Onkyo TX-RZ50 warning about Dirac Live

[Sounderista]

I got this receiver recently, and as part of the setup, I ran the Dirac Live test, then edited the curve substantially to my linking, because those tests never worked for me. I'm used to the Sansui sound of the '70s and '80s, unlike everything that came after that, which is plain horrible, with the mids and mid-highs boosted and the highs tamed down.

So I did my own curve in the app, I applied it to all the channels except the subwoofer, pushed it to the Onkyo and I was happy as I could be, having the Sansui sound signature but with all the extras of the current era. But last night I was watching something with sudden loud noises, and a lot of sub bass with those noises, so I thought I would go into the speaker configuration, and turn the subwoofer to "No". Well, I don't know if this is by design (and if it is, it's moronic), but by doing that, it turns out that I reset Dirac Live in the unit. I couldn't even turn it on from the quick menu, it was grayed out.

Even more, I saw that now I had access to the regular equalizer, and I had been meaning to give that a try, to see how close I could get it to the Dirac Live curve. Sadly, not even close. As much as I like this receiver, without the custom EQ curve Dirac Live provides, it's a rather mediocre one. And I guess that's true for most receivers these days. I haven't had the chance to experience the amps and receivers that you only see in rich people's homes, those that around the $4,000 mark or more. I heard there's a Marantz that sells for like $9,000. Not a chance. I bought a $1,000 Marantz in 2016 and it was rather mediocre, so even if I had $9,000, I wouldn't. It's probably better, but here's the thing. I had a Sansui growing up that was one of the cheapest you could find. It sounded fantastic. Not a lot of power, but excellent sound quality.

A few decades later, I had the luck of finding a Sansui G-5700 on eBay that according to the seller, had spent 30 years in an attic and hadn't been used much, so it was in mint condition. I found it hard to believe, but I took the chance, and when I finally got it, I was happy to see that they had not lied. It was impeccable. I paid $360 for it, and apparently, that received, updated for inflation, was sold for more than $3,000 of today's dollars, so it was quite an expensive one. The sound quality is remarkable, especially when paired with the Sansui SE-7 equalizer. But the G-5700 by itself sounds great too. It has a pleasant base sound signature that none of today's receivers have. If white noise is played, you can hear well all the frequencies as far as your ears can handle. And it's a smooth sound.

Today's receivers, when no EQ is applied, sound terrible. The RZ50 had a price as high as $1,700, so it is a rather expensive receiver. And if it wasn't for Dirac Live, it has a very harsh sound signature, even on the Emotiva speaker set I just got. It's as if the hearing of the sound engineers that designed HiFi audio gear was completely different in the '70s and '80s than those who did the same from the '90s until today. Even the most respected brands started having an awful sound quality. And the problem there is not quality, because if I can get the amazing sound quality from this Onkyo TX-RZ50 as I could from my Sansui G-5700, it's a simple matter of the base internal EQ. But the equalizer that comes as default is too narrow. It only goes 6 dB each way, and that's not enough. To show you what I mean, this is my current Dirac Live curve:

And this is what I did with the internal EQ after the Onkyo deleted my DL presets:

This curve sounds nothing like the one I made with Dirac Live.

Now, going back to the matter at hand, setting the subwoofer to "No" in the speaker configuration, it will delete your Dirac Live presets in the Onkyo RZ50, and I would assume in all the similar ones. After that, you won't have even the choice to access it without opening the Dirac Live in your computer, and open the project and push the preset again. That is if you can connect, because either the DL app or the Onkyo, or both are so buggy that when you open the app, it won't find the Onkyo, despite in my case both being connected to the same router via ethernet. If I can connect without problem to the Onkyo's web interface, it stands to reason that the Dirac Live app should find it right away. But it doesn't. I have to unplug the Onkyo for several seconds, plug it back in, turn it on, launch the DL app again, and then it will see it. So it's a buggy system, and you need a lot of patience.

 

[Power Pop 23]

I got this receiver recently, and as part of the setup, I ran the Dirac Live test, then edited the curve substantially to my linking, because those tests never worked for me. I'm used to the Sansui sound of the '70s and '80s, unlike everything that came after that, which is plain horrible, with the mids and mid-highs boosted and the highs tamed down.

