Dirac Room Correction Vs Audyssey

[Karren Bangura]

Roomcorrection started out at simply correcting for frequency response anomalies due to speaker and room interactions. This can be something as simple as graphic EQ (GEQ) or something a little more sophisticated called a Parametric Equaliser (PEQ).

So modern room correction technologies focus on both phase and time-alignment issues as well as the frequency response and take the loudspeaker system and the room as one system while doing so. To do this, they use a mathematical tool called convolution and affect the impulse response of the loudspeaker in both the time and frequency domain.

To help people resolve the above issue, I have created a brand new guide called Dirac Live Perfection: Loudness Compensation with Dirac Live. It is a few dollars more expensive than my other guides as it has taken a lot more work than the other guides. However, it will help those that are looking for a solution to the above issue.

However, where Audyssey has fallen down has been with the design of the algorithms that balance imaging with frequency based corrections and that the system was designed with the reverberation characteristics of their single test-room.

Audyssey needs to keep improving its research and algorithms, especially when it comes to reverberation characteristics of listening spaces. Also, the balancing of imaging and frequency response should not have to be so hard with regards to microphone positioning or need Audyssey Pro and 10+ mic positions.

Yamaha must lay down its pride and have a chat with Audyssey or alternatively, get someone who understands base management and correction. YPAO R.S.C. needs to do much better with subs and not just yearly incremental improvement otherwise it will never be taken seriously.

Otherwise, this is going to be slowly swinging the other way and getting the other half of their customers upset. If you are as unhappy with the sound quality of content on Disney+ as I am, please put a complaint in directly to Disney. If this is not resolved by them within the next few years, I will stop my subscription and boycott content that is not mixed to an appropriate quality. I would encourage you to do the same.

Look, I think this is definitely great for rooms that are not set up as a dedicated room with proper speaker placement and speaker matching. If you set up a system properly with room treatment and proper calibration, then sound can literally float between speakers so you can achieve this without spacial mapping.

Hi , I am just reaching out after looking through this. I have a Yamaha TSR 7810 and have been looking at the Pioneer LX505 with Dirac Live because I feel that YPAO is not freat for my dual SVS subs. Anyway in the comparison you mention that Loudness compensation is absent from Dirac Live, but it does now have it, and you even have an ad for it inbetween your explanation of the technologies here.

Like Audyssey MultEQ, Yamaha's YPAO, and Pioneer's MCACC, Dirac Live is a room correction system designed to counter the ill effects of placing loudspeakers in a real room. While we know Dirac's products are used on high end products like the Emotiva XMC-1 and Theta Digital Casablanca, we can't really claim to know all the fine details of how Dirac Live actually works. Fortunately, we know somebody that does: Mathias Johansson, CEO of Dirac. Of course, Mathias isn't just a business man; he's got a Ph.D. in Signal Processing. If you want to know the full scoop on Dirac Live, keep reading!

Here is another image. It shows impulse responses from 9 different measurement positions within the sweet spot of a very well damped room using Genelec monitors. The impulse responses have been time-aligned here to make them easier to compare. For reference, we show how the same impulse responses look after application of a Dirac Live filter and another filter with identical magnitude response but no phase correction (a so called minimum phase filter)

Audioholics: Do users have the ability to set multiple profiles--for example, setting a separate "music" and "movie" room correction profile where one can be tailored for a different frequency response range, bass response, different crossovers, etc?

Mathias Johansson: Yes. The number of presets depends on the particular hardware implementation. For Dirac Live RCS you can create as many presets as you like.

He sends back a sample filter which has had time and frequency domain corrections made to it. From there you listen for a few days, provide some listening notes and then Mitch will make adjustments as per your desires based on your listening notes.

I have my filters running inside the DSP within Roon, but they could be in any convolved like his HangLoose convolver if you wanted to run a PC with a sound card to do the processing. Roon is just convenient to me, let's me run multiple filters for different content and also allows you to run the full DSP engine if you want additional functionality like gain, as this DSP work usually drops the level a little.

I've found the results far better than anything I've had in commercial solutions like Anthem ARC or the time I spent with Dirac Live. I'm only using it for 2 channel listening today but I do have plans to look at deploying something like a Motu Ultralite as a sound card to enable this processing on all of my sources (analog, digital, HT etc).

Hi @BugPowderDust very interesting. i saw the video and it was fascinating. how do all the different resolutions get handled like 24 bit/96K, 24 bit/192K. specially with Qobuz it seems every song has a different resolution, so are they different filters for each ? That would need multiple sweep signals at each resolution?

The filter has a bunch of settings in it so that it can deal with all of the different resolutions you are trying to playback. This gives you a separate .cfg file and a separate .wav file for each bitrate.

Alternatives? HAF has been doing somethig similar for a long time. Pricing is on the site. Has a few unique solutions like room shaper. Deqx has been doing this for decades with an all in one hardware/software/mic one box solution. Now there are also lots of guides to generate filters yourself and cheaper hardware like miniDSP and multichannel pro dacs.

This is an excellent thread. I am using the schiit loki+ as an analog filter to change the tone of songs that seem too harsh or boomy. Maybe a longer term project to understand some of the theory before going in big time. I had tried Dirac with minidsp a few years back and it made the sound quite clinical but from what I can read the accourate stuff and the FiR filters is more sophisticated and works quite well but has a learning curve/ needs an expert to do it.

Email the man and tell him what you want and he gets you a price. There's no sign of differential pricing in my experiences with him, but he does want to get paid for the time he spends. Given I elected to get him to help plan things like room treatment as well as multiple DSP filters, my quote won't be the same for many of you here so I didn't think it appropriate to post it.

Room treatment can sound clinical at first, especially if you are not used to an accurate response. We all have slight tonal preferences too, which is where the tuning of targets comings into things. With Mitch I send him listening notes on a bunch of my music and he offers suggestions on how to alter the target curve, how to pick another target curve etc and resends more filters. You can easily make a hash of room correction filters. I didn't have the time or inclination to go down that route today but I will in future to start doing my other rooms (I have about 10 Roon RAAT zones) myself.

Absolutely agree mate. The point where I experienced for myself the differences well implemented room treatments and room correction DSP was to my mind the biggest game changer of my entire 25 year audiophile journey! You are absolutely correct there is no bigger 'bang for buck' available in this hobby. Thanks for posting your experiences, I was not previously aware of Mitch's services.

If all you want is convolution filters and dont have the knowledge / tools to create them, i would suggest the cheapest option is using HAF. All you need is a usb microphone/umik and there is an automated process/instructions to take measurements. Send them off and pay for the filters. Mitcho offers something similar but you have to pay for/install/set-up audiolense. This is a good option if you want to learn a method of generating filters but the software and service is much much more expensive.

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I was reading an article on room EQ produced by Dr. David Rich over at Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity. The article focused primarily on Anthem's ARC system and how it works and was interesting for people like me that have some understanding of room EQ, but not on a very technical level.

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