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Strikingly good results with Dirac Live digital processing

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Lauwerk

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Re: Strikingly good results with Dirac Live digital processi

PostTue Mar 10, 2015 1:46 pm

Dear HeAu,

The online Dirac Live user guide that I downloaded at the time of my trial period and purchase includes the following file structure detail on page 20:

"3. When the optimization has completed (this may take some time depending on the speed of your computer and how many sampling rates you selected to make filters for), press “Save Filter” (g) below the target editor to save the filter to a file that you will be able to open in the Dirac Audio Processor™.
To be able to load the filter in the Dirac Audio Processor™, make sure to save it in the default directory suggested by Dirac Live Calibration Tool™:
Windows 7/Vista: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Dirac\Filters
Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Dirac\Filters Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Dirac/Filters"

Page 36 includes the statement, "Kernel Streaming is a recommended output mode on Windows XP and older...."

In other words, the Dirac manual suggests to me that Windows XP should support Dirac Live. However, I am using Windows 7, so I do not know directly. Perhaps you should contact the people at Dirac, especially considering the potential expense.

Tschau...
(I lived in Wels for some months. :wink: )


Doug and Marc --

Thank you for your kind words. Sorry, I did not know without your comment that the trial period has been reduced. You probably want to have all of your physical arrangements in place (microphone, etc.) before downloading!

Everyone: best of luck!

Don
Don Vlazny
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Jan Loosman

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Re: Strikingly good results with Dirac Live digital processi

PostThu Jun 09, 2016 4:33 am

Hello Don
After using Arc2 with great pleasure for many years, i decided to move on to Dirac for reasons you already mentioned. Time correction and impulse respons correction. Time correction is a great benefit in a multchannel setup. Arc2 only corrects the room resonances and freq. curve.
But the most annoying thing about Arc 2 is the impossibility to correctly save the filter settings in the second instance running in the rear channels. Curiousity for the sonic benefits and the saving issue where the reasons to go to Dirac.
Dirac is a standalone app. and has no generic asio drivers. As you mentioned you had succes getting Dirac to work with asio4all drivers.
But there is also a (beta) VST version of Dirac and during the trial period i was allowed to use it in my Reaper setup.
Getting Dirac to work as VST was not easy but now i grasped the way it works as VST it is not that difficult.
Arc2 vst uses two VST instances but Dirac uses only one VST instance.
To setup you have to create one main track where you place the Dirac VST in the FX part.
Then you create sub tracks front and rear for example.
In the main (Dirac) track you create a send channel 1-2 to the front track and channel 3-4 to rear track.
In the front track you create a receive from the main track 1-2 and in the rear a receive from the main track 3-4.
These are in short the basics for the setup.
Then you open the Dirac app and choose as ouput the Dirac VST. plugin!!! Al the measurments are made through the Dirac VST plugin in reaper!!
This gives the most accurate measurments.
After taking the measurments you can choose the filter curve. You can choose the standard curve suggested by Dirac which sounds good already or you can choose your own curves. You can lift the high freq. a bit so you can choose this setting for a bit dull sounding sample sets. You can even choose that Dirac only does the corrections below a frequency you choose leaving the upper range as it is. So a lot of settings you can experiment with.
In my setup the measurments are done using the Umik usb mic. with supplied correction curve.
How does it sound?
i can fully agree with you, Don!!! Dirac correction improves the sound a lot. Improved clarity, stereo image etc.
I think if you use a stereo setup Arc 2 will be a good choice but with multichannel setups Dirac is far better.
I don't know when the VST version is out of beta testing ? i hope soon but if you contact with Dirac, and tell about your setup I think they will allow using the VST plugin of Dirac as they did with me.
There is a demo version of Dirac with a 2 weeks activation. You only have to possess a measurments mic.

Regards Jan
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scottherbert

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Re: Strikingly good results with Dirac Live digital processi

PostThu Jun 09, 2016 9:45 am

Please forgive my ignorance, but is this the DSP that I am seeing everywhere? I really don't know what that is or what it does. :oops:

~Scott
"Life is just a dream, it is in death that we truly awaken!"
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Jan Loosman

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Re: Strikingly good results with Dirac Live digital processi

PostThu Jun 09, 2016 10:40 am

Hello Scott
It started with Arc2 room correction.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7938&hilit=Arc2
Arc2 and Dirac are both software solutions that will correct room problems that lots of Hauptwerk users encounter when playing. The essence is that you meassure your room anomalies with test tones and the software Arc or Dirac calculates automaticaly a filter to compensate.
When you apply this filters the Hauptwerk organs will sound better and most of the voicing of the lower notes to compensate for roomnodes can be skipped.
This is in a nutshell how this works.

Regards Jan
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abaymajr

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Re: Strikingly good results with Dirac Live digital processi

PostThu Jun 09, 2016 3:25 pm

Just to add some comments to the last post, Dirac VST plugin is on the penultimate beta release. If someone just asks for participation on beta program, he/she will only receive the last beta release, which does not carry the VST plugin. Someone needs to ask specifically for the VST beta release. I managed to save the VST plugin from this release, which works with the posterior beta installations. Don't know if the latest official release for Mac (v1.2) carries a VST plugin, nor if there is any Mac beta with VST plugin. So, if Mac users are expecting for a VST plugin, be careful not to purchase this expensive software before checking VST availability. Indeed, Dirac VST performance is awesome. There's almost no delay. There's no ASIO driver and, although its WDM drivers are very deficient in latency and stability, they work flawlessly in combination with ASIO4ALL, which reduces drastically the latency (not at the same rate of the VST solution) and solves the instability problem.

I have great experienced great results with three different acoustic environments: a home studio, an small-to-mid conference room and a medium-sized chapel. On every one Dirac made so great results that I cannot live without it anymore. It saved me a lot of voicing sessions in attempt to overcome some not-so-tolerable acoustic interactions between samplesets/stops and a given environment, and the balance between stops and even along the compass of a given stop, not to say the equalization of the speakers output. So, it saves a lot of time and ensures quality and consistency. Its auditorium mode is a great feature. The chapel on which I tried it has almost two different acoustics: one at the loft, because of the properties imposed by its rather large area and the small height, and another at the naive. Calibrating the output from the naive perspective (in auditorium mode) made substantial improvements over what was already good from the console/loft perspective. Of course, the technology has its limitations. Working with the digital domain only limits somewhat the results. I remember of the second session I made in effort to calibrate speakers to the chapel. I zeroed the builtin equalizer of the console speakers (which I use to complete the round trip organ-Hauptwerk-organ) expecting that Dirac could do an even better job. The result was the opposite. Dirac made too much effort in sub bass and super treble ranges, not achieving the posterior and better results made with the default equalizer settings, which now I realized Viscount did a kind of rough "pre-calibration". Also, choosing the best output level for the test tone collaborates for the best results. I have set the test tone volume to the average SPL of Hauptwerk output for a given environment. In short words, helping in analog domain Dirac to do its job in digital domain is the best strategy.

Unfortunately, the microphone I use is a Behringer ECM-8000 for which I have only a default calibration file. Since Dirac RC works on small details, I suppose it would perform even better with individually calibrated mics.
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