Post-DIRAC Live ART Calibration - Lack of Bass

[Chromatischism]

All of us with Denon and Marantz gear can easily compare Audy and Dirac ART.
For me its not even close, everything else being equal - in my untreated, accoustically terrible multipurpose room. Look at all the measurements people have posted with ART, Audy can never achieve that.

Well, it certainly can. I'll post a graph tomorrow when I'm back at the PC that will change your belief.

 

[TimoJ]

Well, it certainly can. I'll post a graph tomorrow when I'm back at the PC that will change your belief.

Post left or right channel 20Hz-20kHz Decay graph using 1/6 smoothing, light REW color scheme and in the Controls dialog put these settings:

 

[AudioJester]

Well, it certainly can. I'll post a graph tomorrow when I'm back at the PC that will change your belief.

I dont think you get it. I have Audy and ART. Have allready done the comparison. Its not a belief, but a reality for me in my system.

No matter how good a graph you get with Audy, unless you compare directly to ART you will never know.....

By the way - have a look around. Do you see many users chosing Audy over ART when both are available??

 

[dlaloum]

Post left or right channel 20Hz-20kHz Decay graph using 1/6 smoothing, light REW color scheme and in the Controls dialog put these settings:

View attachment 500496

Any specific reason for 1/6 smoothing? (I settled on 1/12 for most of mine...)

 

[TimoJ]

Any specific reason for 1/6 smoothing? (I settled on 1/12 for most of mine...)

It gives a little bit cleaner visuals in order to quickly see the total 20Hz-20k "picture".

 

[janbth]

Any specific reason for 1/6 smoothing? (I settled on 1/12 for most of mine...)

I strongly argue the use of Var smoothing (no smoothing in the bass, some smoothing on higher frequencies). Smoothing in the bass region will hide relevant information, in particular room modes.

 

[TimoJ]

I strongly argue the use of Var smoothing (no smoothing in the bass, some smoothing on higher frequencies). Smoothing in the bass region will hide relevant information, in particular room modes.

There is no Var smoothing option available for decay. 1/6 (and also 1/3) gives a good overall picture of decay. For other things, like room modes, there are lots of options and ways to view them.

 

[janbth]

There is no Var smoothing option available for decay. 1/6 (and also 1/3) gives a good overall picture of decay. For other things, like room modes, there are lots of options and ways to view them.

I just checked the Decay graph for one of my measurements. I haven’t noticed this for Decay graphs before, but it seems that the smoothing is fixed at 1/48. Can you verify this? Can you set 1/6 or 1/3 for Decay graphs?

 

[TimoJ]

I just checked the Decay graph for one of my measurements. I haven’t noticed this for Decay graphs before, but it seems that the smoothing is fixed at 1/48. Can you verify this? Can you set 1/6 or 1/3 for Decay graphs?

I'm using REW 5.40 beta 111, in that version right mouse menu has that setting.

 

[Chromatischism]

Post left or right channel 20Hz-20kHz Decay graph using 1/6 smoothing, light REW color scheme and in the Controls dialog put these settings:

View attachment 500496

I never did waterfalls to 20 kHz because waterfalls were a tool to analyze the bass region.

I dont think you get it. I have Audy and ART. Have allready done the comparison. Its not a belief, but a reality for me in my system.

No matter how good a graph you get with Audy, unless you compare directly to ART you will never know.....

By the way - have a look around. Do you see many users chosing Audy over ART when both are available??

Please stop pretending this is some kind of competition. Bad assumption. I am only responding to the following:

(by the way, the answer to your question is: yes there are some, but let's not get into that now)

Look at all the measurements people have posted with ART, Audy can never achieve that.

It can do a pretty good job:

 

[TimoJ]

never did waterfalls to 20 kHz because waterfalls were a tool to analyze the bass region.

What about posting REW's decay tab results, like I asked, with the parameters I mentioned?

 

[AudioJester]

I never did waterfalls to 20 kHz because waterfalls were a tool to analyze the bass region.


Please stop pretending this is some kind of competition. Bad assumption. I am only responding to the following:

(by the way, the answer to your question is: yes there are some, but let's not get into that now)



It can do a pretty good job:

View attachment 500729

Relax, no one is calling it a competition.i have been an Audy user a lot longer than Dirac.

No one is doubting that Audy, MSO etc. can do a good job - i have experienced that. What you still dont seem to accept is that when we switched to ART the improvement is significant. Unless you try for yourself you will never know?

As good as you think your graph looks, it will look better with properly setup and calibrated ART - its just the way it works compared to Audy.

 

[janbth]

I'm using REW 5.40 beta 111, in that version right mouse menu has that setting.

OK, found it, thanks. I was using the Graph menu, but oddly enough setting a smoothing there doesn’t apply to the Decay graph.

 

[Frank207be]

Relax, no one is calling it a competition.i have been an Audy user a lot longer than Dirac.

No one is doubting that Audy, MSO etc. can do a good job - i have experienced that. What you still dont seem to accept is that when we switched to ART the improvement is significant. Unless you try for yourself you will never know?

As good as you think your graph looks, it will look better with properly setup and calibrated ART - its just the way it works compared to Audy.

Agreed!

ART is awesome for rock music. Play any live concert music or videos and feel the kick drum that was always masked by room modes that no affordable RC previously could eliminate. Pure joy!

