Dirac and room correction software

[pete86]

I downloaded the trial of Dirac today and took measurements with a umik-1. I'm using it with my 120 on a Windows 10 PC with Roon. I'm selecting the Dirac processor in Roon, however when I select the Devialet ASIO driver in Dirac, the sound is extremely distorted. When I select Kernal Streaming in Dirac, it sounds fine (and sounds pretty good!). Has anyone ever encountered this?

Also, Roon indicates that the output is being sent to the OS mixer. Is that correct?

[Rodney Gold]

IM not sure what the rammifications are of playing at +5 .. im often deep into the +'s with my setup and cant hear any distortion etc
Check your output volume is 100% tho .. the limiting of attn is in my minidsp plugin.. Im sure it must be somewhere in the computer based Dirac.. tho not 100% sure .. maybe in the levels or setup menu?

As to the computer based dirac ..Im not sure how roon treats DAP .. I run a hardware version.. roon sees my squeezebox touch as the endpoint and that feeds the dirac box via spdif .. there is an icon in Roon that if you click , gives you the signal path and tells you if it is lossless

Im not sure why asio is giving you issues and kernel streaming not

[Hifi_swlon]

I ended up returning Dirac and getting a refund.

Nothing to do with sound quality - I'm really happy with that - more to do with the OSX output issue on the DAP.  

To be fair to Dirac they sent me a beta of the fix but it didn't work (fair enough, it's beta). I'm confident they'll get there but why take the risk on a nearly €400 piece of software, so took them up on their 30 day money back offer.  

I was starting to wonder how I'd implement it in practice with Roon - since they don't support AU plugins and I want to use RoonSpeakers/NAA ultimately.  So I'm going to sit back a minute and look at other options.

If I can find a way to do it I'm going to try and test just using a parametric EQ, and also using the delay offset that Dirac suggested (I sit off centre) and see how much of the 'Dirac Effect' that gives. If most if it, I'll look for solutions there too.

I'd still highly recommend Dirac, especially for ease of use combined with quality. Nothing I've looked at has been anything like intuitive and would also require Windows to measure and generate filters? I've got REW so if that can do it I'll try and feed it through HQ player (in non-up sampling mode) just because it has a convo over and works with Roon.

[ogs]

Then you could look at Audiolense. Unfortunately Audiolense (and Acourate) is Windows only, which I understand is a problem for you. The license for Audiolense XO is €390 and €78 per year after that. Audiolense is not difficult to use although it is very advanced if you need that. I have created extremely transparent and good sounding filters for my system. Filters can be used in HQ player, LMS (Linux with BrutefirDRC) and JRiver(on all platforms). And of course in Roon when they implement the convolver. Maybe already in Roon 1.2?

[Hifi_swlon]

Thanks. Am looking at both - Windows isn't ideal, but I could live with it for measurement (apart from the hassle/expense of setting up dual boot on my lovely pure audio-only mini).

They look horrible but I'm sure they can make nice filters.

I think ill try REW first and see if it makes an acceptable result. I think if I were spending reasonable money on RC, I'd hold out for a Dirac fix or hope Roon add one (which is far more likely than Devialet ever doing it, as well as being more likely to be useful/useable). Not sure if they're definitely doing it, but 1.2 is rumoured to be a month or so away.....

[Rodney Gold]

If you want to correct bass only under 200hz or so , a parametric EQ is pretty much ok

[deviousalet]

I thought that Dirac did a lot more than EQ, at least so they advertise at http://www.dirac.com/live-home-professional-audio-info. Is all of that stuff unnecessary under 200Hz? I'm not expert at using Dirac, REW, or parametric EQ, but I haven't been able to use EQ settings to equal the results I've had with Dirac (or even my AVR's automatic room correction). However while I've tried correcting only the bass (at various cutoff points) to my taste my room benefits from full-range correction.

[Hifi_swlon]

I thought that Dirac did a lot more than EQ, at least so they advertise at http://www.dirac.com/live-home-professional-audio-info. Is all of that stuff unnecessary under 200Hz? I'm not expert at using Dirac, REW, or parametric EQ, but I haven't been able to use EQ settings to equal the results I've had with Dirac (or even my AVR's automatic room correction). However while I've tried correcting only the bass (at various cutoff points) to my taste my room benefits from full-range correction.

It does all that stuff - I was merely thinking about a temporary solution.  Since I now know what makes the difference between my system sounding thin and horrible or really good, I thought I'd try and adjust as required using EQ, just as a bodge for now.

[Rodney Gold]

Foobar and J River have parametrics and RC as well ... free with foobar , JR will cost you $50
A ton of real geeky solutions are lurking all over as well. convolvers  , fir generations and all that bumph
free to DL.. but not that easy to use.
REW can generate filters

[Hifi_swlon]

If Roon did put a convolver/EQ in v1.2, even if it was basic, I'd be happy…..