Dirac continues to push the boundaries of sound with the introduction of Dirac Live Active Room Treatment at the CES 2023. This latest Dirac Live feature processes home theater audio as a unified system, not individual speakers, to eliminate boomy bass and deliver cleaner, more cohesive sounding audio experiences in any room.
Active Room Treatment Basics
Dirac Live Active Room Treatment (DLART) is the latest in its family of award-winning Dirac Live features designed to address bass resonance and room decay time to produce a cleaner, tighter bass experience than ever before.
Typically, managing bass response and room reflections requires that physical sound dampeners (aka Acoustic Treatments) be installed on the walls or other areas.
However, Dirac Live Active Room Treatment works similarly to Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) Technology, using the system’s own speakers to actively cancel out unwanted wavelengths originating from other speakers.
Instead of targeting each speaker individually, Active Room Treatment measures the audio setup as a unified system. Advanced spatial optimization is applied to the entire system based on the needs of each unique room. As a result, Active Room Treatment dramatically improves sound performance in any listening area.
Digging Deeper
Dirac Live Active Room Treatment leverages Dirac’s expertise in MIMO (Multiple Input/Multiple Output) mixed-phase impulse response correction technology to enable spatial optimization.
This means all the speakers in a sound system cooperate with each other to accomplish what would normally have to be done by passive acoustic treatments (which are less precise). Decay times are reduced digitally and automatically.
As a result, listeners experience sound where boominess and smeared bass are eliminated – as if the room didn’t exist.
Depending on the room, it can take a long time for bass to decay — or stop bouncing around the room. This results in ringing or booming.
Adding Dirac Live Active Room Treatment to your setup mix allows for the automatic evaluation and adjustment of the bass characteristics of the entire system, leveraging the strengths of each speaker to make up for any shortcomings in other speakers. In turn, the passive speakers of a system become active support elements, optimizing the performance of the entire system.
Dirac Live Active Room Treatment complements existing Dirac Live features such as Dirac Live Room Correction and Dirac Live Bass Control.
As a result, audio performance in any room can dramatically improve. Active Room Treatment can be used in any system with more than one speaker. Performance enhancement is based on the total number of speakers in the system. The more speakers a system has, the greater spatial optimization can be attained.
From Dirac’s Mathias Johansson, Dirac’s Chief Product Officer: “Dirac pioneered digital room correction through our impulse response optimization technology found in our acclaimed Dirac Live Room Correction feature…Now, with Active Room Treatment we are moving beyond traditional room correction to actually reduce bass decay times digitally, without needing bass traps or thick layers of wall absorption.”
“By actively optimizing and coordinating bass response characteristics from all the speakers in a system, our latest Dirac Live feature reduces decay times to provide an incredibly dense and transparent audio experience in any room.”
“Passive treatments for controlling low-end resonances have been around for years, but they’re not necessarily effective and require physical changes to the listening area, so most people don’t use them…Dirac Active Room Treatment is the only solution available that reduces room decay time for a much clearer and tighter bass. StormAudio recognizes the transformative power of this world’s first technology and we look forward to its debut in Spring 2023.”
The Dirac Story
Availability and Pricing
Dirac Live Active Room Treatment will be included, at no additional fee, in all StormAudio Processors and AVRs ordered from January 1st 2023 onward and will be made available through a firmware update in Spring 2023. StormAudio products ordered before January 1st will be upgradeable with Dirac Live Active Room Treatment after the Spring 2023 firmware update and by purchasing a license from Dirac’s online store at $299.
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How to Improve the Sound of Your Hi-Fi: Fix Your Room Acoustics
TonyE
May 28, 2023 at 5:10 pm
Why not just make sure your room sounds good to begin with?
Put the speakers in the right place, place the furniture with care, don’t try to put a square peg in a round hole and hope to “fix it in the software”.
But of course, Dirac -and all of those fancy labels in the consumer products- cost $300 licenses each.
Keep shoving those square pegs and ignore the phase and frequency distortions ( time dependent now ) that are being shoved in the audio stream.
Besides… most people with HTs want the BOOM BOOM! Huh?