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Post by marcl on Apr 21, 2024 16:27:22 GMT -5
Youthman did an hour and 42 minutes LIVE today with Matthias from Dirac. I haven't watched all of it but there was some interesting stuff sprinkled through it. One thing he mentioned - I knew about it but hadn't heard the details - was the idea of using Exclusive Mode in Windows while doing measurements. he said sometimes processes running in Windows could interfere with measurements and cause lost or inaccurate data. So I was just about to do a calibration (after moving my surround speakers a bit) so I did what he said ... enabled Exclusive Mode and shut down everything in my PC except Dirac. Well, I can't say that's what made the difference for sure ... but here are my results measured at the MLP (exact location of my initial Dirac measurement) after doing the 6-point "Domino" measurement pattern. This is with no level tweaking, and with Variable Smoothing (not Psychoacoustic).
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Post by marcl on Apr 22, 2024 16:55:16 GMT -5
As my friends constantly bust my chops about how much measuring and Dirac calibrating I do ... they seem certain that at any hour of the day or night they will catch me sucking sweeps through my UMIK-1 ... I respond that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who will do a Dirac calibration only once if they can get away with it, and dread every second ... and those of us who will get an idea and squeeze one in while their wife is at the grocery store.
So how long DOES it take? How quiet does it HAVE to be? Yesterday I had a quiet house and was able to turn off HVAC and hadn't opened the refrigerator in a while so the compressor was off. I measured noise floor at the MLP 38dbC and 30dbA ... and that is REALLY quiet and Dirac will certainly work fine at ambient levels 10db higher than that!
My current process is to do the 6-point "domino" pattern around the MLP, and measure that MLP again at the end so the mic stays there for post-cal verification. It took me:
35min - Volume Calibration and 7 measurements (x7.1.4 ... 91 sweeps) 5min - Filter Design and save filters 15min - Quick 7.1 verification with REW 20min - Precise level adjustment (to <1db) using Spears & Munsil disk Panning noise - separate adjustments for Preset 1 and Preset 2 5min - Full 7.1.4 measurements using Spatial Audio Toolkit sweeps with REW - Preset 1 only
Note that Preset 1 and Preset 2 have the exact same filters. The only difference is Preset 1 has center sub=LFE, and Preset 2 has center sub=None (changed after filters are loaded).
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