So I did my own curve in the app, I applied it to all the channels except the subwoofer, pushed it to the Onkyo and I was happy as I could be, having the Sansui sound signature but with all the extras of the current era. But last night I was watching something with sudden loud noises, and a lot of sub bass with those noises, so I thought I would go into the speaker configuration, and turn the subwoofer to "No". Well, I don't know if this is by design (and if it is, it's moronic), but by doing that, it turns out that I reset Dirac Live in the unit. I couldn't even turn it on from the quick menu, it was grayed out.

Even more, I saw that now I had access to the regular equalizer, and I had been meaning to give that a try, to see how close I could get it to the Dirac Live curve. Sadly, not even close. As much as I like this receiver, without the custom EQ curve Dirac Live provides, it's a rather mediocre one. And I guess that's true for most receivers these days. I haven't had the chance to experience the amps and receivers that you only see in rich people's homes, those that around the $4,000 mark or more. I heard there's a Marantz that sells for like $9,000. Not a chance. I bought a $1,000 Marantz in 2016 and it was rather mediocre, so even if I had $9,000, I wouldn't. It's probably better, but here's the thing. I had a Sansui growing up that was one of the cheapest you could find. It sounded fantastic. Not a lot of power, but excellent sound quality.

A few decades later, I had the luck of finding a Sansui G-5700 on eBay that according to the seller, had spent 30 years in an attic and hadn't been used much, so it was in mint condition. I found it hard to believe, but I took the chance, and when I finally got it, I was happy to see that they had not lied. It was impeccable. I paid $360 for it, and apparently, that received, updated for inflation, was sold for more than $3,000 of today's dollars, so it was quite an expensive one. The sound quality is remarkable, especially when paired with the Sansui SE-7 equalizer. But the G-5700 by itself sounds great too. It has a pleasant base sound signature that none of today's receivers have. If white noise is played, you can hear well all the frequencies as far as your ears can handle. And it's a smooth sound.

Today's receivers, when no EQ is applied, sound terrible. The RZ50 had a price as high as $1,700, so it is a rather expensive receiver. And if it wasn't for Dirac Live, it has a very harsh sound signature, even on the Emotiva speaker set I just got. It's as if the hearing of the sound engineers that designed HiFi audio gear was completely different in the '70s and '80s than those who did the same from the '90s until today. Even the most respected brands started having an awful sound quality. And the problem there is not quality, because if I can get the amazing sound quality from this Onkyo TX-RZ50 as I could from my Sansui G-5700, it's a simple matter of the base internal EQ. But the equalizer that comes as default is too narrow. It only goes 6 dB each way, and that's not enough. To show you what I mean, this is my current Dirac Live curve:

View attachment 496232

And this is what I did with the internal EQ after the Onkyo deleted my DL presets:

View attachment 496233

This curve sounds nothing like the one I made with Dirac Live.

Now, going back to the matter at hand, setting the subwoofer to "No" in the speaker configuration, it will delete your Dirac Live presets in the Onkyo RZ50, and I would assume in all the similar ones. After that, you won't have even the choice to access it without opening the Dirac Live in your computer, and open the project and push the preset again. That is if you can connect, because either the DL app or the Onkyo, or both are so buggy that when you open the app, it won't find the Onkyo, despite in my case both being connected to the same router via ethernet. If I can connect without problem to the Onkyo's web interface, it stands to reason that the Dirac Live app should find it right away. But it doesn't. I have to unplug the Onkyo for several seconds, plug it back in, turn it on, launch the DL app again, and then it will see it. So it's a buggy system, and you need a lot of patience.

Thank you for the information.

I use a similar Pioneer '505' AVR and have not experienced this problem deploying Dirac Live.

The Pioneer app for iOS lost my Dirac setting once. I had to measure the listening space again.

 

[Dougey_Jones]

Based on your sound preferences, it seems like you have significant high frequency hearing loss, which is why everything new "sounds terrible". There's nothing wrong with having HF hearing loss, it happens to everyone at some point, I have it as well. You can address the problem without blaming modern equipment, which is usually designed to be neutral.

