Dirac Live's impact on soundstage & imaging

[mitchco]

Now now @thewas_ there are indeed industry standards for stereo recording, even for music using Dolby 5.1 and Atmos tech. When I went took audio engineering for recording and mixing, these standards are front and centre and covered in several industry textbooks. While I appreciate not everyone follows them, which is the real issue, it is simply not true that there are not standards.

 

[bluefuzz]

As you can see there's about a 20dB swing between 45-120Hz and my understanding is that 10dB of boost is the maximum amount that Dirac will attempt in it's correction.

I wouldn't worry about that. It looks very good on the whole.

I wish there was an easy/reliable way to see the actual results post-adjustment.

You can measure with REW.

Still uncertain as to why I'm experiencing the differences in soundstage and imaging with the filters activated.

Well, that's what Dirac is for ...

Whether you actually like the result is a different matter. But the soundstage is probably a lot closer to what the recording is meant to sound like. But often, at first listen, it may seem less 'exciting' but that's because Dirac is reining in a lot of the extraneous resonances and phase anomalies that shouldn't be there in the first place. Try and listen to it for a few days or weeks with lots of different material before deciding whether you like it ...

 

[thewas]

Now now @thewas_ there are indeed industry standards for stereo recording, even for music using Dolby 5.1 and Atmos tech. When I went took audio engineering for recording and mixing, these standards are front and centre and covered in several industry textbooks. While I appreciate not everyone follows them, which is the real issue, it is simply not true that there are not standards.

You are right, I should have phrased it better, standards which aren't unfortunately widely used if we see the tonal differences or many albums and also several wrong standards like a linear or X-curve target at the listeners position which don't consider a linear direct sound and the individual different loudspeaker directivity and room reverberation curves.

 

[mitchco]

The standards could use a refresh on their operational room response curves as per Toole and Olive (and I agree). But otherwise, everything else still applies (i.e. reverb times, stereo config, directviity specs, etc.). But I have been amassing quite a number of measurements of systems from around the world and what people prefer from a correction perspective. There are a large percentage of folks that prefer the industry standard operational response curves over the "Harman target." It's quite fascinating actually and I plan in time to publish this as an anonymized data set, for both the before and after correction.

Sorry Bill for the OT. Will be interested to hear your thoughts on a 500 Hz partial correction.

 

[QMuse]

There are a large percentage of folks that prefer the industry standard operational response curves over the "Harman target." It's quite fascinating actually and I plan in time to publish this as an anonymized data set, for both the before and after correction.

Hopefully Bill will forgive but I have to fill the whole in my knowledge: how does industry standard opeeational response curve look?

 

[mitchco]

@QMuse I have some of the operation room responses linked on my site with an overlay. There are others, but more or less the same. Another popular target is Bob Katz's flat to 1 kHz and then a straight line to about - 6 dB @ 20 kHz used in many a mastering studio. This is based off of James Johnton's psychoacoustic work, but a variation of one the industry standard operational response curves (which really are straight lines and not curves

 

[QMuse]

@QMuse I have some of the operation room responses linked on my site with an overlay. There are others, but more or less the same. Another popular target is Bob Katz's flat to 1 kHz and then a straight line to about - 6 dB @ 20 kHz used in many a mastering studio. This is based off of James Johnton's psychoacoustic work, but a variation of one the industry standard operational response curves (which really are straight lines and not curves

Thank you, very informative site!

 

[wgb113]

Thanks again to all - particularly @mitchco whom I've been pestering via PM on another site.

I'll give a go to new measurements and filters this weekend after I swap equipment racks. I'll probably try 3 new filters - One full-range with more tilt, another only correcting up to 500Hz and another correcting up to 300Hz with the fourth remaining the default Dirac curve.

I'll report back next week and appreciate all of your input!

