It's clear that there are many ways to implement room equalization in a file-based system, ranging from the packages and plug-ins used by professional musicians and studios to the facility built into Windows Media Player. It was also necessary to somehow incorporate room correction into the system, and while I'm pretty confident in dealing with audio hardware, audio software is not one of my strong suits. The problem was choosing a setup with enough quality and capacity to be suitable for multichannel music. Dirac's Live Room Correction System (see below) was featured in the Theta Digital room at CESthis speaker/room EQ system is included in the latest version of Theta's Casablanca IV preamplifier/processor.ĭirac Research Live Room Correction Suiteįor more than a year now I've been hearing the siren call of high-definition file downloads, and have finally surrendered. The Unity is not yet in production, but it's tantalizing. The playback of only the correction signals was analogous to examining your vacuum-cleaner bag and being pleased that its contents were no longer in your room. The result should be a global minimization of modes that will be equally effective for two- and multichannel sources. The Dirac system adds no hardware to a multichannel system, but instead measures the local modal behavior for each speaker and, in software, creates compensatory filters. I reviewed a related device from Bag End, the E-Trap, in July 2008.

Stereophile reviewed it in December 1989, and Keith Howard included it in his discussion of room correction in January 2008.

This harks back to an idea, by Nelson Pass, long ago marketed as the Phantom Acoustics Shadow active low-frequency control. Using a 7.2-channel system, Dirac demonstrated their Active Room Treatment System, in which each speaker is also used as an active compensation for the room modes in its vicinity.

Most interesting was the demonstration of a new approach to room equalization, presented by the canny folks from Dirac Research. Still, there were new developments to report see Stereophile's almost live on-line coverage. I'm sure that the larger manufacturers were displaying new audio/video receivers and preamplifier-processors at the Las Vegas Convention Center last January, during the 2014 Consumer Electronics Showbut except for dinner, I didn't get out of the Mirage, where I slept, or the Venetian Tower Suites, where the high-end audio displays were concentrated.

Dirac live™ 7.2