View Full Version : Dirac Digital Room Correction - Free Trial With A miniDSP Microphone
Well, just about to play with it and have raised this thread as a couple of people showed an interest.
Question? Is it better than no RC.
Answer... watch this space:)
realysm42
03-04-2014, 15:05
Yes it f*cking is, massive improvement!
Transformed my system/listening experience.
purite audio
03-04-2014, 15:14
Coincidentally I have been trying the MAC version bundles with Amarra playback software, It is easy to use
but there is enough adjustability.
I like it, and the mere act of measuring your room can be a revelation.
Keith.
Well, taking the measurements and doing the filter calculations is a doddle. A 10 minute process the first time around.
However, it simply isn't working with JRiver when I direct it to output to the Dirac "virtual soundcard". Dirac Live is set to output via ASIO4ALL. I get some ridiculous error message from JRiver saying it can output 44.1KHz 2CH to the Dirac output option.
Time for some Googling, LOL.
purite audio
03-04-2014, 16:42
If the set up is the same ,which I imagine it is, then the first screen outputs to your dac and the second screen outputs to the Dirac sound card, in my case the XTZ microphones sound card.
Keith.
Humm
Mechanical (digital) manipulation of sound staging and placement of thereof. Ideal imaging for sure but where's the music gone?
realysm42
03-04-2014, 18:19
See I've always heard people make that comment Tony, in my space I much prefer it turned on.
I used Dirac to measure my room and I had a bass spike of 21db @45hz!
I have used many of these devices and they do work (most of them do) they help elevate the humps in a poor room without question, and with some of these programmes and enough amplifiers, you can perform individual driver time alignment from 0.5m/s, x/over point adjustment down to 0.25Hz and upto +/-15dB and perform 'proper full RTA'.
We recently had a chap who systems was just plain bonkers as in a significant hump between +11 and +24dB @ 75-104Hz, like having a couple of free subs set high in the mix :stalks:
We tried everything, parametric EQ, digital time domain manipulation (Tact and DEQX), speaker platforms, sound panels even bloody duvets :scratch:
In the end the cause was a stud wall to the right of the listening room which was coming up from the ground floor below and was acting like a piano sound board.
Cure, relocate sound system to ground floor garage. Result massive improvement.
If possible we always find that looking at the room acoustics first, this usually reaps big rewards, failing that after RTA'ing the room, finding a speaker that matches the room characteristics far better.
Pretty much sub 200Hz is were the vast majority of the room / speaker interfaces are.
Though for myself I can tell a digital manipulated system pretty much instantaneously, great fixed image, lots of air and space, speakers disappear well, but always left with a sense of contrivance to the sound. (imho)
Well I've just spent 2 hours on and off trying to get it to work with no success. I'm guessing the Mac version is better, Keith.
Tony - contrived sound is what I am expecting TBH but I was curious to see just how good these things have got.
Good job it is a FREE trial... I'd be angry if I'd paid money. Either they've got some work to do on the software or trouble shooting documentation or I am missing a trick.
Suspect it is just too new and they have some bug fixes to do. Anyone know how old it is?
realysm42
03-04-2014, 19:24
My understanding is that you:
1.have Dirac setup to output to your DAC and
2.jriver setup to output to your Dirac virtual sound card.
3. Finally, on the PC (I know you don't use that, but perhaps there's a Mac equivalent)
Go to the control panel, disable your normal USB output drivers and then select the dirac output device and enable it, hey presto.
Sorry if that's what you've already tried, I had some :scratch: at first but now it works perfectly, one its worth persevering with.
Hi Martin - no - I use a PC.
Just done some surfing and found it really does have issues, as I thought. This guy, I reckon, has done a lot of the trial and error dirty work to get it going on a PC. Will give his suggestions a try.
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f23-dsp-room-correction-and-multi-channel-audio/dirac-live-room-correction-suite-initial-impressions-free-trial-15137/#post211589
purite audio
03-04-2014, 21:17
Absolutely none of those problems with the Mac/Amarra version, we tried Tact and DEQX and found them poor, the Dirac software isn't nearly as versatile as the Trinnov, but it's 'auto taget ' curve works well with the natural room /speaker curve.
A perfect room would of course be the ideal.
Keith.
realysm42
04-04-2014, 08:48
Amen Keith, when I've got my own place that's going to be the 1st thing I focus on, digital room eq, should be the last thing to use, if at all IMO. Currently its the most affordable and practical tool for me.
Those trinnov units look versatile.
