I would think that Audyssey users do know they should measure all 8 positions and plot REW graphs for more than just one position. I have used Dirac Live too (trial only) and I don't share your experience/opinion based on both subjective and objective measurements. That's fine as we all have our own ways and opinions. It cannot be taken as facts that one "sound better" than the other, except again, it may be "fact" for the one who makes the claim. To really compare the two objectively, we would need to see some proof based on a complete set of measurements (as you said, not just FR, single position or not..). I have never seen any published credible evidence to that effect so far.
That doesn't address my point. Sure you can take REW plots of multiple positions but how do you interpret which has more precise imaging or better "live" sound (whatever that means)? "Proof" based on a complete set of measurements are not going be the most helpful in answering that. Blind listening tests are more reliable for this and that's where Audyssey routinely comes up short.
Dirac has a higher learning curve than Audyssey, and its default target curve is known to be bass shy. If you only used the Dirac trial for a short time, then no offense intended but it's unlikely that you dialed everything in properly with Dirac and found your preferred target curve. You also need to make sure you have a wide variety of test content, because some content may sound no different while others can reveal huge differences.
When you were using the Dirac trial, did you get any help on forums and get any recommendations? Here's an
old post where a user compared the two and found Audyssey to be better than Dirac at first, until they were informed by more experienced Dirac users that they didn't do the Dirac calibration correctly - they changed their mind after they fixed their Dirac calibration. There are several dozens more cases like that in the AVS miniDSP DDRC-88A thread. My first several Dirac calibrations were not the best I've done.
I was not satisfied with sub bass from my Dirac attempts, finding it to lack impact. No bloat on either system. This seems like it's down to preference. There are likely other things going on that are hard to see with basic measurements.
I also could not get as good of sub-speaker integration.
I believe most of the time the target curve for the sub with Audyssey doesn't need changing, since Dynamic EQ builds that in.
Which Dirac target curves did you try? The default does not have a lot of bass, and I don't find that commonly suggested
Harman curves work well as in-room targets either because they are flat besides the house curve, unless they are modified to roll off mids and treble. And Dirac's IR correction cleans up the bass significantly so I find it is capable of running strong house curves as long as the system can handle it. After a lot of experimentation I am running the below custom curve which is a kind of hybrid between Harman 10 dB and Dirac's default curve, but with even more bass boost and treble rolloff - it is a 24 dB spread in total. It may look excessive but was finely tuned for most realism on my system which which was confirmed by several users in a series of blind tests with a variety of movies and music. I couldn't say how well it would work on other systems - the point is that Dirac users may need to spend some time and effort on finding the proper target curve for their system, and if they don't, they have probably not realized Dirac's full potential.
I always kept DEQ off because it also boosted satellites which was undesirable to me. Does it still work that way?
Keep in mind that was before the Audyssey app, which made a big difference. Back then people had very little control over the results, so it's understandable that some jumped at the chance to try Dirac. The MultEQ editor isn't as advanced but the extra options and computational ability of the smartphone are nice improvements.
You're right, the initial comparisons in that thread before the Audyssey app are no longer useful. Still, from my own testing on several systems, Audyssey with the EQ editor was unable to produce the same clean level of bass, precise imaging, and live sound of Dirac.
OH, has DLBC finally allowed you to control dual subwoofers, something you could do in Audyssey for something like 5 years now? How much extra did you have to pay for the DLBC software upgrade?
Thank you for that, but are you sure Audyssey does not take that into account as well? Based on numerous experiments and REW graphs, I thought they do too, but it could have been just coincidental that mine seem to integrate extremely well, though admittedly it does vary with the crossover setting. I guess I could ask Audyssey about that.
When I used it two years ago, Audyssey only independently set levels and delays, and then EQs the subs as one, and that is consistent with everything I've ever seen about this topic from Audyssey and its users. It would be a big deal if Audyssey could do fully independent subwoofer EQ and they would certainly market it. It would be nice if the base level Dirac worked the same way but you can achieve the same with a splitter and optionally using the gain and delay knobs that most subwoofers have. And as has been mentioned, Audyssey is certainly not comparable to DLBC at all.
The biggest problem is when you run into users that insist "my stuff is great and your's is junk".
Choice-supportive bias is a well known phenomenon. People are obviously motivated to defend the stuff they own, whether it is quality or not. But this is ASR, where audio gear that people own is routinely exposed as junk. We should be conscious of this bias and still be able to have productive discussions.
One thing (I know that would not be possible as no one would organize such an event) I would love to do, is to participate in a controlled listening test between Dirac Live and XT32, both tweaked with the curves approaching flat between 20 and 300 Hz or so.
This still has the potential to be flawed. If the test restricts the Dirac calibration too much and makes it sound like Audyssey, it doesn't show what Dirac is actually capable of. That was the issue with the comparison test I linked above.