 

[EWL5]

I got this receiver recently, and as part of the setup, I ran the Dirac Live test, then edited the curve substantially to my linking, because those tests never worked for me. I'm used to the Sansui sound of the '70s and '80s, unlike everything that came after that, which is plain horrible, with the mids and mid-highs boosted and the highs tamed down.

So I did my own curve in the app, I applied it to all the channels except the subwoofer, pushed it to the Onkyo and I was happy as I could be, having the Sansui sound signature but with all the extras of the current era. But last night I was watching something with sudden loud noises, and a lot of sub bass with those noises, so I thought I would go into the speaker configuration, and turn the subwoofer to "No". Well, I don't know if this is by design (and if it is, it's moronic), but by doing that, it turns out that I reset Dirac Live in the unit. I couldn't even turn it on from the quick menu, it was grayed out.

Even more, I saw that now I had access to the regular equalizer, and I had been meaning to give that a try, to see how close I could get it to the Dirac Live curve. Sadly, not even close. As much as I like this receiver, without the custom EQ curve Dirac Live provides, it's a rather mediocre one. And I guess that's true for most receivers these days. I haven't had the chance to experience the amps and receivers that you only see in rich people's homes, those that around the $4,000 mark or more. I heard there's a Marantz that sells for like $9,000. Not a chance. I bought a $1,000 Marantz in 2016 and it was rather mediocre, so even if I had $9,000, I wouldn't. It's probably better, but here's the thing. I had a Sansui growing up that was one of the cheapest you could find. It sounded fantastic. Not a lot of power, but excellent sound quality.

A few decades later, I had the luck of finding a Sansui G-5700 on eBay that according to the seller, had spent 30 years in an attic and hadn't been used much, so it was in mint condition. I found it hard to believe, but I took the chance, and when I finally got it, I was happy to see that they had not lied. It was impeccable. I paid $360 for it, and apparently, that received, updated for inflation, was sold for more than $3,000 of today's dollars, so it was quite an expensive one. The sound quality is remarkable, especially when paired with the Sansui SE-7 equalizer. But the G-5700 by itself sounds great too. It has a pleasant base sound signature that none of today's receivers have. If white noise is played, you can hear well all the frequencies as far as your ears can handle. And it's a smooth sound.

Today's receivers, when no EQ is applied, sound terrible. The RZ50 had a price as high as $1,700, so it is a rather expensive receiver. And if it wasn't for Dirac Live, it has a very harsh sound signature, even on the Emotiva speaker set I just got. It's as if the hearing of the sound engineers that designed HiFi audio gear was completely different in the '70s and '80s than those who did the same from the '90s until today. Even the most respected brands started having an awful sound quality. And the problem there is not quality, because if I can get the amazing sound quality from this Onkyo TX-RZ50 as I could from my Sansui G-5700, it's a simple matter of the base internal EQ. But the equalizer that comes as default is too narrow. It only goes 6 dB each way, and that's not enough. To show you what I mean, this is my current Dirac Live curve:

View attachment 496232

And this is what I did with the internal EQ after the Onkyo deleted my DL presets:

View attachment 496233

This curve sounds nothing like the one I made with Dirac Live.

Now, going back to the matter at hand, setting the subwoofer to "No" in the speaker configuration, it will delete your Dirac Live presets in the Onkyo RZ50, and I would assume in all the similar ones. After that, you won't have even the choice to access it without opening the Dirac Live in your computer, and open the project and push the preset again. That is if you can connect, because either the DL app or the Onkyo, or both are so buggy that when you open the app, it won't find the Onkyo, despite in my case both being connected to the same router via ethernet. If I can connect without problem to the Onkyo's web interface, it stands to reason that the Dirac Live app should find it right away. But it doesn't. I have to unplug the Onkyo for several seconds, plug it back in, turn it on, launch the DL app again, and then it will see it. So it's a buggy system, and you need a lot of patience.

I'm sorry but it sounds like you're stuck in the past and would rather stick to legacy equipment (which is fine as you like what you like). There's a certain amount of competency required to get Dirac Live working properly. Did you perform bass management in Dirac or in the AVR?

