Having calibrated home cinema systems to extreme levels of performance over the last 15 years and gathered a vast amount of experience dealing with acoustic obstacles and room orientated challenges, in the last 12 months I have found Dirac Live to be an exceptional addition to the calibration tool box.
Whilst we should still ensure that we maximise the performance of the system before running Dirac Live, I am constantly startled by the consistent way that Dirac Live behaves regardless of size or the acoustic signature of the room in question. We have known for a long time that the best systems we put together are those which exhibit the same voice or timbre from every channel as this allows for the seamless movement of audio objects with the room, rather than being able to pick up on sonic balance shifts from speaker to speaker. Unfortunately the problem in achieving this is twofold..
1. Finding a home cinema speaker package that offers the same voice from each channel.
2. Placing the speaker in room so that it has the same characteristic as all other channels.
Dirac Live's fundamental ability to give every speaker the same acoustic signature within its operating window at its room placement, allows for seamless movement of objects within the room as if the sound itself is free from a speaker and effectively floating in free space. Now, with the latest v3.82 software update and latest Dirac Live software package, we can calibrate height channels or Dolby enabled upward firing speakers, allowing us to place a listener within a seamless sphere of audio - the results are simply stunning, so much so that at the recent Munich High end show the in-cinema "rainstorm" demonstration routinely received a round of applause....!!!
For me the world's best AV receiver just got better....!!!!
Andy Moore
Product Manager, Arcam Ltd