Dirac Reviews

[dominikz]

Dirac Live gets a clear "A" from me, because I find it provides an optimal level of ease-of-use and configurability for the average user, while still capable of producing very good sounding corrections - but only if an appropriate target curve (which will mainly depend on loudspeaker directivity and how reflective the room is) and appropriate correction limits are selected (I usually only correct below 300Hz or so)!

The default target with full-range correction is IMO not always appropriate and can sound bass-deficient with some systems, while using full-range correction may produce over-processed sounding results. I've tested the basic Dirac Live on PC quite extensively while comparatively testing various DRCs (link to thread).

In the end I still prefer to use manual PEQ based on REW measurements, but that's only because I like to have full control over the correction.

 

[direwolf08]

I have Dirac Live in a SHD (MiniDSP) 4 channels out to poweramp/speakers and two subs. I find it outstanding compared to Audessy on a Denon receiver.

This is an "apples to apples" comparison as the speakers/subs are the front of my Atmos system. I switch line out to change system type, as other people here do.

I have been thinking about doing exactly this with a MiniDSP Flex and amp for my media room. Can you share what switch(es) you are using?

 

[dmilller]

I have been thinking about doing exactly this with a MiniDSP Flex and amp for my media room. Can you share what switch(es) you are using?

NEOHIPO ET30 VU Meter Speaker Switcher Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the NEOHIPO ET30 VU meter and 2 in, 2 out speaker selector. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $160 but is on sale for 20% less on Amazon. Let me tell you: you are not a hifi nerd if your heart did not melt as mine did the moment I saw...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Davide]

I have been using Dirac for a few years on a system initially 2.0 and now 2.2. I've gone through I think 4 speakers and 2 rooms with it.

My opinion is that to make a judgment you need to understand well what it does and how it does it.
It is not a tool that magically solves the negative effects that occur between the live performance and the sound wave that finally reaches our ears at home.
It simply does what a DRC can do... and the result, due to the complexity of the factors at play, including our brain, is not necessarily better from a fun, involvement and entertainment point of view.
I won't go into the merits of Schroeder, minimum phase etc.
In most cases I found greater timbral coherence, especially in the bass, while I often found a collapse of the sound stage (stereo imaging).
I believe this depends on how our brain interprets the reflections and the phase deviation between the not corrected and corrected system, as well as the effectiveness of the Dirac correction algorithm with respect to the listening area.
I also just noticed that different measurements in the same environment lead to different results in terms of stereo imaging.

In fact, as someone here on the forum suggested to me, a careful positioning of the microphone, as well as a quality microphone, produces a slightly better result.

Dirac currently has the advantage of having Bass Control and Active Room Treatment, which do an unsurpassed job in the low frequency and sub(s) integration. And this associated with ease of use.

All things considered, if I switch the correction on and off today, I notice a slightly less engaging sound in the mid range, but more natural and coherent across the full range. Especially at the low end, there is no comparison in tangibility and balance.

So I say that it does its job of making a more coherent sound, but that it doesn't necessarily produce a more pleasant sound.

Is it worth the money? DLBC and ART I'm not sure, but hifi is a hobby at heart and so value is relative.

 

[slaweks]

Several people mentioned that they limit Dirac to below 500Hz, I tried this idea and I am happy with the results. I found that limiting Dirac to below 300Hz and applying BACCH DRC worked much better than allowing Dirac to work on the whole range (and then applying on top the BACCH DRC).

 

[Flak]

Deleted

 

[Davide]

Question regarding DLBC if I don't have a sub now.

So, my main speakers are fully capable of reproducing bass. It's better than most subs. VMPS Supertower III. So, I have not added a sub and therefore have not used DLBC. However, since I'll be adding Dirac ART to my Denon AVR-x4800h when it's released, I may add a sub to take better advantage of ART.

Flavio at Dirac told me that they chose not to try to control large front main speakers with DLBC (as they originally had planned), and, usually, the program will try to bypass the front speakers by introducing a high pass crossover so they don't reproduce the bass.

However, he also told me that the crossover can be lowered to 20Hz, allowing me to use the fronts, although they won't be controlled by DLBC.

But what happens to the sub's crossover? If I set the high-pass crossover for my main speakers down to 20Hz, is this independent of my subs crossover?

Thanks

Bass Control from what I understand should primarily provide the integration between mains and sub(s), and better LF consistency through the combined use of them.
Whether it is also equipped with a more advanced algorithm for bass correction (example when used with 2.0) is honestly not clear to me.
Maybe you can ask for a demo license for two weeks and see the benefit yourself.

