Top automated EQ for multiple subwoofers

"How would you rank the current mainstream automated eq offerings (Arc Genesis, Dirac, Audessey Ect) at managing multiple subwoofers and would you always recommend a bit of manual eq/summation or MSO prior to running automated software?"
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[@raccerx67]

music as better to test with.... YES please! how, what format, 2 channel vs multi, etc. please please please

[@bigjack79]

I will say, the latest version of Dirac did an amazing job of equalizing my 4 subs placed in the corner. Their predicted response matched what I recorded in rew. I just wish Dirac would run a sweep after correction to confirm results. For the money Dirac bass control is hard to beat.

[@PoesAcoustics]

Not really a reason to confirm. If they didn’t match, it wouldn’t know what to do with that. Remember that it would need to retake all the measurments you took in the first place to confirm.

[@mikepdx487]

Matthew, thanks so much for this. It confirms what I've found empirically in 20 yrs of using various DRC systems and gives some ideas of where I might turn next with my 4-sub music setup (from ARC Genesis to either Dirac with LBC or to Trinnov). Multi-sub optimization is a complex issue -- with 4 subs and 2 mains, 6 speakers have to be working together -- and it seems that mfgrs are just beginning to go beyond fitting each one individually to a target. I'm looking forward to the day when Dirac ART and Trinnov Waveforming are a bit more evolved, reliable, and easier to use.

[@MW-ii5nb]

Great video on your experience and guidance on the pros and cons of these room correction technologys.

[@Wozzaatwozza]

Fantastic video Matt, I really value your wisdom.

[@Wozzaatwozza]

And I like these informative these videos. I love ATMOS music over videos.

[@PoesAcoustics]

Thanks! Yeah Atmos music is coming into its own.

[@1Aquadon]

Thanks Matt!

[@PoesAcoustics]

Happy to help!

[@matta9316]

Love this; if you ever had time to elaborate on common calibration mistakes would be really helpful

[@PoesAcoustics]

Number one mistake. People correcting to a curve without any understanding of what underlies what they are doing. Over reliance on this leads to bad sound. This idea that a perfect line equals perfect sound is a mistake.

[@hifihometheater]

I agree with using music over movies to fine tune. Its easier to tell what sounds "right" with music and once I have my music and concerts sounding right, movies sound right to.

[@PoesAcoustics]

Absolutely. Movies are very artificial. We have no idea what they are supposed to sound like. Even the timbre of voices are hard to judge. Not like we have heard these actors in real life before (and they may change the timbre of their voice for the movie). With music, many people know what (or can learn) an instrument should sound like. It’s easier to dial in from that.

[@johndaddabbo9383]

Oh for sure... these are great! Seriously, these are really really Helpful 👍

[@PoesAcoustics]

Thanks. Much appreciated.

[@danielwander605]

Great video. I’ve been using DLBC for a while now and I love what it does. It took a bit to figure out how to make it work for me in my room but I feel like I’ve got it down. One thing I had to learn is to stop fixating on graphs. With the minidsp approach I could get a beautiful graph from the MLP but it did not sound anywhere near as good as DLBC which didn’t technically measure as good.

[@BalanBro2]

Thank you Matt for the continued excellent content! In your experience where bass management software didn't do such a great job, was it just random or is there some sort of common theme (room geometry/asymmetry, poor seat positioning, mismatched subwoofers/equipment, etc.)?

[@PoesAcoustics]

The two systems for which I’ve had the most inconsistent results are Audyssey and Dirac. With Dirac, I’ve had excellent results with their bass control. I’ve also had totally nonsensical results. I’ve rerun it and gotten different results. Why? No idea. So I real can’t say. I just don’t know.

[@HammerThyme9]

Reckon you could do a deep dive on A1 Evo and an interview with its creator, OCA? Seems like his use of the Audyssey measurement files combined with automation through the REW API is giving a lot of people some pretty amazing results, especially around bass management. Thanks for the interesting videos as always!

[@bigjack79]

Honestly, i don’t see that happening. OCA has done amazing work for the diy community though.

[@HammerThyme9]

@@bigjack79 OCA definitely has, some serious passion there! Would be awesome to hear Matt's thoughts on some of the techniques he is automating through REW now.

[@PoesAcoustics]

I just don’t have time to read through all the threads on it and I don’t know what he is doing. Nor do I know him.

[@Khalid-dd9ln]

Thank you Matthew very informative as usual. Regarding to the ARC Gensis are you referring to the old software or the new one that release with AVM90.

