Unlocking the Secrets of Dirac ART's Future Potential 

My pleasure!

@@FOH3663 well sure but remember that acoustically treating the room at such low frequencies is often prohibitive or even impossible. A demo was done at Trinnovs headquarters. They had enough woofers to do a very complete array with full steering. All optimally places. The end result was that any bass frequency could be played and you could walk around the room and hear no difference at all. Waveforming on and the bass is perfectly even. Waveforming off and even one inch could be a hugely audible and measurable difference. This room was in fact treated with bass traps. Slotted MDF panels covering acoustic fuzz with sizable air gaps existed all around the room. I’ve been in tons of treated studios and theater rooms. I’ve treated many myself. I’ve never experienced that trick in a treated room. The bass traps are just not that effective. So this really isn’t an alternative or a replacement. It’s a necessary augmentation to traditional treatment. We shouldn’t kid ourselves. The bass traps typically only work effectively down to 100-150hz. Below that their effect is marginal at best. That effect becomes more and more marginal as frequencies go lower. But by doing both you get something that can really help reduce the decay time all the way down to 20hz. It’s true that treatment eases the job. But we are still talking small changes at the lowest frequencies. The bigger job is actually ensuring that the bass decay control aligns between the analog acoustics and active acoustics.

Appreciate your support 🙏

Well the subs likely need to be within 6dB of the main emitter subs. However the surrounds used as support speakers would need bandwidth down to 30-40hz and be within 3dB of the main subs I think. There isn’t enough testing to be sure. They don’t need more output than the main subs, but if they are too far off the main subs, they won’t handle it.

@@DavidAndrewsMBA simply placing the mic around the room is adequate at low frequencies to map the room. You don’t need to place it at each woofer. In fact having the mic too close to the woofer or any boundary would be problematic for mapping the room. What you really want is an understanding of the wavefront. The wavefront condition is unstable and inaccurate at the boundary condition.

I wish I knew. Officially the launch partner no longer has exclusive rights. Others are supposed to be able to add it. But I haven’t heard Defintive timelines for anything. I thought NAD launched it in a 2 channel amp but it seems to have not materialized yet.

@@PoesAcoustics It seems as you referred to in the video that they are still tweaking it.

Thanks!

Yes to all. But remember. It’s not just bass extension. It’s output at that frequency. I can build a small surround speaker with bass to 40hz. But not enough output to matter.

Wavelengths get larger, and decay times get longer, as you go lower in frequency. Unless you live in a glass bowl or an echo chamber... It's unlikely that the decay time below 150 Hz will be SHORTER than midrange frequencies.

@@keithlevkoff8579 agree. But if we use ART, I suppose decay times below 150 Hz could potentially be made much shorter than above 150 Hz? Is that desirable? Or do we rather want a "flat" decay across frequencies?

Thank you!

The Dirac equation is superficially similar to the Schrödinger equation for a massive

As I noted. There is a huge difference between a car environment and a home . The concepts are sound. The implementation needs and will continue to improve.

@@PoesAcoustics Not only the concepts, sound in practice. The thesis environment was a regular room, if on the dry side. Car environments have their own challenges, no doubt, are engineered and speaker placements are fixed, measurements done by Dirac trained engineers etc. Trinnov meanwhile needs to publish one, just one, study, something meaningful, close to anything Dirac has published.

Agree, Dirac’s solution is so much more elegant and practical compared to wave forming which I’m not convinced is any more innovative than the double bass array method.

@@daryllim2036 it is. And actually Waveforming is the more elegant solution. Double bass array is an analog method of producing planar waves and elongating reflections. It’s not very effective in actual theaters with risers and any real texture. Waveforming is a digital version using individual driver control and advanced FIR filters to shape the wavefront and minimize reflections. One of the solutions is to optimally produce a planar wavefront. There are other solutions it can provide when a true planar wavefront is not possible or would yield less ideal results. It also can produce a more complete cancelation with less subwoofers using the same filters for the rear subs. It’s more elegant because it’s a solution that relies on simpler filters yet produced better results with less artifacts. Diracs solution is more universal. But it’s not elegant. It’s a complex brute force solution and one of its known problems is artifacts. I was actually skeptical and disappointed upon the release of Waveforming. I was very excited about ART. I now have fairly extensive hands on time with both and my impressions reversed. I do believe that ART is useful and future improvements will make it better. But what I can tell you is that in my experience it’s Waveforming that yields the better measured results and more elegant solution. I actually believe the biggest fix to ART is to implement specialized arrays and to reduce the reliance on surround speakers for correction. Which ultimately makes it more similar to Waveforming.

Not at all. But do keep in mind that high end home theaters have multiple dedicated circuits. I have 3 in the closet and two in the room for my setup.

The beta I got to use was the PC app.

Nothing wrong with more. The extra subs helps increase bandwidth and dynamic range, reduce distortion, and improve seat to seat consistency.

I wouldn’t be afraid of it. It’s getting better every day. You just need to be sure your speakers support its capabilities.

I wasn’t able to make it but yes that is what they did.

Most likely not. I doubt Dirac would allow the software to be licensed on MiniDSP devices. Been waiting years for Dirac Live Bass Control

Yes but anything going to the minidsp would potentially be less controllable. Let’s say you had your four sub feeds go into a pair of Minidsps and 8 outs. You could only gain control in pairs. Like small arrays. Could be fine. Could cause issues.

I’ve calibrated those before. Decent receivers.

The problem Gene has is inherent in ART. MARANTZ isn’t able to handle his system. Not even in the same ballpark of flexibility. Storm can route the LFE wherever you want. But Dirac can’t handle what he is doing with ART. It applies a highpass.

@@PoesAcoustics I thought I read in the Dirac/Storm manuals for ART, that a newer "infrasonic option" (I dont recall the name) was added to remove the HPF for the mains?

@@DavidAndrewsMBAyes but it’s still there. They are working to fix it.

More needed than you think. Just wait until you try to design a high channel count system with Waveforming or ART.