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I got this receiver recently, and as part of the setup, I ran the Dirac Live test, then edited the curve substantially to my linking, because those tests never worked for me. I'm used to the Sansui sound of the '70s and '80s, unlike everything that came after that, which is plain horrible, with the mids and mid-highs boosted and the highs tamed down.

So I did my own curve in the app, I applied it to all the channels except the subwoofer, pushed it to the Onkyo and I was happy as I could be, having the Sansui sound signature but with all the extras of the current era. But last night I was watching something with sudden loud noises, and a lot of sub bass with those noises, so I thought I would go into the speaker configuration, and turn the subwoofer to "No". Well, I don't know if this is by design (and if it is, it's moronic), but by doing that, it turns out that I reset Dirac Live in the unit. I couldn't even turn it on from the quick menu, it was grayed out.

Even more, I saw that now I had access to the regular equalizer, and I had been meaning to give that a try, to see how close I could get it to the Dirac Live curve. Sadly, not even close. As much as I like this receiver, without the custom EQ curve Dirac Live provides, it's a rather mediocre one. And I guess that's true for most receivers these days. I haven't had the chance to experience the amps and receivers that you only see in rich people's homes, those that around the $4,000 mark or more. I heard there's a Marantz that sells for like $9,000. Not a chance. I bought a $1,000 Marantz in 2016 and it was rather mediocre, so even if I had $9,000, I wouldn't. It's probably better, but here's the thing. I had a Sansui growing up that was one of the cheapest you could find. It sounded fantastic. Not a lot of power, but excellent sound quality.

A few decades later, I had the luck of finding a Sansui G-5700 on eBay that according to the seller, had spent 30 years in an attic and hadn't been used much, so it was in mint condition. I found it hard to believe, but I took the chance, and when I finally got it, I was happy to see that they had not lied. It was impeccable. I paid $360 for it, and apparently, that received, updated for inflation, was sold for more than $3,000 of today's dollars, so it was quite an expensive one. The sound quality is remarkable, especially when paired with the Sansui SE-7 equalizer. But the G-5700 by itself sounds great too. It has a pleasant base sound signature that none of today's receivers have. If white noise is played, you can hear well all the frequencies as far as your ears can handle. And it's a smooth sound.

Today's receivers, when no EQ is applied, sound terrible. The RZ50 had a price as high as $1,700, so it is a rather expensive receiver. And if it wasn't for Dirac Live, it has a very harsh sound signature, even on the Emotiva speaker set I just got. It's as if the hearing of the sound engineers that designed HiFi audio gear was completely different in the '70s and '80s than those who did the same from the '90s until today. Even the most respected brands started having an awful sound quality. And the problem there is not quality, because if I can get the amazing sound quality from this Onkyo TX-RZ50 as I could from my Sansui G-5700, it's a simple matter of the base internal EQ. But the equalizer that comes as default is too narrow. It only goes 6 dB each way, and that's not enough. To show you what I mean, this is my current Dirac Live curve:

View attachment 496232

And this is what I did with the internal EQ after the Onkyo deleted my DL presets:

View attachment 496233

This curve sounds nothing like the one I made with Dirac Live.

Now, going back to the matter at hand, setting the subwoofer to "No" in the speaker configuration, it will delete your Dirac Live presets in the Onkyo RZ50, and I would assume in all the similar ones. After that, you won't have even the choice to access it without opening the Dirac Live in your computer, and open the project and push the preset again. That is if you can connect, because either the DL app or the Onkyo, or both are so buggy that when you open the app, it won't find the Onkyo, despite in my case both being connected to the same router via ethernet. If I can connect without problem to the Onkyo's web interface, it stands to reason that the Dirac Live app should find it right away. But it doesn't. I have to unplug the Onkyo for several seconds, plug it back in, turn it on, launch the DL app again, and then it will see it. So it's a buggy system, and you need a lot of patience.

This is very interesting. In my experience, properly working, high quality vintage amplifiers sound the same as modern amplifiers. There were some which were sensitive to speaker impedance. Modern amplifiers tend to have better noise and separation performance. But several people on this forum have measured vintage equipment and found them to still be viable.

