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Automatic Room Correction
Audio recordings themselves, and modern audio playback and amplification equipment, both
achieve very high levels of accuracy; the weakest links in a modern audio system are the speakers
and the room. The limitations of speakers themselves, and the complex ways in which they
interact with various characteristics of the listening room, can cause the way music sounds in your
listening room or home theater to be quite different from what you expect, and from what the
recording engineer intended. Simple variations in frequency response - as experienced at your
listening position - can make the music you're listening to sound bright or dull, or change the
tonal balance in more subtle ways, and errors in timing and phase can transform the sound stage
from a precise recreation of the original recording venue to a blurry and jumbled mess.
In the early days of audio, you could use a test disc and a sound pressure level (SPL) meter to
graph the frequency response of your audio system, then manually adjust the gain at various
frequencies using some sort of equalizer to produce a relatively flat frequency response. While
this process was usually carried out by experts who had the necessary equipment and expertise,
the basic principle was really quite simple. Most modern pre/pros incorporate automatic room
correction systems like Audyssey™, and our own EmoQ™, which will perform the entire process
for you. If you prefer the manual approach, our high-end processors include powerful parametric
equalization controls, and built-in programs to generate test tones. Together they give you far
more accuracy and control than even the most experienced expert had at his or her disposal a
few years ago. However, while performing frequency response corrections manually can be quite
effective, it can also be somewhat difficult and time consuming.
Also, while correcting the frequency response of the audio signal at the listening position can
often produce a marked improvement in sound quality, because of the complex ways in which
speakers and rooms interact, simple frequency response correction may not be enough. Even
if the measured frequency response is quite accurate, differences in the precise times at which
different frequencies reach the listener can interfere with proper imaging - resulting in vocalists
and instruments seeming to be spread out and blurred, or shifting location when different notes
are played. Timing and phase errors can also cause transients to be rendered incorrectly, which
may result in drumbeats and other transients sounding blurred in time, or other similar errors,
which can make your music sound slow, or lacking in "liveliness".
Dirac Live® Automatic Room Correction
Dirac Live takes the correction process a step further than other room correction systems. Because
Dirac Live uses mixed-phase filters, it is able to calculate filters that not only correct the frequency
response, but also compensate for errors in time response. This allows Dirac Live to correct more
of the differences between how your speakers perform in your room, and how ideal speakers,
in an ideal room, would sound - and enables Dirac Live to correct both frequency response
and transient response. In simplest terms, because Dirac Live is not limited to correcting only
problems related to frequency response, it does a better job of making your room sound more
like it theoretically should.
Dirac Live for Emotiva Processors
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