[@PoesAcoustics]

I’ve used all of them. I setup an AVM90 just a few weeks ago.

[@isak6626]

If you have Audyssey, try OCA's fully automated Audyssey script for REW. It does a much better job with multi sub and sub to mains integration (in terms of timing and crossovers) as well as EQ than Audyssey does by itself.

[@PoesAcoustics]

Unfortunately I don’t have any Audyssey devices in my home. I have Trinnov in my main system and a Sony receiver/Minidsp in my family room.

[@isak6626]

​@@PoesAcoustics How do you like the Sony? Does it do room correction, and if so, do you know what it does?

[@Azzy_Mazzy]

@@isak6626 well seeing he has a minidsp added to the sony receiver its safe to assume he doesn't like its room correction

[@Nikita-P]

The other video for testing with music - really curious!!

[@phillipmorris9847]

good stuff

[@MyFatherLoves]

EDIT: Yes, these videos are my favorite. You rock. Hey Matt! Is there any sort of setup guidelines anywhere on the net for Dirac ART for best practices? Trinnov seems to basically have Waveforming so dialed in that they can tell you exactly what to do (and even give some advice on variation) and it works. Dirac Live BC seems to generate great results by following Harmon's best practices for sub placement. But Dirac ART is puzzling. You have your 7.1.4, for example. The .1 consists of 4 subs. However.... It's my understanding that if you tell ART that you have 4 subs for LFE and your speakers only go down to about 70hz or so, you're gonna need more subs to be "support" subs to control 70hz on down to whatever your designated .1 subs can do. So... how do you then setup those subs? How do you setup your speakers if you have speakers that can dig down to 40hz and you also use support subs? As far as I can see, ART doesn't have a section where you physically tell it where your speakers are in the room. Certainly the folks at Dirac have a best practice white paper or something, yeah? If they don't and I had customers with budgets to handle premium processors, I would be extremely hesitant to Storm until there is a best-practices white paper or some kind of instruction in general. That's potentially 10's of thousands of dollars spent for a setup that may not work as well as Trinnov's Waveforming. Am I overthinking ART? Does it follow best practices for an Atmos setup, best practices for sub placement, and then best approximation for support subs? Maybe your .1's sit in the four corners and then you support subs sit on the four mid-wall points? It just seems like there's a huge margin for error and for errant sounds to clutter up the S/N ratio in your room, you know? Signal in this case being the .1 subs and noise being the support subs and support speakers. Each of the 11 speakers have the ability to have what, 10 support speakers plus support subs helping to control RDT? That sounds like a potential recipe for chaos or awesomeness. Maybe I've got the support sub thing wrong... Maybe it's best to either buy full-range speakers or buy a sub for each speaker in the room and use active crossovers... That would solve one issue. Then it would just be using best practices for Atmos placement and best practices for .1 placement. I mean, you did say that you've heard excellent implementations but right now if I had the cash to spend on one processor or another, I'd be using Waveforming. ART is too anxiety inducing at the moment.

[@PoesAcoustics]

No that doesn’t exist yet. It’s something we have had internal conversations about.

[@Pete.across.the.street]

Got to try Anti-MOde 8033s

[@PoesAcoustics]

I had tried it back when it was new.

[@Pete.across.the.street]

@@PoesAcoustics what did you think?

[@PoesAcoustics]

@@Pete.across.the.street impressive for the time. But I think it’s been surpassed.

[@MovieViking]

Do you have any experience with Lyngdorf Room-Perfect? I'm considering going from a Yamaha Aventage to Lyngdorf MP-40 in the surround setup but have achieved a very satisfactory result with Dspeaker and manual corrections using REW.

[@PoesAcoustics]

I don’t have a lot of experience with it. I hope to play with it more soon.

[@SamuelOrf]

Thanks for your excellent answer. I really appreciate it. As a follow up, how would you recommend one verifies they got a good result without a professionally trained ear? I mean good is good so if it sounds subjectively good, I suppose that’s… good. However, is a sweep in REW the best next step? Thanks again!

[@PoesAcoustics]

Well one sweep won’t be enough. The best approach is to take a series of measurements across the different seats. Then you want to look at the deviance between traces. The smaller the deviance the better.

[@jordanhermant659]

Good coverage. What about Lyngdorf RoomPerfect? Available in both 2 channel and multichannel processors.

[@JP-bm2fq]

Thanks for making great videos😊 Can you please alaborate around «frinch» systems regarding when ART is not working proparly. Is it bad speaker placement ?