 

[MEGB1262]

Hi there,

i have made a quite "nuts" proof of concept inspired from a huge Goto drive units and horns multi way stereo setup that do not sound right even though the massive effort in hardware - see the photo of the "Goto drive units and horns cathedral"



my proof of concept is an open baffle multi horn setup with subwoofer, kickbass, low midrange horn, high mid range horn, tweeter horn and super tweeter horn with an additional back firing high mid range horn for the dipole dispersion behaviour also where the front firing horns have constant directivity

here a picture of the very provisional lab construct



the first step was to adjust the crossover points, SPL level and delay to have a more or less decent over all SPL graph measuring like a fool with CLIO pocket due to the complexity of the multi way setup

left channel 10 degree 100 cm mic distance - no subwoofer, have only 7 power amp channels in my Marantz AVR



right channel 15 degree 100 cm mic distance - with 21 inch subwoofer



this has been done taking into account the very asymmetrical listening position sitting at the desk in my home office and audio lab in one go

after switching from

2 mini 2 X 4 HD with power amps + 2 Hypex FA123 plate amps

to

miniDSP FLEX 8 DL + SR7012 AVR as multi channel amp + 2 Hypex FA123 plate amps

i was able to activate Dirac Live for 4 of the seven active channels

i could activate the second 21 inch subwoofer for the left channel using an additional amp connected to the subwoofer NF output of the AVR

0 - 60 Hz SW 21 inch in OB

0 - 400 Hz Kickbass 2 X 15 inch in OB

400 - 1200 Hz low midrange horn

1200 - 20000 Hz front firing three way multi horn setup with Hypex FA123 and back firing single way horn

even with this maximal complexity Dirac Live is the game changer and reveals now even the difference in cabling from PC to USB DAC with an ordinary 300cm USB cable or with a short audio USB cable and Pro-Ject Stream Box S2 Ultra attached to the PC through the LAN

clearly an A for the Dirac Live software extension used in the miniDSP Flex 8 in the DL version

So far - so good, Stefano

P.S.:
i have tried to take into account the basic idea coming from the japanese founder Goto san to limit the bandwidth used for the drive unit in conjunction with the horn to the range with a minimum of distortion level and best transient behaviour with the compromises i have to accept about the non ideal drive units and horns available for my proof of concept

 

[GD74]

Hi guys, I bought my dream speakers last week and I thought I'll share my experiences after recalibrating my system with Dirac live.

Setup used:
NAD C658 + C298 amplifier combo connected with Goldkabel Edition Concert XLR cables.
Focal Sopra No.2 connected to the amp with Sommercable SC-Orbit 2x4mm2
Streaming with BluOS connected using Tidal MQA.
MiniDSP Umik1 microphone loaded with 0 degrees calibration file.

I still had my settings for my previous speakers (Canton Vento 896DC) stored in my amp, and the Sopras sounded truely horrendous with Dirac turned on. (I used the wide imaging calibration with the Cantons.)
The whole soundstage was gone, and the music seemed to be castrated by the old Dirac settings.

It was actually so bad that I didn't see myself using Dirac Live again anytime soon, as the Sopras sounded marvelous right from the start without any corrections.
(Off topic, I actually didn't expect them to be such a huge step up compared to the Ventos, the soundstage that these Sopras deliver is from a different level.)

I started with Focused listening position, and for starters I only used 1 frequency sweep before creating a new "quick 'n dirty" filter.
It already was a big improvement compared to the old settings, but it was still far from ideal for me.

Then I continued to perform a proper measurement with 13 measurement points.
It was remarkable that the Sopras reached quite a bit deeper (and higher) than the Cantons despite their smaller woofers (7" vs 8")

I designed 5 filters:

1: Basic, as recommended default filter by Dirac (+8db bass / -2.3db treble.)
2: Below 200hz correction.
3: +9.5db bass / -3db treble.
4: +6db bass / -2db treble.
5: A copy from the natural Sopra curve as measured by Dirac by using the multiple control points (using the "dotted line")

I adjusted the filters real tim while listening to music, and making corrections on the fly. I didn't do this the previous time with the Cantons, but now this has become a must to me.
The guesswork is over then, and the corrections can be tried and adjusted accordingly in real time.

