Dirac Live Review
Sadie
The short answer is yes we can. We can see the improvement in the measured frequency and timing response. I can also hear an audible difference with a tighter, more clear sounding bass, smoother overall frequency response and a more coherent timing response (i.e. stereo imaging and depth of field) across a larger sweet spot.
Since the Dirac Live Processor is a VST plugin, any software music player or Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that supports the VST plugin architecture can simply load the DLP. In this article, I am using JRiver Media Center 64 Bit DSP audio architecture to host the DLP:
I clicked on Manage Plug-ins in JRiver and navigated to where the DLP VST was installed and loaded it. Here we are seeing the DLP loaded into JRiver and active with a correction uploaded into the first of eight slots available.
Each step of the wizard comes with a help screen of what to do. It is concise and well written so you can quickly get the hang of what to do. Here we are selecting which recording device to use once we clear the instructions:
Here I am using my Lynx Hilo ADC with a microphone preamp and calibrated measurement microphone. I have clicked into the area with the red square and loaded my measurement mics calibration file. In my case, the mic calibration file uses comma separated text whereas Dirac is expecting periods. Easy enough to open in a file editor and replace commas with periods. In most case, like using a UMIK-1 mic, the microphone calibration file will load without any calibration file modifications.
Clicking on next brings up the type of measurement you would like to take. These involve taking multiple measurements, the number of which depending on what type of listening arrangement is selected. The wider the listening area to cover the more measurements one needs to take. So it could be as few as 5 measurements and as many as 17:
In this walkthrough, I tried two listening arrangements, a single chair with 5 measurements and the sofa wide imaging with 17 measurements. This is so I could also subjectively compare the two corrections. First lets walkthrough the single chair selection.
Each time you take a measurement, Dirac will output a sweep signal starting with the left channel, then the right channel, then back to the left channel. So 3 sweeps per location times 5 locations equals 15 sweeps:
Dirac suggests a target curve based on the measurements you took. Generally speaking, one is looking for a downward tilt of the frequency response at the listening position. This is because most forward firing drivers in loudspeakers start off as omnidirectional at low frequencies and become progressively more directional at higher frequencies. The rising bass energy yields a steady state room curve with a downward tilt.
How much tilt? The scientific research that Sean Olive (and earlier Floyd Toole) conducted over years shows that a slope of 20 Hz to around -8 to -10 dB at 20 kHz is what most listeners prefer as neutral sound. A high level overview of that can be found in, The History of the Harman Target. While the overview also discusses headphone target curves, which have the same preferred target (transfer function) as loudspeakers in rooms, it also discusses loudspeaker target preferences. More importantly, there are a listing of AES papers that one can get the details on. One example is the Subjective and Objective Evaluation of Room Correction Products:
So these wonderful little 15L bookshelf Purifi speakers have a frequency response with the -3dB limits at 25 Hz and 22 kHz. Outstanding for such a small 2 way bookshelf speaker. Ctrl-click both checkboxes, top right to get both curves to display.
See the bottom right panel where it says on one side measured and corrected on the other side? Dirac has already calculated the correction in the background and by unchecking the measurement and checking on the correction, we get:
It is recommended to leave the delay and gain compensation on. I also adjusted the gain slider to about -6 dB for headroom management. The meters will peak red if there is any clipping, which I experienced none. I could probably go to 3 dB of headroom management, but I have plenty of power on tap.
And back to the filter design section. Creating a partial correction is dead easy. All I need to do is grab the right marker that was previously at 22.1 kHz and drag the marker to the left to about 600 Hz:
So the frequencies between 25.7 Hz and 587 Hz will be corrected and the rest left alone. Note, if I were using Dirac and Digital Room Correction for the first time, this is where I would suggest starting with a partial correction. This way one can focus your attention on just listening for an improved bass response and not a change in overall frequency response.
The corrected impulse is on the left and measured impulse on the right. As one can see on the left, the impulse or transient response is a cleaned up version of the measurement. Vertical scale is amplitude and horizontal scale in milliseconds.