[@PoesAcoustics]

Systems with unusual setups like full range mains with high bass capabilities of their own. There probably are others. That’s just one that has come up lately with very concrete and clear problems.

[@38special4ever]

Have you tried Audyssey ONE (evo) ... Audyssey scripted calculations using REW computations. The author is Obsessive Compulsive Audiophile on his youtube channel.

[@PoesAcoustics]

I haven’t used it. As you can tell from all the comments. I keep hearing about it. But I don’t have it and haven’t used it. I no longer have any devices with Audyssey.

[@Taikostuff]

I've had some weird experiences with Dirac but more with the high frequencies. Using a SHD Studio i have the 4th slot which has nothing enabled on it no eq, dirac nothing. And i have noticed if i don't have that profile selected when doing a measurement/correction but slot 1 which usually has the dirac correction i get a big roll of above 10k like probably 18db, it goes off a cliff. My money is on it being a Minidsp bug but it can also be Dirac. Point being sometimes weird shit happens and it might not be Dirac's vault.

[@PoesAcoustics]

A lot of the correction systems do weird things from time to time. No denying Dirac has had its share of bugs over the years.

[@Taikostuff]

@@PoesAcoustics Agreed, bugs and consistency are certainly areas for improvement.

[@joek6207]

Also, caveat WHEN/IF Dirac where DLBC works as well. People have a heck of a time with it too. Could be a D&M thing. But I have used Dirac for about 5+ years and it’s always been incredibly buggy.

[@PoesAcoustics]

I’ve only used Dirac on a D&M product 1-2 times. I’ve mostly used it in Arcam and Audiocontrol products. Dirac has been buggy at times. It was a lot rougher in the early days. It’s much better now. I haven had many issues in the last year or so. On Genes system we got lousy results. I don’t know why. But literally two hours before going to him, I finished a DLBC calibration for a client with an Arcam and it came out fabulous.

[@sebastiankorfanty8015]

Could you comment on Optimizer vs DART or DIRAC in general for other than bass correction as we already have your view on bass part of the spectrum. Would you run Optimizer / DIRAC full range or which would you prefer full range as more effective one / easier to get better results etc. Thank you

[@PoesAcoustics]

Optimizer is a lot more flexible. Their overall approach and capabilities are somewhat similar. Both optimize the phase and amplitude response using mixed phase methods. Both allow for and make use of multiple measurement positions. But Trinnov Optimizer has far more manual control over how it does this. For those reasons I prefer it. It gives me more control over how it corrects the response.

[@sebastiankorfanty8015]

​@@PoesAcousticsthank you for coming back to me. I read that Trinnov produces more expensive with better object placement soundstage to, well everything else really, but I am asking specifically vs Storm. Also that is making speakers disappear and blend together better even if of different makes and models. Would you agree? Or once both are fully optimized manually after running their respective EQs the differences in that aspects should be negligible?

[@Azzy_Mazzy]

great video

[@PoesAcoustics]

Thanks!

[@brandonwelch578]

What is your opinion on RoomPerfect by Lyngdorf?

[@PoesAcoustics]

Very little experience. I have a friend that is a dealer so I should get some hands on time soon enough.

[@brandonwelch578]

@@PoesAcoustics, thank you for another great video. To echo others, I find your vidoes helpful and informative. From what I have read and the reviews of the RoomPerfect, I feel it offers a, potential, better EQ experience than others. I'm in like my waaaay early stage of building out a basement media room. From my research, it sounds like RoomPerfect is a much better product, with its unique approach to room correction. I know that so many are jumping on the Dirac wagon but I don't like the idea of having to pay a monthly fee for a room correction / EQ feature...especially when you have to drop so much cash on the processor.

[@josephtronolone3242]

What do you mean by "fringe" systems?

[@PoesAcoustics]

Systems who design or layout are outside the common expected setups. In Gene’s case, an example fringe system, his L-R speakers have four of his seven subwoofers. They are in key locations for subwoofers. No correction system on the market was designed around that concept and so creates complications. Dirac, ARC, Audyssey, and Optimizer would all struggle with his setup for various reasons. Two of those corrections would end up applying a non-detestable high pass filter.

[@hiramb7956]

Great Video

[@PoesAcoustics]

Thanks!

[@danielcomptonnz]

If you have a receiver with Dirac Live Bass Control but with only one subwoofer output, would you use MSO to align multiple subs, and then DLBC to integrate the bass with the rest of the speakers?