 

[AudioJester]

Agreed!

ART is awesome for rock music. Play any live concert music or videos and feel the kick drum that was always masked by room modes that no affordable RC previously could eliminate. Pure joy!

Had a new years eve get together last night and cranked up a live concert. I cant believe how good the system sounded, everyone there was stunned.

 

[alvigg]

Agreed!

ART is awesome for rock music. Play any live concert music or videos and feel the kick drum that was always masked by room modes that no affordable RC previously could eliminate. Pure joy!

Try atmos version of dark side of the moon

 

[Vaporizer3644]

Hey folks I also want to share my experience with Dirac ART.

I also felt the subwoofer and bass in general lacked output after inital ART calibration, especially in movies.
I want to be able to play loud and buckle my seatbelts when needed.
My setup is:

• Denon X3800H
• Fronts: Dali Zensor 5 / Center
• Front Heights: Dali Stile bookshelf
• Rear: Dali Zensor bookshelf
• Subs: 2x Dayton Audio UMII-18 (Ported build but Plugged) with Behringer NX6000d

After spending days messing about in Dirac Live app I ended up doing this:
Downloaded the NAD target curve from DIRAC site and modified it to my taste, i remember someone told me that a +10db slope from 80hz to 30hz and flat 30hz to 20hz was the "omphf".
Save and apply target curve to all speaker groups.
Removed all speaker groups support to subwoofers and dragged subwoofer 2 to its own group.
Limit all speaker groups support range to 80-150, 110-150 on smaller Stile bookshelves as they bottomed out several times on the Batman car chase sequence.
Set subwoofer support to -24db on all speaker groups.
Enable infrasonics on the subwoofers on all the speaker groups.

With this I really get the "whoa" when watching movies on higher volumes.
I will experiment more with support levels and range on the different speaker groups, like whats the in-room difference between -18db 80-150hz vs -6db 50-150hz?

The target curve I ended up with works quite fine for causal volume TV and high volume movies in my room.

 

[Keith_W]

With bass, there are two aspects that affect our perception of how much bass there is: its amplitude, and its decay. The louder the bass region is, or the longer the decay, the more bass we subjectively perceive. You can probably guess where I am going with this one.

I do not have ART, but I do have different DSP profiles where I can have longer decay or shorter decay. And of course, it is a cinch for me to dial up the subwoofers and get more bass. Subjectively, increasing the volume of the subwoofers changes the tonality and the bass seems way too loud and overdone. However, increasing the decay does not have the same effect! Up to a certain point, bass feels more full and more ample. Go beyond it, and bass seems "slow" and "muddy". If the bass decays too fast, it seems "thin", as if there are no subwoofers at all. At no point does the tonality seem to change.

I am not aware of any psychoacoustic studies that have looked at this phenomenon, probably because you need an anechoic chamber that remains anechoic down to 20Hz and I don't think there are many such chambers in the world.

So I very much suspect that the reason you guys are complaining that there is a "lack of bass" with ART is because ART is working as intended. By reducing the decay, it sounds subjectively thin. I would be curious to hear what you guys think about boosting the low bass volume by 10dB to compensate, in my experience it sounded off.

 

[dlaloum]

If the bass decays too fast, it seems "thin", as if there are no subwoofers at all. At no point does the tonality seem to change.

There seems an inherent assumption that having it sound as if there are subwoofers is a positive...

This could potentially stand in opposition to a principle of wanting the entire frequency range to sound consistent, as if all of it from 20Hz to 20KHz is coming from a single speaker (if we are discussing Mono...) - seems to me, that we don't want it to sound as if there are subwoofers! Rather we want it to sound naturally full range...

However I do take your meaning with regards to it sounding "thin" - although I hasten to add, that that is a subjective term.

With my ART setup, I find flat bass (+0) to be ideal - and even when I put into place a small +4db bass shelf (using the handle method) - I found it to be bass heavy.

I am almost certain that the bass performance I am experiencing now from my setup (tuned to my liking) is what you would describe as "thin" - and I would perhaps describe as "Neutral"

I do like the terms "wet" / "dry" which seem to have been coined in the StormAudio threads at AVS... (Wet meaning with decay present, dry with decay controlled/removed)

And this is definitely a topic that is likely to generate more interest, and various explorations - we need a better understanding here!

 

[Vaporizer3644]

So I very much suspect that the reason you guys are complaining that there is a "lack of bass" with ART is because ART is working as intended.

ART sets the target curve to 0db in the low-end after the initial measurements and the rest of the the target curve is based on the speakers themselves(i think).
So you end up with "your speakers without a house curved low-end with a cleaned up 20-150hz".
It is a fantastic template to work with, can freely shape the the sound to how you subjectively want it.

What kinda irritates me about Denon is Direct mode.
Can't run ART with Direct mode, ie the only mode to get pure 2.0, 5.1, 7.1 etc.
I'm left with only running Upmixing mode or Stereo.

When the sound mode is “Direct” or “Pure Direct”, only Distances and Levels will be applied. The acoustic filter will not be applied

So as of right now my ART Wide calibrated setup now works great Dolby Surround Upmixing.
For pure music listening I need to make my own ART Narrow calibration and make a dedicated curve just for that and assign that to "Stereo" mode.