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Dirac for nearfield 2.0?

MarcR

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I just acquired a pair of Kali IN-8v2 and a miniDSP Flex TRS w/ Dirac. The physical setup is pretty good - small carpeted office with speakers on audio isolation foam pads toed in from the corners of a 60x34" desk centered on a wall.

I'm new to nearfield and am blown away by the out-of-the-boxes sound quality.

I wonder though if I'm missing out on what Dirac can do. It's my first time using it. I configured it for a "tightly focused" setup with nine measurements, designed a Harman-like target curve, and loaded it to the Flex. When I A/B Dirac Live OFF/ON, I hear no difference.

I noticed that the Flex preset with the Dirac filters has a 0.02 ms delay for Dirac 1 whether the Dirac Live button is ON or OFF, so I also A/B'd between presets. The several seconds of dead air while the preset switches make judgments difficult, but any possible difference there is subtle.

So I have a couple of questions:

1. Does Dirac Live generally offer much to nearfield 2.0 setups with close-to-optimal physical configuration? Maybe it's just not necessary?
2. When I load filters from the Dirac Live app to a Flex preset, does it change the sound of the preset even when Dirac Live is OFF?
 

usersky

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Hi! I use Dirac with Minidsp Flex in my office in semi near field (1.2m between ears and ELAC DBR6.2). For my setup it is truly beneficial. And for the second question: turn Dirac off and it it won't affect the sound at all. You can play however you want with the 4 presets (I use 2 of them for 2 positions in my office, chair and sofa and the other two with Dirac off, with eq for Senn HD600 and Hifiman HE4xx).
 

DJBonoBobo

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If it is a small room, I would be surprised if there would be not even a boomy room mode in bass anywhere without Dirac.
You could test if everything works correctly by trying a new filter with a very "crazy" target curve that could be identified clearly if applied.
 
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MarcR

MarcR

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Thanks for the feedback and advice. I remeasured with more care regarding mic placement. I also accepted the default target curve instead of building a custom one. This time I do hear a difference between OFF and ON. Even better, I prefer ON. :)

The speakers both have a deep and wide low-frequency dip from about +3 dB at 45 Hz to -15 dB at 55 Hz and then back up to +7 dB at 103 Hz. The correction limits the double dip from +0.5 db at 45 Hz to -4 db at 55 Hz. The frequency response curves of the two speakers cross and thereby support one another as they climb back up to 0 dB at 75 Hz. Looks better, sounds better.

Should I expect to be able to improve the LF response curve with a single well-placed subwoofer crossed at 80 Hz, or will I need two to improve on Dirac's management of the Kali IN-8 pair's combined LF curve?

The Dirac 1 input has a 0.04 ms delay, and the Dirac 2 input has a -0.3 dB gain adjustment. I was careful to position the UMIK-2 precisely and am surprised by Dirac's adjustments. Does anyone know (or care to speculate about) what's up with that?
 
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MarcR

MarcR

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I'm satisfied with my Dirac Live configuration and overall setup now. I don't think a subwoofer (or two!) will improve this office desk setup enough to justify the expense, space, and complexity.

A key insight was to move the default control point target curve down 5 dB to give Dirac room to correct more fully the giant null in the bass response at my listening position - the before and after pictures are below. I used trial and error to settle on a 5 dB reduction - less leaves improvement on the table, and more does no good.

I wish there were an instantaneous gain-matched way to compare Dirac ON vs OFF with a gain-shifted target curve, but I see no way to do that. To make comparisons with the other Flex presets easier, I added 5 dB to the two output channels to compensate for the shift down in the target curve.

Related, while switching presets back and forth, I discovered a Flex bug - when I switch from one preset to another while Dirac is ON, it appears to be ON in the DDR-24 app and on the Flex display, but it is actually OFF. I have to cycle it OFF and then back ON to enable it. The -5 dB target curve shift makes this really obvious.

The Dirac ON/OFF comparisons for the default curves seem to be gain matched - I tested with a sound meter app - and I do prefer ON in sighted comparison. With the preset switch delay and the need to turn Dirac OFF and then ON, I'm not able to discern a difference between the default and gain-shifted target curves - they both sound awesome to me. I'm just relying on Dirac's before/after pictures in preferring the gain-shifted curve.

I also noticed a "Disable delay/gain" menu item in the Dirac Live app. Choosing that and overwriting the Flex preset allowed me to ditch the irritating small delay and gain that I presume is due to measurement error rather than anything real.

Dirac default sloped target curve.png
Dirac default sloped target curve -5 dB.png
 
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