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I didn't stick with the default, though I did listen to it. I definitely didn't like Harman and I don't think it's intended to be a set-it-and-forget-it preset, either. I adjusted it to be as close to sounding "right" as I could, which was very close to what I end up with using Audyssey and DEQ's gradual bass slope. It probably sounded great to the uninitiated but I'm picky and spend a lot of time on this system so I can hear the differences. I can't tell you where the issue was causing the lack of impact at the bottom or lack of integration up top – I spent a lot of time chasing it down and eventually concluded I had tried everything with my 2 subs short of a MiniDSP. My subs have delay adjustments up to 16 ms each which should be enough in my 16-foot room, and while the resulting frequency response looked nearly on the money, the sound wasn't. Aside from those two things, I found the quality of the bass in the rest of the subwoofer range to sound similar to Audyssey. There was another user at AVS who noted the same issue with lack of sub bass impact with Dirac and I don't think he ever solved it, either.Which Dirac target curves did you try?
Since I have experience with this I can say that although your bass is a little high, I don't find it excessive. I bet you have sealed subs? In my small room and with vented subs I'm only needing a 6-10 dB rise (depends on volume level). It was higher when I had sealed. I like the shape of the sub bass curve for the most part – if I had to compare to mine, I wouldn't have a knee at 70 Hz but more of a slope that starts at maybe 50Hz, and I would have it blend with the speakers by 120 Hz at the latest. Every time I've had a bass boost extend to 150 Hz or higher it just sounds too thick and I lose clarity in the lower mids.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...
Yes it does, and I hope they address it. Still, it's not worth ditching DEQ for that. Just calibrate your surround levels with DEQ on after the fact with Dolby test tones or similar. That usually means they need to be reduced by anywhere from 3-5 in the Levels menu.I always kept DEQ off because it also boosted satellites which was undesirable to me. Does it still work that way?
I am not sure what constitutes "live sound", but I definitely don't think Audyssey lacks in bass quality. It uses a huge amount of taps with its FIR filters to achieve great resolution in its corrections. I can't say regarding imaging since I don't EQ outside the bass region and have a nice triangular setup with equidistant walls and waveguided speakers so imaging is great – no issues to correct there. However, I would believe if you had differences from left to right due to an uneven room setup that imaging could be improved by room correction.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.
What I did hear from Dirac when I ran it full range was that the speakers sounded more tame, smooth, and composed. Probably the opposite of live sound which can be more brash due to the amplification and spaces used. But you have to take that with a grain of salt because the results were specific to that speaker. I don't have the hardware anymore or I could test with a much better speaker. But there's really not much point equalizing my current speakers beyond maybe 1 kHz at the absolute most.
That is the correct way to do it. In a room, the subwoofers will essentially act as one below a certain frequency and above that, it depends on location and phase. That's where placement, delays, and EQ come in. But you want to EQ them as one, not individually. Applying individual EQ will be a waste because the results will change when they are summed as a single LFE channel.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.