 

[thewas]

@QMuse I have some of the operation room responses linked on my site with an overlay. There are others, but more or less the same. Another popular target is Bob Katz's flat to 1 kHz and then a straight line to about - 6 dB @ 20 kHz used in many a mastering studio. This is based off of James Johnton's psychoacoustic work, but a variation of one the industry standard operational response curves (which really are straight lines and not curves

As you know the problem is that the listeners position FR depends on the loudspeaker directivity (and the room reverberation curve and listening distance) so a "universal" target can only work for very similar loudspeaker designs but should imho not used for different loudspeakers, as I showed here with 2 examples of Bob Katz monitoring systems.

 

[wgb113]

So after some remeasuring and experimenting with filters I think I have a few I'm going to live with for a little. The changes that I made from the initial measurements include:

• Repositioned speakers 6" further out into the room.
• Reduced toe-in.
• Repositioned listening chair 6 further from rear wall.
• Replaced equipment rack.
• Removed second set of speakers.
• Changed XOVER setting to 75Hz.
• Remeasured.
• Came up with (so far) my preferred target curve that:
  • 30Hz-200Hz more of a bump (+3.5dB peak) than a flat line.
  • 200Hz-1kHz elevated in level rather than flat.
  • 1kHz-3kHz slowly tapering line down to flat
  • 3kHz-20kHz gradual taper down to -2dB.

Those middle two changes to the target curve are what I feel brought back the detail in the imaging/soundstage for me. It follows more of the speaker's natural curve, just ironing it out a bit.

Per some recommendations I also loaded two target curves only focused on the lows - one to 200Hz and another to 500Hz with relatively the same curve as above and it's really hard to tell the difference between the two so far but more listening is needed.

Thanks again to everyone here who's offered insight/suggestions. Hopefully this will help someone who stumbles across the same issue.

Bill

 

[TonioRoffo]

Hey everyone,

Looking for some input as to what I might be encountering with my recent implementation of Dirac Live 2.0 via miniDSP DDRC-24. Setup is as follows:

MacMini (macOS Catalina) running Roon->USB->miniDSP DDRC-24->RCA->KEF LS50W (w/Sub Out to Elac SUB3010)

My room is small at 10'W x 12'L x 9'H and slightly asymmetrical due to a doorway in the rear right and a shelving unit along the left side. The speakers are placed per KEF's guidelines to that they're 1/5 out into the room from the front and side walls and on 24" stands with about 20% toe-in. My listening position is 38% out from the rear wall. As you can imagine, this results in a near field setup where the speakers are 5' apart and also 5' from where my noggin lands.

The room has treatment in the form of soffit traps that run around the perimeter and floor to ceiling corner traps in the front corners.

After reading some positive reviews of the results that could be had with Dirac Live 2.0 I decided to try out the miniDSP DDRC-24, looking for the combo to be the "icing on the cake" so to speak.

Neither Dirac Live 2.0 nor the latest miniDSP software officially support macOS Catalina but I was able to get them to work and measured using the Chair position with success. I exported 4 different filter options from Dirac Live to the miniDSP:

1. Dirac's default target curve.
2. Slightly more tilted version of Dirac's target curve.
3. A version of #2 that was the same below 250Hz but flat up to 10kHz.
4. A version of #2 that was the same below 250Hz and only corrected below that frequency.

The Dirac target curve was as follows:

Freq / Correction
38 / +2
74 / +1.5
143 / +1.1
278 / +0.6
540 / +0.1
1050 / -0.4
2040 / -0.8
3970 / -1.3
7720 / -1.8
15000 / -2.3

The corrections to the bass are welcome, it's more even over those octaves now, but the impact to the soundstage and imaging is where I'm struggling. While it's shifted centered things to the center as opposed to slightly to the left, it's collapsed the soundstage to one that's very flat with no space around instruments and voices and there's a lack of detail like a blanket's been thrown over the speakers.

I'm not sure what the cause is but it's across all four filters.

Bill

Try turning off phase adjustment in the final filter. Didn't work Well for me. Huge soundstage but lack of focus.