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Comment by MrBuddyCasino

1 day ago

Did you ever use Dirac Live and can compare the results? Hardware that supports Dirac is unfortunately very expensive.

11 comments

MrBuddyCasino

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vladvasiliu  1 day ago

FWIW, I've tried Dirac Live and compared it to the correction suggested by REW [0]. In both cases, the measurements were taken with a UMIK-1, and the correction was done on a computer. Contrary to GP, I didn't have to fix borked components, just a random, untreated living room.

Dirac seemed to have a fairly heavy-handed correction. In my case, I only had fairly narrow frequency ranges that needed correcting, but Dirac seemed to move much wider ranges at a time. It's also nearly impossible to tweak; you basically can only increase/decrease "the lows" or "the highs". But maybe I'm missing something.

In contrast, the suggestions produced by REW were loaded in EasyEffects on Linux, and I could tweak everything to my heart's content. But I actually just left it alone, since it was good enough.

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[0] https://www.roomeqwizard.com/

  • MrBuddyCasino  1 day ago

    I also have a UMIK-1, and tried the REW route once, but it made everything worse. I suspect a lot of the know-how in Dirac is how to automatically get good results.

    • monster_truck  2 hours ago

      It's equal parts science and art. Best left as a last resort, never a shortcut. These utilities are generally directed towards much louder systems, in bigger spaces, with far more than a few speakers. Everything that has bled down into the consumer space is a band aid for people who either can't or don't know/care/want to treat their rooms and position speakers correctly.

      Ideally you want to be going into it intenting to correct a specific aspect of the room or the speakers, after already ensuring that you've placed the speakers correctly for the room and listening position. If you did not use a tape measure and the full dimensions of the speakers, start over. One of the most useful things REW/Dirac can do for you is confirm that you've placed everything correctly. It is not a magic "make it sound better" utility.

      Hate to sound like an ad but the most impressive thing I've purchased wrt audio in the past 20 years has been some isolators from https://isoacoustics.com/. It's legit engineering magic, you will spend the first hour thinking something is wrong with your body because you can no longer feel the sound.

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    • vladvasiliu  1 day ago

      In my case, the setup is pretty simple. I have full-range floorstanders that only take a single input, and I mostly wanted to control some booming in my listening position. So there's no crossover to handle or anything fancy.

      Maybe for more involved situations Dirac does a better job, but, in my case, it didn't really solve anything. Also, I see they now have this newer "bass control" thing, and it's not clear if my version had it when I last tested it (around November 2025).

throwawaySimon  17 hours ago

Ive done quite extensive testing with Dirac(with a MiniDSP Flex), rePhase, normal PEQs, BruteFIR, CamillaDSP etc. etc.

Dirac is the most user friendly of the bunch, but honestly once you limit the correction to below Schroeder frequency I cannot tell them apart. So for my systems I just stick to a few PEQs targeting the main peaks under 300hz.