Concentrate on passive room treatment first, otherwise you're making the DRC work extra-hard. Personally, I've done a lot to treat my room passively, with TubeTraps, SubTrap and PicturePanels, and it's worked. I've even treated my speakers by stuffing the bass ports until the bottom end sounds tight and less overblown. I don't need DRC, and that's the best option if you can achieve it.
Agree with Martin passive treatment should be the better way to go
I'm just playing with it Martin. The room/system sounds great to me and I do have some traps Paul at RFC knocked up for me.
It is just curiosity for kicks. A bit of fun and basically to see how well RC works in 2014.
purite audio
04-04-2014, 10:32
If you have a low bass resonance peak, it is almost impossible to treat passively, bass traps need to be at least a quarter the thickness of the bass wave, and for 60Hz wave is twenty odd feet long, the bass traps need to be placed throughout the room .
I experimented with proper acoustic foam,metres of it, when I measured the room ( with and without foam) I discoverd that the foam was having almost no effect on the problem areas.
Keith.
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-1Juv0jcjskZ/learn/learningcenter/home/speakers_roomacoustics.html
The traps clean up the rear wave reflection off the front wall admirably (Duettas are dipoles for those who don't know).
There is quite a bass bump at around 30Hz but I've always known about it. It is only present when the ears are close to the rear wall. Move a metre forward and it goes - you can blatantly hear it and measure it, plus it is easy to kill using a digital graphic equaliser.
There's some good tips in the user manual for setting target curves. I'd post them here, but selecting text in the document is disabled and I can't be arsed to post jpegs of it. But basically what they are saying is a flat FR isn't necessarily what you want. For instance, you might find it too bright - I've long known this and my passive x-overs have it built in by my request. Done the hard (but best) way by physically changing inductor values and listening by ear!:)
I'm fairly confident I can get it to work properly BTW - I'll have another stab soonish.
realysm42
05-04-2014, 16:53
Any joy dude?
Been distracted playing with Qobuz Hi-Fi TBH but I'll get back on the case tomorrow.
realysm42
05-04-2014, 17:46
This is what I had to put up with before :stalks:
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q153/realysm42/Untitled1_zpsd3ff1bb3.jpg (http://s135.photobucket.com/user/realysm42/media/Untitled1_zpsd3ff1bb3.jpg.html)
Then I measured the room and hit the auto target button, this is what I have now (I know this is predicted, not actual, however the positive impact is substantial):
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q153/realysm42/Untitled2_zpse97d0871.jpg (http://s135.photobucket.com/user/realysm42/media/Untitled2_zpse97d0871.jpg.html)
Before the correction was applied, I was painfully aware of those bass humps choking the mids and dominating the room (I shudder to think how it would have measured with my last two pairs of rear ported speakers lol).
What I wasn't aware of was how prematurely rolled off the treble was, gaining this was quite a revelation to my sound. Tony said it right earlier, I got a lot more "air" in the sound, not to mention detail throughout the whole frequency range.
I know conventional wisdom is that you should physically treat first and use DRC as the polish, but if for whatever reason you can't (women, circumstances etc) then I'd still say give this a shot, especially if you can demo it first (I did for two weeks, then couldn't live without when the demo ended lol).
I'm also aware that you're not meant to boost with DRC, only take away the excess, but I don't know how to do it with this software and frankly, I can't hear anything bad the change brings.
I chose Dirac because some of the other software looked a bit intimidating, I don't want to learn acoustic science or anything, especially when I can press a button and it does it for me :eyebrows:
I'm really happy with the product.
The pair matching between your speakers at LF looks naff TBH. I was amazed how close mine were to each other.
What are the speakers, and is one in a corner and another in free space? Also, are they really good to 10Hz? Wos goin' on there?
realysm42
05-04-2014, 18:16
Yes, they are exactly as you describe.
No, they are Usher mini dancer 2s, so good down to 28hz.
I'm not sure what/why/how etc but even my little Roksan K2 TR5s had nutty (read: bad) bass in this room, they were meant to go to something like 49hz, but I used to turn down the 32hz band on the eq, because that's the frequency they'd terrorise me at!
Well I am confused by the LF content in your plots, then.
Anyway, I've heard the Usher Dancer II and it is a fine speaker. Not heard the mini Dancer's though, but I suspect they're very good.
Be interesting to run an FR response with RC on to see if the postulated FR is anywhere near what you actually have:)
realysm42
05-04-2014, 19:11
I wonder if we're speaking about the same speakers?
