graph from REW would be great.

 

[Paul McNeil]

DLBC does its work in the frequency domain. ART, in the time domain. There should (will) be very little appreciable difference in FR graphs between DLBC and ART. Waterfall graph from REW would be great.

Yes, thanks for the suggestion Blueprint. However, there doesn't appear to be much of a difference.

 

[Sal1950]

I have side and rear surrounds, and 4 height channels, and two subwoofers (left and right front corners). So 7.4.2, I think!


Marantz AV10 (pre/pro)
NAD M25 (amp)
McIntosh M205 (amp)
Carry Cinema 5 (amp)
Revel Performa F226Be (l/r)
Revel Performa C426Be (center)
Revel Performa F126Be (surrounds)
Klipsch (back surrounds)
Marin Logan (front and back, left and right, Atmos height)
Two SVS 13 Ultra Cylinders (subwoofers, both with amplifier upgrade, one front corner)
One SVS 17 Ultra (the other front corner)
Oppo Bluray player
Music Hall turntable
Roon nucleus
Sony Bravia OLED XR-83A90J

Nice system! I'd love to see some photos, etc of your rig and room.
When you have time we usually post them in the Members section here,

'The kit we bought, our current setups'

Jun 12, 2016

after a few of you expressed a intrest in just what each of us wasted our money on I though I would make a thread.

Post your current setups, stuff you used to have. Anything really but you must of owned it...( or made it)

• Thomas Savage
• Replies: 1,234
• Forum: Member Area

• 

BTW, If I count your speakers correctly you have a 7.2.4. 7 floor level speakers, 2 subwoofers, 4 Atmos height speakers. Just sayin
Mine is similar though now in a bit of an upgrade transition, new photos coming soon.

 

[Blueprint]

Yes, thanks for the suggestion Blueprint. However, there doesn't appear to be much of a difference.

Thanks for posting those. Two possible conclusions to draw. First of all, the DLBC response is good. I assume you have either a large room or well-placed acoustic treatment. Probably both. Secondly, the lack of improvement is disappointing. I notice above you mentioned you have two subwoofers. This result would suggest that perhaps four are required, or for at least one of the two to be placed on the rear wall. Good insight here. I’m sure waterfall graphs are going to pop up a lot here and in other places over the next few weeks as Denon and Marantz users run this software. I look forward to the results.

 

[Paul McNeil]

Thanks for posting those. Two possible conclusions to draw. First of all, the DLBC response is good. I assume you have either a large room or well-placed acoustic treatment. Probably both. Secondly, the lack of improvement is disappointing. I notice above you mentioned you have two subwoofers. This result would suggest that perhaps four are required, or for at least one of the two to be placed on the rear wall. Good insight here. I’m sure waterfall graphs are going to pop up a lot here and in other places over the next few weeks as Denon and Marantz users run this software. I look forward to the results.

Yes, I have a very large room (5.0M l x 4.0 M w x 2.4M h). And yes the DLBC response is good and I was skeptical whether or not ART could improve on it (but of course I had to give it a try, the wife wouldn't even notice!). That being said, one needs a tool such as the REW waterfall plot to monitor the effect of any changes made for improvement of ART response, for example changes in speaker ''grouping' (hard concept to grasp but it is emphasized in the official ART instructions) or the addition as you suggested of a rear wall subwoofer (which I can by the way implement, there's an unused sub sitting under the pool table).

 

[Paul McNeil]

Just one further remark: why, Oh Lord, does Dirac not provide before and after waterfall measurements (or whatever they deem best) for the purpose of adjusting speaker grouping or subwoofer addition/placement?! They suggest looking at predicted 'spread' a ludicrously awkward method as it involves waiting minutes between calculations and so would require taking snapshots of the results for JPG viewing, as best I can judge.

 

[Blueprint]

Yes, I have a very large room (5.0M l x 4.0 M w x 2.4M h). And yes the DLBC response is good and I was skeptical whether or not ART could improve on it (but of course I had to give it a try, the wife wouldn't even notice!). That being said, one needs a tool such as the REW waterfall plot to monitor the effect of any changes made for improvement of ART response, for example changes in speaker ''grouping' (hard concept to grasp but it is emphasized in the official ART instructions) or the addition as you suggested of a rear wall subwoofer (which I can by the way implement, there's an unused sub sitting under the pool table).

