Is Anyone Using Dirac Live Or Other Room Correction?


Just looking for thoughts or suggestions. I'm currently using a Music Vault Ultra 2 with Roon. I'm leaning toward Dirac but would like to hear any experiences anyone has had. 
bg1968
I've posted a bit on this before.  I used Lyndorf and now use Room Perfect.
Opinions are in previous posts
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If have the Music Vault II also. Call Neal and get the Lyngdorf 2175 Int amp with room correction. Most amazing combo I have owned. The two together are sonic and operational heaven. 
I considered that as an option, after getting my new electronics and new speakers "dialed in" to the room, sounding great, all bets were off when I added a pair of subwoofers.  The new "man cave" had all sorts of terrible resonances.

Instead of doing room correction with an electronic device, instead I downloaded REW (Room EQ Wizard) and purchased a miniDSP UMIK-1 USB calibration microphone and added strategically-placed bass traps, to control the resonances and make sure the newly-placed bass trap didn't adversely effect the mid and high frequencies.

Now the system sounds awesome!
Agoner accurus uses Dirac.  Check his posts.  I am interested in it as well.  It's for computer audio mainly it seems. 
I too am considering DIRAC but before taking the plunge I spent fair amount of time working on speaker placement and room treatments as ejr1953 recommends.  According to my spl meter I am pretty much getting +-2db from 20-1000hz.  Needless to say, the sound has improved dramatically.  I may get the usb calibration mic and the 2 week trial of DIRAC or REW and measure my room to see if there are any other areas I can address.

I use Acourate. Been using it for 2 years. Initially I only used it for room correction. Eventually implemented active crossovers (within Acourate) between subwoofers and the 3-way speakers, then added a pair of monoblocks and added another active crossover on the woofers of the 3-way speaker. So now I have a 3-way active system with tweeter and midrange being in one channel and keeping the passive xo. Next up is time aligning the channels. Acourate is very powerful. Very powerful, but involved. There is no going back, though :-)


Before jumping into Acourate I compared it to Dirac. In comparison, Dirac is not as powerful, it's a lot more expensive if you want to go multi-way, but it's a lot simpler to implement. It is simpler because you have less freedom to customize to various system settings.


Working on room acoustics is wise. The less you need to correct digitally, the better.

Before adopting Acourate I was using REW, with a measurement mic and outboard soundcard. Please note USB mics, and outboard USB soundcards like mine, have a ADC built in. This is OK initially...but it now has become an issue for me as the internal clock differs from the DAC internal clock and that becomes an issue when you want to time-align drivers accurately.


Two years ago I was worried about digital processing. But I ended up trading my Lamm pre and purist 2-channel DAC and USB-to-SPDIF converter for a Lynx Hilo working as 6-channel DAC and using the digital volume control from JRiver. My system sounds better now. I actually still hold the Lamm but that's more related to my affection - I know it will not make it back into the system.


For those interested in learning about Acourate, these are what inspired me:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/529-acourate-digital-room-and-loudspeaker-correction-softw...

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/556-advanced-acourate-digital-xo-time-alignment-driver-lin...


Cheers!

Something to consider with DSP/DRC recommendations is the age of the review or discussion. I'm seriously considering a miniDSP unit using Dirac Live and have been reading reviews and comparisons with other DSP/DRC options. What I've noticed is that miniDSP is expanding their line of products with more options and flexibility built in. And the Dirac Live software has been improving as well. So comparisons with other DSP/DRC options from three years ago may not be relevant and even discussions from a year ago should be put into context.

The world of DSP/DRC is changing rapidly and it pays to stay updated.

Regards,

Tom

I just got a DSPeaker Anti-Mode 2.0 for my Rythmik F12G subs to blend with my Magnepan 3.7i's.  It doesn't seem helpful so far, but I need to fiddle with it some more.
I like Dirac, especially the curves they use, but I do it all myself with a miniDSP and OmniMic.

My main speakers are pretty flat at my listening location and only really use the EQ for the sub where it is glorious. :)

Best,

Erik
My customer service experiences with Dirac were not good.

So I went with Acourate. No problems at all. Better service and software.
There's a Flavio@Dirac who used to handle tickets and entertain my inquiries (in a small company way).  I abused that contact until he stopped responding :)

In any case I've been using it for almost 3 full years and for the most part it alienated me from recordings that lacked headroom.  The old stuff sounds great but from the 80s on I'm constantly adjusting the balance between Dirac's digital attenuation and my preamp gain (on a track by track basis) to strike the best balance that maximize dynamics and minimizes clipping.  Definitely a job for a computer and not the listener.  Eventually I got tired and stuck to all high quality recordings so I could be a spectator and not a DJ.  I blame Dirac for forcing me to like Jazz (all that headroom) and abandon my favorite catchy tunes that were stripped of headroom shortly after birth in the processing studio.

This morning I tried the Volume Leveling (R128) function in JRiver.
Not one flicker from Dirac's clip indicator, and I have Dirac's gain maxed.
I played Kanye West, Major Lazer, Infected Mushroom, and still no clipping.
Roon v1.3 is supped to have this R128 function.  I'm not leaving JRiver until that feature is ready.
Room correction for bass to achieve linear bass is the new game changer. Too much smudging from the bass to the lower mid-range.  Room eq on 500 hz and below works nicely.