What’s New

By Jordan Matthiass
Technical Marketing Manager
Dirac

James Todd
Global Product Line Manager
HARMAN Luxury Audio

Many of you will already be aware of Dirac Live and the benefits it adds to select ARCAM, JBL and JBL Synthesis units, as well as the end-user benefits it delivers to customers in the form of superior, optimized sound from a powerful yet easy-to-use tool.

For those of you less familiar, Dirac Live is a convenient tool for measuring the response of a sound system in a room, and then improving its sound through patented digital signal processing. The impact of the room is then reduced so that the system can be enjoyed with superior clarity and bass. Dirac Live will improve the perceived sound stage and imaging as well as calibrate multiple speakers so that they work together in the room rather than adversely impacting one another.

You can supply the best loudspeakers in the world, but the sound they create will always be imperfect when installed. Every room has its own sound, with individual bass modes that shape how low frequencies sound. Sometimes the bass ends up boomy and dominating, other times it is weak and lacking energy. The impulse response (the ability to start and stop a sound quickly) of the speakers in the room is rarely accurate and affects the overall precision of the system, meaning that in an uncorrected system, certain small details in the sound simply cannot be heard. This further affects the perception of imaging.

There are many features of Dirac Live that help deliver superior sound. In this article, our focus is Dirac Live's newest feature, one that applies to all Dirac Live projects: the Auto Target Curve.

The new Auto Target Curve more faithfully reflects the inherent character of the measured system, minus the adverse effects of the room. With the Auto Target Curve, a system can be quickly optimized without the user needing to make a single adjustment. Adjusting individual frequencies is not a necessity for getting better sound.

Crucially, Dirac Live’s Auto Target Curve also delivers adjusted bass levels and tonality. Boomy, exaggerated bass, often the result of room gain, will still be removed, but the Auto Target Curve restores power across the low-frequency spectrum for a smoother, tighter bass response. Put simply, the new target curve system removes bass where there’s too much and adds bass where there’s too little to arrive at the best possible performance, tuned for the room.

We’re confident that you will appreciate the adaptive nature of the automatically generated target curves, but Dirac have also made it easier than ever to adjust curves whenever you want. The current target curve design, composed of many individual points of adjustment, can be intimidating. That’s why Dirac have also implemented a simplified custom filter design process, so that users simply drag a sound region up or down to increase or decrease its volume.