Now I'm very happy with the results again, the soundstage is back without losing detail and everything sounds to my liking again.
I tend to use map 5 the most, because it replicates the sound of the Sopras in the most natural way.

I'm very happy with the setup now, hopefully my mistakes and experiences will help someone else.
My biggest mistake was to make too radical corrections, and it was messing up the sound signature.
My advise is: don't be afraid to experiment with different filters, but make small corrections, and listen to a map for some time to settle your hearing.
"Zapping maps" is tempting, but give it some time to listen to a map before making changes.

Good luck with tweaking Dirac and regards,

Gijs

P.s. Forgot to mention, I have used Dirac SW version 3.3.3, and if I read the replies below, I should be happy that I didn't upgrade my SW version yet.

 

[Davide]

I vote B, but just when it work correctly.
I recently found that there is a lot of inconsistency between repeated measurements, and also in my case (but I'm not alone apparently) it increases low freq GD up to 100 ms, when it is almost 0 ms without Dirac.
Another thing, by measuring at high sample rates (>48kHz), artifacts appear in the IR, compromising the creation of filters.
Ultimately, slight measurement asymmetries involve imbalances between left and right channels in a sharply audible way (decentralized image).

 

[pogo]

Actual DL problem: Link

 

[Elder]

I'm voting a tentative B.

Using Dirac (via MiniDSP Flex) at my desk setup, with Genelec 8030C 1m away from my ears in a pretty heavily treated room.

At first I had a nightmare with weird delay's being set and nothing seemed right. After a reset and plugging the mic back in again finally started getting some results that made sense. The software itself is really intuitive to use, but there's definitely some gremlins.

Really did not like the results when following the Dirac instructions for mic placement and correcting the full range. Seemed to work best when all my measurements were the same height, possibly due to the strong nearfield reflections/comb filtering coming off my desk. I get the feeling the whole thing wasn't really designed for nearfield setups.

After making profiles affecting up to 150/200/300/400/500Hz, I ended up settling for the 200Hz profile. Really nicely tightened up the low end, I would personally struggle to get the same results manually using REW. The Schroeder frequency of my room is calculated at 290Hz.

So even though my use case seems to be limited to under 200Hz for my particular setup, the improvement has been substantial and will also hopefully work really well once I get my subs installed.

 

[landco]

Hello! I must share my unpleasant experience of interacting with Dirac.



I installed the studio (Desktop) version of the program for PC.

Nothing works, Dirac only sees the built-in speakers of the MacBook, and it is impossible to force him to see another audio interface.



The program periodically glitches and crashes. A terrible uninstaller, or rather, the lack of one, so even after deleting the program, it, like a virus, continues to work in RAM, you have to find each folder and delete it manually.

The program is very dependent on having an Internet connection, which is very inconvenient at times.

In general, there is a lack of functionality and fewer settings compared to its competitor - Sonarworks.

This is not what you expect to get by paying $500-800 for a license.

 

[Elder]

The program periodically glitches and crashes. A terrible uninstaller, or rather, the lack of one, so even after deleting the program, it, like a virus, continues to work in RAM, you have to find each folder and delete it manually.

I found the following in another thread, hope it helps you.

MAC: Delete the app and its sub-folders by running /Applications/Dirac/maintenancetool

 

[landco]

MAC: Delete the app and its sub-folders by running /Applications/Dirac/maintenancetool

This does not work.

 

[Tell]

Anyone not happy with Dirac needs to fiddle with the target curve. The default one is to my ears dull and boring, but tweaking it to more of that V-shape by boosting the treble and lower bass will make it sound way better, and I'm most likely not alone in thinking this (even though not everyone knows they do).

 

[PeterNL]

Do you understand my English poorly? The problem is not the curve, but the fact that Dirac does not work and is buggy.

I've never had any problem using Dirac on 3 different PCs.

Check again your internet connection, try to use VPN, it is very possible that some countries are blocking Russian IP address because of war...

 

[landco]

I've never had any problem using Dirac on 3 different PCs.

You again inattentively read my post. We are talking about the studio version of Dirac (without receiver)

 

[PeterNL]

You again inattentively read my post. We are talking about the studio version of Dirac (without receiver)

"I've never had any problem using Dirac on 3 different PCs" are my words. Where do you see receiver ??

 

[landco]

Check again your internet connection

To use the Sonarworks program, you do not need the Internet at all. That’s why I wrote that being tied to a permanent Internet connection is Dirac’s big drawback