Tony_J

...and now disc 2

At least there isn't a fountain...

Doctor Doctor everyone keeps ignoring me. Next please...

Boris Blank - Electrified

Gary Moore - Live at Montreaux

Doctor Doctor I think I am becoming a kleptomaniac. Are you taking anything for it...?

I went to the Chemist today and he advised me to stop taking vitamins. "Why?" I asked. "Because, shoplifting is illegal," he replied.

Not yet.

One interesting thing that these responses brings out is that we should be pointing the mic at the ceiling when doing the Dirac measurements, which I have not done in the past - I must give that a try.

Hi Andrew - when it says "1. Place the microphone in the middle of the listening area." I have always interpreted that as meaning the same place that you would put the microphone for your first measurement. Later on, they get into the detail of the listening area and talk about this first position as "the main position", but I think they have just glossed over that early on as it is explained in more detail later. It would have been helpful if they used the same terminology at the start and maybe referred you to the later description to understand what it means. In any event, given that the point of the mic calibration is to adjust the mic for the later measurements, I can see no reason why you would choose a different position (than the first measurement position) to do that calibration - it would make no sense to me.

I'd prefer them to be in deep shade. Very deep shade

Not good enough to be described as poor taste IMHO

Nice try George...

Just to put a timescale to what I wrote above, the "vanilla" approach to using Dirac is about an hour's work. My hybrid REW/Dirac approach maybe extends that to maybe half a day.

It's very much horses for courses. With REW you can go a long way but it takes time and effort to get the FR curve that you are after, and if you want to indulge in phase/timing correction as well that is all possible to do using the FIR capabilities in the 2x4HD if you chooses the right tools to help you generate the necessary filters. The beauty of the Dirac approach is that you reach the goal rather more quickly - draw the target curve, do the measurements in the listening area, generate the filters, job done. So with Dirac you can very quickly reach your desired FR curve, and have it fix the phase/timing stuff, without busting too many brain cells. I'm absolutely sure that with sufficient time and effort you could reach the same end point using REW and other freebie tools, but you might be still at it in a few month's time. These days I use a bit of a hybrid approach - I measure with REW and tweak the PEQ filters and crossover settings in the DDRC-24 until I have a pretty good "fit" between the drivers and have ironed out the grossest of the peaks and troughs in the FR curve. I then run Dirac to apply the final polish. Using that approach, the difference between Dirac on and Dirac off is (not surprisingly) more subtle, but still gives a very significant improvement to my ears.