It's the new version of these:
http://www.jordanacoustics.co.uk/product_details.php?ref=1055
Yeah I might try that, if I can be arsed to dig the mic & pre amp out for it lol!
purite audio
05-04-2014, 20:05
The pair matching between your speakers at LF looks naff TBH. I was amazed how close mine were to each other.
What are the speakers, and is one in a corner and another in free space? Also, are they really good to 10Hz? Wos goin' on there?
The speakers probably are perfectly matched in an anechoic chamber, but a real room changes everything.
Keith.
Treble is really rolled off though, never seen to that degree before?
realysm42
06-04-2014, 00:36
Who knows why Keith; I hope he doesn't mind me quoting him but Tony (coherent) said he thinks TQ might roll off the treble - I wouldn't know personally.
The correction certainly improves that aspect of the sound.
TQ might roll off the treble
Not to my ears.
How are your speakers (realysm42) angled? That original trace looks very line it may be off axis from the loudspeaker and they are very directional. What looks like the crossover point seems very disconnected as well as the HF rolling off.
realysm42
06-04-2014, 11:03
Not to my ears.
We'll, I've always been a strong advocate of the brand because of their sound, I think UBS are great cables.
I spent some time with Wammer CarlBkk's Ushers - not sure what they were now but they were dead good. The treble was in no way rolled off IMHO. He was demoing some Apogee Calipers but he didn't like the treble. I can understand why though - the Ushers treble was really sweet. I don't personally think they sounded as real as the Calipers in the treble, especially after recently spending some time playing drums in a studio, but it was very inoffensive.
EDIT: from memory they looked like Usher Compass Dancer Be 20s. In which case massively more expensive new than the Calipers. I preferred the Calipers but they had new ribbons and the recent Caliper refurbs are massively better than the earlier attempts (easily more than 10+ years ago when the first ones were going through refurb with non-original ribbons).
OK up and running. Took about 30 mins to get it going this time. The cal tool can crash but it remains in memory and cannot be stopped via task manager, necessitating a reboot. I'm guessing one of its threads died as the main process remained loaded but was left in a unresponsive incapacitated state. The cal s/w obviously still needs work.
The problem is realising which drivers to use to get it to work. You playback to one device in JRiver and another via the Dirac s/w, but you must also create the correction file using a selection which is compatible with your digital output type (i.e. USB Amanero in my case). If anyone is using an Amanero USB card in their DAC I can tell you what to use/do if you PM me.
Once you've got it streaming properly you can engage and disengage the correction filter on the fly. It is very easy to hear what it has done. You "know" the filter engaged result is flatter straight away. But whether you like it or not is another question:) If not, mess with the desired target curve and re-generate yourself a filter. I haven't done this yet and I hope the s/w stands up to it without crashing.
Instantly I think I know what I want to do with the target curve.
More later - but DO NOT buy this without trying the demo first.
realysm42
06-04-2014, 15:13
I use Amanero drivers on my PC for the VDT1 dac and they worked fine.
Nick, they are very toed in, I'm going to adjust them and re-measure - thanks for the suggestion :)
Yeah the Amanero drivers do work fine. Never had an issue with them.
The Dirac Audio Processor defo has stability problems though. It relies on a server, which doesn't seem to start up properly on reboot. It was doing, now it isn't. A manual start of the server is sorting that for the moment.
Well after an hour or so of listening, I think it is rather good. It's working fine with Qobuz Hi-Fi and JRiver - atleast when there's no annoying stability problems to fix. Now I know exactly what to do when there is a problem I'll probably not think too much of it.
I'll try some different target curves over the coming days.
Hello :)
most probably everyone is aware of the following but I'd like to mention that when taking measurements it's important to double check that the microphone is pointing as required by its calibration file... if vertical we need a 90° calibration file while if horizontal we need a 0° file (this may be the reason for odd measurements at high frequencies)
The difference in frequency response because of orientation is shown in these data of a UMIK-1:
http://www.cross-spectrum.com/cslmics/700-0589_mic_report.pdf
Ciao, Flavio
I find it amazing how such a cheap mic can be as linear as it is WITHOUT the correction applied. I was genuinely surprised when I looked at the correction table for mine.
But yes - good point Flavio and great link.
Couple of points I thought I'd make.
1) There's no balance control implemented in the Dirac "virtual soundcard" driver. Really annoying. So when using Qobuz Hi-Fi there's no way to control it. Fine with JRiver which implements one internally i.e. before sending it to the Dirac "soundcard". I just find balance useful on some recordings.