[@PoesAcoustics]

That could probably work. You would likely need a minidsp for that to work.

[@we8463]

Sad to hear ARC Genesis is not doing anything good with 4 subs! Seriously where is the data please!

[@andyv9365]

Can I get a decent tune with Dirac live and minidsp 2x4hd?

[@PoesAcoustics]

Yes sure. If the minidsp is used first to fix the subs by aligning them properly and equine them correctly, Dirac Live on top of that is great.

[@randomvariablenj]

Yeah, used MSO with all the biquad banks and then run Dirac afterwards. Be prepared to spend a few hours to get a sensible result from MSO first.

[@2gnospam]

Do any of these systems allow you to understand there file format? Then one could take data yourself (via other equipment), and doing math in say matlab. Afterwards create the file format on your own and upload your self created file. In other words I would be creating FIR or IIR filters to do the math that I want. Can this be done? Thanks for the videos

[@PoesAcoustics]

Some people have figured out how to modify the files in Audyssey to upload manual correction. Not sure if anyone has figured that out for Dirac as well. This assumes you no more about how to create these corrections that the PhDs that developed the correction systems in question. There is a lot that goes into them including how they constrain the correction for both best sound and avoiding over-fitting the correction model.

[@2gnospam]

@@PoesAcoustics Thanks for the reply.

[@2gnospam]

@@PoesAcoustics I might know a few things about acoustics as I received my Ph.D. in it in 1993. I have done specialty work in active vibration control, active control of sound, structural acoustic coupled control, with extensive background in vibration, acoustics , and controls theory. I would guess most of these systems use fundamental MIMO control concepts where once the desired outcome is cast mathematically in the right formulation it falls into a select group of basic control methods. My $0.02.

[@PoesAcoustics]

@@2gnospam ART and Waveforming are MIMO, all others are MISO based.

[@2gnospam]

@@PoesAcoustics By far the waveforming technique is the most unique and intriguing approach I have seen. Would love to hear it in action. The beauty of having all of the different approaches is having different ideas being put forward.

[@stingber]

Have you experienced Room Shaper from Home Audio Fidelity?

[@PoesAcoustics]

No. I have no idea what it is.

[@stingber]

@@PoesAcoustics Im planning to integrate Room Shaper with Dirac Live RCS.

[@DonnieDorko477]

How can you say ARC Genesis does nothing for multisub? What was the last anthem surround product you actually had true real world hands on time with?

[@ricanman85]

I was thinking just this, everything is raving about the AVM 70 with dual sub and AVM 90 with 4 subs, I have the AVM 70 and still used my REW calibration but I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to

[@SamuelOrf]

I have an AVM90 with 4 subs and the calibration/summation has never been great and the issues I have pre cal are still there post cal. It’s what prompted me to ask. It does a good job with the phase alignment tool and distances/levels though. Sounds like MSO for the bass and arc genesis for the rest is a good solution. But if monolith made an htp-2 with Dirac Art, I’d jump ship. 😊

[@ricanman85]

@@SamuelOrf what issues specifically if you don’t mind me asking?

[@SamuelOrf]

@@ricanman85nothing major but I have low q mode from 30-50hz and long decay times. I have 4 corner loaded, sealed subs so my assumption is I should be able to get a pretty flat response if the calibration does its thing correctly. With arc genesis no matter what that scoop is still there pre and post cal. When I had Dirac DLBC and the same setup my response would be smooth and these room issues were fixed. With arc it’s just as if the subs were phase and gain matched. It’s audible too with things like explosions and bass notes will have hot spots of loudness and I assume it’s that’s scoop being 6-10db down. Bottom line is Dirac did a better job but I like other features of Anthem so I am hoping MSO can fill the gap.

[@ricanman85]

@@SamuelOrf ah okay, I was just curious because I didn’t have such issues in my room, I have fairly long decay times but not too bad, (an open floor concept living room), but maybe it’s because I did REW first and I basically gave ARC Genesis one sub

[@sammy10001]

Anthem arc users mad on the comments 😅

[@PoesAcoustics]

Apparently. Sorry if it’s not my favorite room correction.

[@we8463]

@@PoesAcoustics Could you please provide data about ARC, I have a AVM90 and 4subs but I am not about to change pre-pro yet?

[@ts6640]

What do you think about ARC? Sorry, I couldn’t resist😂

[@nothingtoseehere93]

Just run MSO everything else is absolute crap. If you have multiple subs, do yourself a favor and learn MSO it’s so worth it