My immediate reaction is that you are misremembering how things used to sound. Alternatively, I think you need to have a hearing test, because your description sounds like quite severe high frequency hearing loss.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I've heard that ARP is detrimental as well

 

[Sounderista]

My immediate reaction is that you are misremembering how things used to sound.

Well, it's not a matter of memory, because I have a Sansui G-5700 that I was using until I bought the Onkyo and was able to set a manual curve in Dirac Live that is very similar to the Sansui sound. It's not my memory or imagination, what is now called "vintage" sounds much better than the typical amp or receiver nowadays.

Of course being able to recreate the same or at least very similar EQ curve to the Sansuis in this Onkyo is a huge deal, because I can have superb sound with all the perks of the modern era, like remote control for all functions, 6 HDMI inputs, and even better, the fake Dolby Atmos that receivers these days create from stereo, which to my ears sounds fantastic, all the All Channel Stereo mode that sometimes sounds even better.

I'm not one of those "analog rules, digital sucks" kind of guy that has a $10,000 turntable with a McIntosh preamp and amp bigger than a house, and two speakers that are probably $20K each. I love all the modern stuff that is convenient, but receivers have sounded like crap for decades, beginning with the 90's. I remember buying a rather expensive Sony receiver in 1995 that quite simply, didn't have half the quality of the Sansui my parents bought in 1978, which was the cheapest of the cheapest. Very low power at 15 Watts, that tells you how cheap it was. But even without a separate EQ, the sound quality was way better than the Sony with a separate EQ.

Alternatively, I think you need to have a hearing test, because your description sounds like quite severe high frequency hearing loss.

I would if I have insurance (I live in the US where the healthcare system sucks and you can't do anything without insurance), but my hearing is fine. I can't say I hear all the way up to 20 Khz, most likely 15 or so, but I have Cubase Pro 15 with a Focusrite audio interface and dozens of professional VST3 EQs, and I have done some tests to see how high can I listen to a frequency and it's around 15. Not that it matters, after all, how many instruments in real life go as high as that?

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Sony receiver in 1995 that quite simply, didn't have half the quality of the Sansui my parents bought in 1978, which was the cheapest of the cheapest. Very low power at 15 Watts, that tells you how cheap it was.

That's probably important.

 

[EWL5]

That's probably important.

In 1995, Sony was the "king" w/the likes of Trinitron (followed by Wega), ES, etc. and could do no wrong. You could be forgiven for thinking that nearly everything Sony touched back then was "gold". The king is dead, long live the king!

 

[jdbob]

When you set your subwoofer to none then you have modified the speaker configuration so the existing Dirac configuration is considered invalid. As far as I know that is true regardless of whether it is a Onkyo, Pioneer (I have a 505 in my office), Marantz, or Denon (I have a 4800 in my living room). For my 4800 I have two presets, one for 2.0 and one for 7.2.4 and so two different Dirac calibrations. Not sure if the Onkyo offers that or not.

 

[Sounderista]

When you set your subwoofer to none then you have modified the speaker configuration so the existing Dirac configuration is considered invalid. As far as I know that is true regardless of whether it is a Onkyo, Pioneer (I have a 505 in my office), Marantz, or Denon (I have a 4800 in my living room). For my 4800 I have two presets, one for 2.0 and one for 7.2.4 and so two different Dirac calibrations. Not sure if the Onkyo offers that or not.

That's wrong. I don't mean you're wrong, but assuming you're correct in the behavior, it's a poor design. Most people don't live in the middle of nowhere. I'm lucky to live in an old subdivision that doesn't have the homes too close together, so my neighbors never complained about my subwoofer. But if my wife has to work the next day, and I stay later than her, I want to enjoy a movie or TV show without her being bothered. And while my neighbors haven't complained, from Sunday night to Thursday night I stop the sub bass and loud movies at 10 PM, and Fridays and Saturday nights at midnight.

So I would like to be able to simply turn off the subwoofer. Come to think of it, I can actually walk to the subwoofer and turn it off, but my point still stands. When I had the Pioneer VSX-935, if I turned off the subwoofer from the speaker settings, the only thing that caused was to not have any sound coming out from it. It didn't disable my EQ completely.

