Dirac Live - Bass Control and Active Room Treatment *new features*

I think Dirac is a great room EQ. It receives too little attention in this community. Here are some Dirac Live clips from the Chief Product Officer and the engineers.

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The genesis of Dirac…get familiar with the terms like FIR vs IIR and DLBC.

New Dirac Spatial Room Correction.

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Was just reading up on this today. Looks potentially revolutionary. At the same time, the barriers for entry seems even higher, this may be reserved for the top tier rooms using Storm Audio or other 16CH DIRAC based processors.

Using the other speakers in the room to actively reduce the reflections from one speaker output is a great concept - basically active room acoustics. But at the same time, wondering if traditional acoustic treatment panels on the walls of the rooms may be similarly effective in the 100-500hz range for the low mids.

For bass, the existing surround / atmos channels may not have enough meaningful output and headroom to actively manage reflections below 100hz… It may require surround and atmos channels to be several steps up in performance, approaching the mains channels as well…

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If Dirac succeeds in this new endeavor, it will be a game changer in the RoomEQ realm. Very interesting approach to get every seat a “good seat”…

Dont have so high hopes… i dont think this is going to work… Dirac tend to over promise under deliver

Based on what i have seen so far, they are using the cancelation technique… rather than using phase to sum… So we are talking about using “More” headroom from all the speakers at surrounds and surround backs to cancel a given frequency. What we want is to preserve as much headroom, but their technique seems to be doing the exact reverse, using up more headroom from speakers to cancel a mode. Whilst you see an improved freq response, you are forgetting how much headroom this is taking up to achieve that, not to mention time correction required. We want the subs and speakers to be cruising… but this is like defying gravity

fundamentally, i dont think its going to sound good using cancellation technique… of course you are going to have sound , but whether or not it is going to sound good is another question. there is a lot more to cater for other than just amplitude and seat to seat variation… you improve the amplitude, but you create another problem elsewhere. there is going to be so much filters in use and delays that is just going to affect the sound in the end…

It is a lot easier to use acoustic panels to treat problems >100hz, and EQ for freq <100hz… that makes more sense …

i believe using so many filters and eq for correction is going to make it sound worse off… personally i feel if Dirac takes this approach, they are going backwards…

When it comes to Phase, Summ is always, always better. Subtract and cancel to achieve a beautiful looking graph ? No Go, no matter how beautiful the graph is…

I have to applaud Dirac for trying something new… Fundamentally it doesnt sound right to me. Hopefully they can prove me wrong…

Thats my personal view…

Hope they make this happen and also at affordable rates rather than charging hand and leg price for additonal room eq modules like Bass management

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https://www.avsforum.com/threads/dirac-live-active-room-treatment-best-of-ces-2023-award-winner.3264556/

Dirac just won 2023 CES award, together with storm audio processor and perlisten speakers !

seems like the in thing at moment

Decay times :point_up_2:t2: with the active room correction tech

Raw response before correction :point_up_2:t2:

looks promising from the paper, not sure how it’s actually gonna be when it’s launched.

3 corrections made. amplitude, time domain (phase), speaker impulse, looks like they are taking the lead now……

One down side is still “headroom” as it uses the cancellation technique that will result in the loss of power going into the room…that means more power for the same volume, also means higher risk with distortion if speakers/subs run out of steam…. But it’s a solution forward….

Not enough headroom? Add more subs !! Done ! Get good speakers with ample headroom….

Looking forward to see how it works in the real world

Looks like coming only to Storm users first

Price according to the article :point_up_2:t2:

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I read that Dirac has said that any processor that can run Dirac DLBC, can run ART. So there is some hope that Denon and Marantz receivers from the X3800 up with get Dirac ART after the exclusivity with Stormaudio ends. We should know when the exclusivity ends in October 2023.

I have been reading up on the new Active Room treatment (ART) from Dirac and this is what I have gathered in a nutshell…

  • It will be released exclusively to Storm Audio from mid-May this year. As to when it will make its way to the less expensive products like Denon and Marantz X800 series is yet to be known. We should bea learning more by early 4th Qtr this year.

  • You need to have Dirac Live Bass Control (DLBC) module before you can use ART.

  • The whole idea of ART is to utilize other speakers which the engineers from Dirac termed “supporting speakers” to essentially “kill off” the reflection sound from the main speakers. For instance, if the mains (left and right spks) produces sound from the content, the other speakers “not in use” will become “active” and use it for “canceling” the reflections from the main spks. That will require a lot of computational power since unused speakers in the array will constantly be “active” to cancel the reflections.

  • ART is targeted to treat room modes at low freq reproduced by your subwoofers. It targets primarily freq 150hz and below. Anything above 150hz can be treated by using room treatments - e.g. diffusor and absorbers.

  • The beta program will be released in mid-May this year to Storm Audio first and the exclusivity will end in Oct. After which, I suppose it will be made available for other manufacturers.

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Just a thought, well a plan, to be built.

If a bass array is the best way to bass load a room, send a plane wave down the dimension, then theoratically the best setup is to use bass arrays for all the walls in the HT.

LFE bass array on front wall.
LCR bass array on front wall
Left wall bass array for left surround and left front wide
Right wall bass array for right surround and right front wide
Back wall bass array for LR rear surround.
Atmos bass array… OK even I think this is unnecessary… :rofl:

With Dirac ART, this is perfect as ART will have maximum ability and headroom to control the room with full authority on all front, side and back walls…

For dedicated theater builds, wall bass arrays are extremely compact floor. I have seen wall columns features built purely for aesthetics take up more space on avsforum.

It isn’t even that costly… 4x 10/ 12in subs plus a 300W plate amp, can get that for less than 1k on parts express on sale days. So that’s 3k for the side and back wall arrays.
LCR and LFE bass arrays, well one can pick one’s poison there.

Bass arrays are also very simple to time align and calibrate , there are no erratic phase inversions or flips due to unpredictable room modal behavior.

I would run all channels full range, with the bass arrays. And then run double bass for all channels so the LFE also gets the bass signals. There will be nice full sum between the full range channels bass and the LFE bass due to the predictable phase response.

As far as I can tell, no professionally designed rooms have taken this approach yet…
Most are still at 4 corner loaded subs for LFE…as the ‘end game’…

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Matt from Storm Audio talks about the new ART feature.

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very positive feedback from china users, multiple (at least 5 users) users commented with ART and without ART are completely different, ART seems promising…

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DIRAC now have 30% discount for Black Friday sale.

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link?

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I bought full DIRAC during the Black Friday sale, but just about to go overseas until late January, so probably won’t install it in my Denon until then

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Dirac Live Bass Control for Denon/Marantz now 30% discount from USD499 price

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