Last week, I attended my local audio equipment store for an event where a very interesting (for most people) technology was demonstrated: active room treatment. This technology was developed by a Swedish company called Dirac.
Dirac offers three software programs, which are basically filters that are applied to your audio system.
One corrects the room deficiencies. Mainly reflection and reverberation. “Dirac Live Room Correction is a software tool that optimises the performance of your audio device. It automatically identifies and compensates for any problem areas in your room for the best possible audio experience.”
The second one is all about bass control. “Dirac Live Bass Control is a specialised algorithm that optimises the low-frequency performance of your home audio system. It runs alongside Dirac Live Room Correction to manage the interaction between your subwoofers and speakers.”
The third and last software they offer is called Active Room Treatment. This is where, they claim, the sound of your system will improve the most; this is the cherry on top of the cake. “Active Room Treatment (ART) is our most advanced audio correction technology. It unites all the speakers in your system to manage the acoustic challenges of your room — without relying on physical tools like panels or diffusers.”
The company offers the three software separately, but in order to have ART, you would need to purchase Room Correction and Active Bass Controll First. As well as if you want bass control, you need live room correction first, as well, which is the structure of the whole solution, as they claim.
We spend hours listeing how Dirac developed this solution for having these filters. I have to say that it is quite impressive in terms of what the technology does. Physically and mathematically, they came up with an impressive solution. If we measure sound in any room, in any studio or venue, you will have lots of distortion and weird reflection noises coming everywhere. Dirac corrects all these “imperfections” with their filters and improves the sound overall.
From where I was, which was a small room, rectangular shaped, they measured audio from several points across the room. They showed us the graphics of before and after applying their filters. And yes, the graphs showed a significantly better shape. In theory, the sound should be better. After seeing more corrected charts, we were delighted to hear 2 minutes of music and two 10-minute parts of some movies. It is the first time I have tested audio equipment/solution with movies, and I do not recommend it.
I think giving my opinion from the audio of the movies would not be worth it. Since I believe audio should be judged from audio only, video interferes with your opinion. I will stick to the 2 minutes of audio that they offered. They played a jazz song with beautiful bass notes. First, they played the song with their filters. Oh, it sounded so good. They played the song without the filter. They were turning on and off the filters for us to notice the difference. How did it sound to me? Even though sound was presented in a cleaner way with filters on, they also took all life from the instruments, mostly on the low-frequency ones. Bass notes sounded way more manipulated. The sound, all of the sound, lacked life.
I think there are two different types of audio enthusiasts, ones that reads charts, and others who listen and feel the music. I can not judge some equipment because its flaws are smotther that when comparing it with another. This is just not how I listen and enjoy music. Maybe these kinds of software are meant for people who listen mostly to surround systems and watch movies with them. I think with active room treatment, the goal is to achieve the best, most uniform sound possible, but that does not mean that the sound with this treatment will sound better than a well-placed stereo system enjoyed from the sweet spot. Being the sweet spot.
What do you think about active room treatment? Have you ever tried it?