As great as Dirac Live is, to me its main issue is to not be able to use it as a simple EQ that you can operate while listening to music. Having that parametric EQ is great, but you have to tweak it a lot to get to the perfect point, while it would be so much better if you had the Dirac Live app open on the computer, while the Onkyo is playing music, and you are tweaking all the bands you want. The same I do when I'm EQing music in Cubase with Fabfilter ProQ-3 and I adjust the points based on what I'm listening to. Of course I wouldn't expect an EQ in a receiver to have the same features as a professional studio EQ, but the one in DL is a huge step in that direction. It just needs to give the user total control over all the parameters.

 

[valerianf]

I got a Onkyo TX RZ30 and had a similar feeling: out of the box, without room EQ or with ACCEQ or with manual EQ the sound is horrible.
In my case too bright with distortion in the high frequencies.
Ultimately I found using Dirac with a calibration mic connected to a computer made the sound acceptable.
For movies it is great but for HD music it is so so.
I miss the sound of the old Marantz or Yamaha.

 

[kyuu]

That curve makes me wince just to look at it, nevermind what it must be like to listen to. I agree with previous posts that there must be some serious issues with your high frequency hearing. Standard hearing tests wouldn't normally catch that as they are concered with speech frequencies. And if your listening to tones through a system with such boosted highs, then obviously that only proves that you have a problem if they sound normal.

 

[valerianf]

Could it be that the measurement mic is not well located or has too much correction in the high frequencies?

 

[Sounderista]

That curve makes me wince just to look at it, nevermind what it must be like to listen to. I agree with previous posts that there must be some serious issues with your high frequency hearing. Standard hearing tests wouldn't normally catch that as they are concered with speech frequencies. And if your listening to tones through a system with such boosted highs, then obviously that only proves that you have a problem if they sound normal.

It's not my hearing, and I would have absolutely no problem saying it is, because I know that it's a fact of life that as we grow old, hearing starts to go in higher frequencies and going down each decade or so.

My calibration is simple. I know what different instruments sound like from having them in front of me, or very close to me. I don't own a drum set, but I have friends who do, and I own a couple of electric guitars, an acoustic one, two violins, a viola, a cello, a flute and a clarinet. But the key instrument is the drum set, because you set up any amp or receiver to a point where the drum kit sounds good, and everything else will do. If you EQ only listening to classical music, well, in my experience, classical music is rather forgiving when it comes to mediocre audio gear, but rock music is not. And while I'm not going to calibrate my AVR with a drum kit next to me, I know what it sounds like, because I've been in front of several at different times in my life. So my goal is always to make my amp or receiver to sound as close as possible to that. That's why to me the big failure of the Dirac Live system is that it does everything based on those woooop sounds, which I'm not against. But I think they should provide a way to also let you calibrate using music.

You may think my EQ curve is insane, but it sounds amazing. Even better than the Sansui itself. Whether it's movies, or music, I seem to have found a sound that makes this room larger, and it's not a very large room. Even worse, acoustically it's a nightmare, because it's one of those awful ceilings with each half at an angle, but because of the way things are placed, I can't really make the home theater part of it symmetrical. But even then, everything from movies to classical music to heavy metal sounds outstanding. And the best test is when it comes to vinyl records, because the Sansui shines when it comes to vinyl records, but all these new receivers are absolute crap for them. And this one is no different without DL, but with this curve, they sound amazing, even the ones that are not Mobility SoundLabs or those really audiophile ones, of which I have a few, but most are not. I even bought an Emotiva phono stage, assuming that this Onkyo would have a phono preamp as bad as the one in the Pioner VSX-935 and the older Onkyo receiver I had. But it turns out the phono preamp in the RZ50 is at least as good as the Emotiva phono stage, because they both sound excellent.

Feel free to load my curve in Dirac Live, you have nothing to lose. I zipped the last three I did, I can't even remember why I named them that way, but the most recent one is the only one I'm using.

 

[Sounderista]

Could it be that the measurement mic is not well located or has too much correction in the high frequencies?

