Dirac ART on Marantz AV10

[Paul McNeil]

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.

Yeah, that's basically my operating mode too, sigh...

 

[Paul McNeil]

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.

There's nothing there, in the RT60 results.

I'm surely not the first to attempt to document Dirac ART improvement using REW to quantify?! No one has referenced any previous ARS or other discussions of this topic, not yet.

 

[Paul McNeil]

One last thought, I made the above referenced measurements in stereo mode (only L/R and subwoofers participating). Maybe the measurement should be made in Dolby or similar processing mode, which would bring all (eleven) speakers into play.

 

[Paul McNeil]

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.

Haven't tried different positions, just the center...but I'h going to remeasure in surround mode (the previous measurements were in stereo) and will try off-center measurements too. However, I sit in the center!

 

[TimoJ]

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

Something is wrong with your ART calibration or preset. There should be a noticeable decay difference. How did you make the calibration?

 

[TimoJ]

One last thought, I made the above referenced measurements in stereo mode (only L/R and subwoofers participating). Maybe the measurement should be made in Dolby or similar processing mode, which would bring all (eleven) speakers into play.

Even in stereo mode all the speakers that you have configured for ART support should be active i.e. playing quiet bass notes.
Did you change ART speaker setup to something weird or did you use the default settings?

 

[Paul McNeil]

Even in stereo mode all the speakers that you have configured for ART support should be active i.e. playing quiet bass notes.
Did you change ART speaker setup to something weird or did you use the default settings?

I used the defaults, not something 'weird'! Point taken about the stereo situation. However, I have separate amplifiers for the center and surround speakers, which were shut off. I'll fix that with my next measurements...sigh!

 

[Paul McNeil]

Something is wrong with your ART calibration or preset. There should be a noticeable decay difference. How did you make the calibration?

Do you have an example of an REW measurement of a 'decay difference' resulting from ART implementation. I think everyone agrees that in theory there should be a decay difference...

 

[TimoJ]

Do you have an example of an REW measurement of a 'decay difference' resulting from ART implementation. I think everyone agrees that in theory there should be a decay difference...

Yes, here are some old measurements of just two small JBL speakers (no subs) with normal Dirac and with ART.

 

[TimoJ]

And this is my 7.2.6 system with ART enabled:

 

[Paul McNeil]

Yes, here are some old measurements of just two small JBL speakers (no subs) with normal Dirac and with ART.

View attachment 480346
View attachment 480347the

Thanks for those though I'm not sure (novice!) how the ART result is an improvement.

 

[ban25]

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

Probably not audible, but if you set it to 90, it may disappear from the graph. The 70 Hz default set by Dirac is just arbitrary, so no reason not to change it.

 

[Paul McNeil]

Yes, here are some old measurements of just two small JBL speakers (no subs) with normal Dirac and with ART.

View attachment 480346
View attachment 480347

OK, I think I see the 'improvement' in the DB lowering of equivalent time lines below 150 htz in the ART result. By the way, those JBLs may be small but their bass response is mighty!

 

[ban25]

Another question for folks testing ART on D+M gear: Can you enable LFE Distribution on the AVP/AVR with ART enabled or is this feature locked out?

 

[Spennis]

OK, I think I see the 'improvement' in the DB lowering of equivalent time lines below 150 htz in the ART result. By the way, those JBLs may be small but their bass response is mighty!

What settings did you use for ART? My understanding is that you can adjust quite a few things that will affect the results, such as the number of support speakers and which speakers that will support the other speakers.

 

[TimoJ]

I used the defaults, not something 'weird'!

Then ART isn't active in your system. No change compared to DLBC at 20 Hz proves that.

 

[Oddball]

Another question for folks testing ART on D+M gear: Can you enable LFE Distribution on the AVP/AVR with ART enabled or is this feature locked out?

Pretty sure it's locked out. This is Audy only feature and only for speakers designated as large.

In theory, if you assign your low end capable bed channel speakers to support the subs, you would get ART version of the LFE distribution, which is obviously different - and all say better.

 

[peng]

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.

That's what I usually do, have REW open full time for quick swap. Just a quick note, Anthem quick measure is a good feature but for REW users, I bet they wouldn't likely use quick measure much, I don't, find it somewhat useful but not useful enough to skip using REW. The quick measure concept is good, but like ARC G's phase optimization, its use is limited because it isn't very effective, but hopefully Anthem will improve on it as it has potential, imo.

 

[peng]

Haven't tried different positions, just the center...but I'h going to remeasure in surround mode (the previous measurements were in stereo) and will try off-center measurements too. However, I sit in the center!

Thank you for sharing the results. My understanding of ART is limited, based on the little understanding I do have, I never expected noticeable results with ART over DLBC though, as DLBC is really quite effective, compared to ARC G and Audyssey Sub EQ HT, at least for the two subwoofers, full range front row scenario. As others mentioned, your DLBC FR seems very good already, so how much better it can get would depend largely on how good your speaker's bass responses are relative to the sub's, as I am sure ART would not try to push the speakers too hard.

I suspect you might get more obvious results (visibly) if you lower the subwoofers output, and/or lower the bass response a couple dB, i.e. without using too much of a so called Harmon curve. I also think ART probably would do better for the non mmp position, whereas for the mmp, in you case, I really don't think you could expect much improvements on paper. Just one note, someone mentioned DLBC works in the freq domain and ART time domain, that I don't think is correct. As I understand, DL bass control works also in the time domain (ie both domains), it is obvious, as it's main function is to do phase optimization.

 

[peng]

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

I don't think so, regardless, if DLBC left it there, theoretically speaking, ART should be able to lessen the dip, may be its effectiveness will improve over time. But no, imo that's academic, really doubtful there is an audible difference for a sharp narrow dip, except may be if you listen to a 70 Hz sinewave lol..