The big vertical spike is the direct sound from the loudspeaker arriving at the microphone without any reflections. The smaller spikes, after the direct sound are early reflections. The corrected impulse response shows a clean spike and very little spikes (i.e. early reflections) after.
Sound travels roughly 1 foot per millisecond, so it becomes easier to understand that right after the direct sound, are the reflections (i.e. diffraction) off the speaker cabinet and then the speaker stand and anything else nearby like floor bounce or front/side wall bounce or ceiling bounce, all of those reflections are contributing to the sound, after the direct sound and our ears have a pattern to integrate those early reflections (i.e. the Haas effect) and understand amplitude and frequency response.
It is a complicated topic as it involves so many aspects of why we hear what we hear in small room acoustics; standing waves, room resonances, early reflections, later reflections, room ratios, room construction and treatments, digital filtering, FIR, IIR, our ears non-linear response to both amplitude and frequency response, the Haas Effect, which reflections are good, which are bad, and on it goes.
At this stage, I just wanted to show that Dirac works in the time domain. Given multiple measurement locations, one can understand that the sound and reflections arrive at different times and in different ways depending on the mic location relative to the loudspeakers. Using the concept of superposition and what we know about the physics of how standing waves respond in a rooms, we can work out the pattern and therefore correct for a wider sweet spot, which is what the 17 measurements are about. Dirac knows the phase relationships between the measurements plus taking the speakers as a pair into account, is used to calculate the correction filter.
Here I have dialed that in the target curve by grabbing the control points of the target and dragging them down a bit to get the desired target response. Of course, one can add and delete control points along the target (right click on the target). One can also save and load targets from the menu at the top left, beside the help icon.
One should note that this is not fully representative as it is one measurement made at the middle listening position. Ideally, I would take 17 measurements at the same or similar locations as I did in Dirac and vector average them in REW. And even then it still will not be quite the same as Dirac is applying more than just a vector average. However, it does verify that Dirac is doing what it is supposed to do:
Dirac was able to extend the low end frequency response in my room to below 30 Hz. -3 dB down at 22 Hz for the left speaker (as it is more in the corner of the room) and 28 Hz for the right speaker, as it is almost center in the room and does not get the corner boundary reinforcement. Compare that to -3 dB down at 32 Hz on the left and 45 Hz for the right speaker without correction.
While phase and time alignment are not supposed to be audible, in my listening tests I have performed over the years, they are to my ears. Excess phase correction in the low frequency response is audible to my ears as is time alignment of drivers. Perhaps a future article on more discussion around this, but suffice to say, Dirac is doing its job in the time domain.
I switched over to the sofa, wide imaging corrections and re-listened to the above tracks, switching from single seat to wide imaging, at the same time moving around on my couch. I wanted to see if the 5 measurements versus 17 measurements were audible in some way to my ears. I found the changes to be subtle with the 17 measurements offering a bit more clarity in the overall sound, especially moving to edges of my couch area. I must say the phantom center image was perfect between the speakers, no wandering of the center image versus frequency. Excellent spatial imaging with a 3D depth of field I only hear from speakers that are time aligned with both channels closely matching in frequency response.
I did not try Dirac 1.x, so have no way of comparing other than reading through the Dirac 1.x 42 page manual. I must say Dirac has greatly simplified the use of their room correction software for Dirac 2. I did not have to open a manual, I just started using it. I found the improvements made to my loudspeakers in my room by Dirac were audible to my ears and measurable in a positive way. Recommended.
I love music and audio. I grew up with music around me, as my mom was a piano player (swing) and my dad was an audiophile (jazz). My hobby is building speakers, amps, preamps, etc., and I still DIY today.
Awesome Job!! Been searching for A/B article with Dirac and REW to compare results are legit. Now trying to Figure out best way to implement Dirac with streaming Qobuz. Roon? NAD C658, or there a way with using $349 route using my laptop?
Thanks @sem115 One will require an application to "host" the Dirac Live Processor (DLP) plugin. An oldy but goody is VSTHost on Windows. I just tried loading the DLP VST plugin and was successful. There are several VST host's available, some free, some $$'s, some standalone and some integrated with other music player software. The trick is routing the audio.
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