Could be. My measuring is not very accurate, because it's not a typical home theater recliner or sofa, it's my bed with a back rest. So placing that microphone in the extra positions the test requires is a "more or less" deal, but on the other hand, if I remember correctly, the DL app doesn't give you directions with exact placements, it just shows you where in a graphic that has a seat. So how would I know exactly how many inches to my right and in front of me, to say one of the many positions, it needs me to place the mic?

Besides, the whole thing is ridiculous. It tells you that ideally you need to place the mic then leave the room. So these people expect me to place the mic, leave the room, then come again, place the mic in the next position, then leave the room again, close the door, then after a minute or two, come inside the room again, place the mic in the next position and so on until it's finished with all the positions? Do these people think I have eternal life that I can waste my time so generously?

In addition, think of how accurate the test will be if you take yourself out of the measurement completely. The measurement is supposed to measure the acoustics of the room the same way it will be when you listen to music or movies. Well, if you measure without yourself as part of that, then it won't be accurate, because when you, after wasting an hour doing measurements and then adjusting the EQ yourself because what it spit out didn't sound that great, you will be in that room. You will be part of the acoustics of the room. So the measurement without the listener is not very accurate. In fact, I need to run the measurement again because I did it with the center channel speaker bellow and ahead of the TV set (beware if you buy Emotiva center channel speakers, they are BIG!), so I need to run them again. And this time, what I'm going to do is sit on the bed in my usual movie watching position, but try to lower myself about five inches, then hold the little UFO mic that came with the RZ50 right on top of my head as I avoid moving my head. That way, the measurement will be more accurate than if I leave the room. FYI, I didn't leave the room the first time, I sat at my desk right next to the bed and set the UFO thingie on a small tripod, more or less guessing where my head would be, and stayed dead silent as DL was doing the measurements.

 

[Sounderista]

When you set your subwoofer to none then you have modified the speaker configuration so the existing Dirac configuration is considered invalid.

An additional thought on this. Like I said, this is a failure in design, because, like you said, disabling the subwoofer makes the DL configuration invalid as a whole. But that just means that the configuration should still be valid for the other 7 speakers just fine. After all, if you're not using Dirac, disabling the subwoofer doesn't reset all the sound tuning you've done.

But let's say it makes DL invalid so it unloads it. Ok, but why does it completely reset the Onkyo to a point where it thinks it never had Dirac Live at all? Because that's what happens. Next time you open DL, it starts as if it was the first time it ran. That's really bad design. Not to mention that the user should be prompted, when disabling the subwoofer, that Dirac Live will stop functioning if the subwoofer is disabled.

 

[Sounderista]

And if your listening to tones through a system with such boosted highs, then obviously that only proves that you have a problem if they sound normal.

OK, I think I know what's going on, and why you guys think that if such a curve is normal for me, I must have hearing problems. It's one of two things, 1) I failed to use DL properly, for which I'm going to dig deeper as much as it bugs me to waste time on something that should be a simple adjustment while listening to music, or 2) DL is extremely buggy. Here's why I came to those conclusions.

I ran the test again, this time just like I mentioned. Sitting on the bed at my normal TV viewing position, holding the mic at the different positions required in the test. Unlike the first run, this time I sucked it up and spent what seemed like at least half an hour doing all the required positions, not just the bare minimum. After that, I pushed the filter to the Onkyo just as it was, no editing of any curve or change in any parameter. The result was as I expected, pretty terrible, with muffled highs and a rather flat, boring sound signature. Not even the best audiophile jazz would sound good.

So I proceeded to edit the curve, not even loading the one I uploaded here, but making a very similar one. I had to do the same annoying workflow of saving the Group 1 curve to a target file, then load that target file to all the groups. Finally, I pushed it to slot 2, since 1 had the nice curve and no chance I'm overwriting that.

The result was absolutely horrible. And it made me realize why you guys said that a curve like that would mean I have hearing problems. Because this wasn't the Sansui sound, with soft highs that gives it a smooth sound, the opposite of harsh. No, this was a really harsh treble, as if it was even worse than the EQ curve above. Like the 4 Khz band all the way up, but the rest at 0. It was an unbearable sound. And if that sounded normal to me, then I would indeed have a hearing problem.