2) Boy does it crush the soundstage - at least with dipole speakers. Any 3Dness in front to back imaging is lost. I wonder what aspect of the correction algorithm kills this. Is it something to do with impulse response i.e. the loss of echo? I'm not sure I can live with it TBH. I guess it is created by room reflections in the first place, but it is a tough thing to lose.
purite audio
08-04-2014, 15:11
Usually correction sharpens up the image, I haven't noticed any lack of depth in the soundstage.
Keith.
It does sharpen up the image in the plane of the speakers - but it loses fore/aft imaging depth outside the plane of the speaker.
Have you tried it with dipoles, Keith?
purite audio
08-04-2014, 17:26
Justin Hi, no ,not sure that I have, the thing I like about the Dirac is that it doesn't appear to try to do too much, working with the room response rather than against it.
Bass is always where the gross problems lie, Weiss are going to implement room correction Inthe mAN301 ,I am looking forward to trying that.
Keith.
I actually think is it very good in some ways. You really get the feeling that your listening to the speakers and not the room. In other words, it really is VERY effective in eliminating room/speaker integration issues.
I think it just needs a bit more control. I'd like to see the ability NOT to correct for impulse response. It'd be easy for them to add a switch to allow for this, and any other types of processing that may be being applied. Also, maybe sliders for varying amounts of impulse response (and whatever else might be controllable) correction would be a good thing.
That way, you can decide which bits or degrees of the RC you actually subjectively like.
The other thing I found is that there appears to be a fraction of dryness to the sound that isn't there when it is switched out. Unsure why, but it is there when it is on.
For a £75 quid experiment (cost of mic), I've really found it very interesting. I'd encourage other people to have a play with it. When you hear what it does, you'll know exactly where it is coming from, so to speak.
Ooops. There is a balance control, selectable for each filter. Sorry about that Dirac:)
Slightly longer term view.
So if this really was good, I'd be using it all the time, right? Well, I find I am not. I find myself trying to construct target curves that were closer to the original in-room FR with it. It is actually really simple to do this on the fly (while your listening to another filter, in fact). You can then load the new filter and select it whilst playing with the old filter.
One thing I noticed is that using the engage/disengage filter in the Dirac processor - when you compare the disengaged Dirac filter with just using the Amanero driver the result appears to be really quite different - and substantially in the Amanero's favour. Of course, it should be the same. Need to do some more homework on that one.
It is looking like I prefer the "here's your room and the speakers" versus "bugger the room here's your speakers" type of reproduction, though, for all its sins. Always after I've had a play I end up switching back to the Amanero driver and nowt else.
purite audio
12-04-2014, 11:54
what is the Amenero driver, that's the uncorrected sound?
Sorryhaventused JEiver for a while,
Keith,
Hello User211,
if the user defined listening volume is too small you may incur into overcorrection, is the size of the "virtual cube" (if you are using the chair option) at least one meter?
also did you try fine tuning the DSP gain?
it should be set to the lowest value (as near to zero as possible) which does not incur into digital clipping,
because it also depends on the music material you will have to invest some time in finding a value which is valid for most (if not all) of your collection
Ciao, Flavio
Flavio - thanks for your suggestions. Will investigate but yes, I am using the armchair option.
Keith - the Amanero driver is simply the driver that takes raw digital data from JRiver and transmits it using the async USB protocol to the Amanero USB card in the DAC. So yes - the uncorrected sound. I also use the ASIO4ALL (http://www.asio4all.com/) driver - which is excellent, even though it has been in beta form for a long time.
Well the demo has expired, and I've done a bit of playing with PEQ (parametric equalisation) in JRiver. I get an in-room bass peak at around 30Hz at the listening position. I actually really seem to like that, TBH, but I've found it is easy to tame in a very transparent manner with PEQ set at 30Hz and some negative DBs which I can set depending on mood and the material. Applying enough negative DBs to make it measure flat never goes down well with me. I like a bit of oomph down there. For me it gives a result I prefer to Dirac correction in practice. The rest of the frequency range is really quite flat in room anyway.
Interestingly, in my experiments with passive room treatment I turned my attention to my speakers, which are very potent and can easily load up the room. By stuffing the four ports I have achieved really tight, deep bass but have lost the bloated overload room modes completely. Measuring the change looks to be only a disappointing reduction of 3-4dB in the bass peak, but listening tells a different and much more positive outcome.
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