I suspect a subwoofer on the rear wall would help. My understanding of ART is that it’s a more complicated version of a DBA that allows you to use multiple sources in multiple positions so that they can actively cancel each other where need be. Even so, the best results will surely come from parallel subwoofers.

 

[Oddball]

Yes, thanks for the suggestion Blueprint. However, there doesn't appear to be much of a difference.

Many thanks for sharing. Although many members report great results with ART, my fear is exactly what happened to you. There are similarities between our systems, but my room is larger, multi-purpose and irregularly shaped.

Well at least if you did not try you would not know.

 

[TimoJ]

Yes, thanks for the suggestion Blueprint. However, there doesn't appear to be much of a difference.

I think you ART isn't working at all. Why there's no 20Hz drop with ART or did you enable infra bass?
You should post REW decay results or DLBC and ART with these settings:

 

[ban25]

Yes, thanks for the suggestion Blueprint. However, there doesn't appear to be much of a difference.

Thanks for posting the waterfall plots. I have a similar setup as you and I'm likewise concerned that there will not be much improvement from my current 2-sub DLBC system. Can you post the RT60 results? It would be interesting to see if there's any notable improvement there.

One other question, do you notice any difference in results from different measured positions? One concern I have with ART is that the correction may be heavily optimized for a single-seat only, so it would be interesting to see if multi-seat performance is impacted.

 

[ban25]

Just one further remark: why, Oh Lord, does Dirac not provide before and after waterfall measurements (or whatever they deem best) for the purpose of adjusting speaker grouping or subwoofer addition/placement?! They suggest looking at predicted 'spread' a ludicrously awkward method as it involves waiting minutes between calculations and so would require taking snapshots of the results for JPG viewing, as best I can judge.

This has been a pet-peeve of mine with almost all room correction settings (only ARC Genesis offers 'quick measurement' for post-correction results). My solution has been to have REW open on my laptop at the same time as Dirac so I can quickly swap over and measure post-correction with the same UMIK-1 as soon as the upload is complete.

 

[ban25]

I recently was able to add Dirac ART to my Marantz AV10. What I'm wondering is whether it would be predicted that any difference could be measured, using REW, between Dirac with Bass Control only, and Dirac with additionally ART.

I have made REW measurements (stereo mode) of the two conditions, and without Dirac equalization. I don't see any SPL difference between Dirac with Bass Control and with the upgrade, Dirac ART (see graph below). What besides SPL, if anything, should I be looking at in the REW measurements that might reveal a measurable difference between the two?

Subjectively, after only limited listening time, I would say that Dirac with ART improves clarity of dialogue and instrument separation (music), over Dirac with Bass Control only. Here's a link that explains what Dirac ART is supposed to do....https://www.dirac.com/live/art-technology/

View attachment 480063

One more thing. There's a small dip at 70 Hz across all configurations. I wonder, are you using the 70 Hz crossover that Dirac sets by default? If so, there may be value in setting it higher, perhaps 80 or 90 Hz.

 

[Sal1950]

This has been a pet-peeve of mine with almost all room correction settings (only ARC Genesis offers 'quick measurement' for post-correction results). My solution has been to have REW open on my laptop at the same time as Dirac so I can quickly swap over and measure post-correction with the same UMIK-1 as soon as the upload is complete.

Good plan, I do mostly the same with Audyssey and the $20 Editor app.

 

[Paul McNeil]

I think you ART isn't working at all. Why there's no 20Hz drop with ART or did you enable infra bass?
You should post REW decay results or DLBC and ART with these settings:

View attachment 480266

Yeah, despite DIRAC LIVE and the Marantz recognizing ART activation, there is not much to measure. Here are the requested files.

 

[Paul McNeil]

One more thing. There's a small dip at 70 Hz across all configurations. I wonder, are you using the 70 Hz crossover that Dirac sets by default? If so, there may be value in setting it higher, perhaps 80 or 90 Hz.

Yeah, 70 htz is the crossover to l/r that Dirac assigns. Do you think that dip is audible?