I loaded DL again (and this is the thing that bothers me the most about this system, that instead of adjusting that great parametric EQ with lots of points while listening to music, you have to more or less guess based on your experience with EQs what will be the right curve, push it, quit the program, then to tweak more, you have to open the program again and it's the same thing over and over until you get what you like), and started bringing down the highs, but push after tweak after push and it sounded just as crappy.

Because I had done this with my Macbook Air sitting on the bed, I copied the project file and the target file to iCloud to open them on my PC. I pushed it, and still sounded awful. I didn't understand what the hell was going on, because it was almost the same curve as the one I showed here. But just to be safe, I loaded to all groups the target file with that curve. And it still sounded like crap.

So then I loaded the project that I had used a few weeks ago when I made and pushed the curve that I showed above. But I loaded the curve that I created today. And that's when I realize how crappy this software is. Because this time, it sounded great. So that tells me that the curve you push is not an absolute, that it will produce for example, 10 dB at 12 Khz, or -5 dB at 1 Khz, because it depends completely on the measurements. And we're not even talking about two sets of measurements that were done in different rooms and houses. The only big difference is that I had the center channel speaker in front of the TV set when I did the first measurement of the 5 minimum points to proceed with the rest, and now that speaker is above the TV set mounted on brackets. And I moved the height speakers a little bit. But other than that, it's the same room.

Maybe it's the difference between doing the 5 bare minimum measurements and doing all I think 9? I didn't even count, but it doesn't matter. Unless I missed something crucial here, this software is seriously buggy. And just to note one important thing, I disabled the gain and delay from the app, so after one point, it was pushing all these curves with the delay and gain to 0.

This has to be the first equalizer I've ever seen that processes sound very differently depending on some rather innacurate measurements. If you tell me that you get proper instructions that tell you exactly the distance from your head where the mic should be positioned, ok, but it's a picture of a silhouette of a man sitting on a chair, that you can't even more in 3D space to give you a better idea of where to place the mic in the Z axis. So you have to guess. And then it gives you measurements that will affect the EQ curve drastically, because it will have its own EQ on top of whatever your curve is. From my experience today, I gathered that the measurements produced one curve that exaggerated the mid-high frequencies, and the curve I edited, was sitting on top of that. At one point I set all the points to the right of 2 Khz to -50. All the way down. I shouldn't have heard any highs at all. And while it was muffled, I could still hear all the instruments just fine. So you have one curve that you cannot modify, produced by the app, and then the one you can modify.

This whole Dirac Live thing is a bag of hurt. You get good results after wasting hours with it, when I would get the same or better result if I was listening to music while adjusting the parametric EQ, instead of Woooooop!!! Woooooop!!!

Give me a freaking break!

 

[Dougey_Jones]

It’s not an EQ, it’s room correction. I hate to say it, but I think you’re in over your head.

 

[EWL5]

I'm sorry but it sounds like you're stuck in the past and would rather stick to legacy equipment (which is fine as you like what you like). There's a certain amount of competency required to get Dirac Live working properly. Did you perform bass management in Dirac or in the AVR?

I called it in post #4. The fact that you couldn't be bothered to answer my bass management question means you're confirming what everyone's already thinking. Holding a mic with your hand? There's a reason why most people use a boom mic stand these days to do a proper room correction.

You haven't asked for help but here's the bare minimum you need to do:

1) Make sure your RZ50 has the latest firmware.
2) Make sure you are running the latest version of Dirac.
3) The puck mic included w/your AVR only works connected to the AVR for Dirac. If you want to use a mic w/your Macbook or any other laptop, you need to purchase a UMIK1.
4) Get at least a tripod or some stable device to position the mic for the different locations. Measurements for the "tight" approach should be no more than 8" apart from the Main Listening Position (MLP).
5) Go to this website and follow the instructions to calibrate your speakers. Not doing this properly will cause incorrect measurements. Note that Dirac settings won't be reflected in AccuEQ and vice versa.

Configure microphone and setting speaker levels for measurements in Dirac Live v2 & v3

Your time and my time is precious. Let's do it the proper way and maybe we can get somewhere.