Has anyone else here tried Dirac ART? It was recently made available for the AVP we use in the family room (Monoprice Monolith HTP-1), thanks in large part to a community effort, so I happily bought the license. (Who doesn’t love a massive but reasonably-priced upgrade for a 6 year-old component?) ART also available in $$$$ StormAudio boxes, and some current-get Denon/Marantz home theater gear. Basically ART is next-gen room correction that uses all the speakers to fix modal problems in each speaker. Active noise cancelling in headphones and cars is probably a good analogy.
I finally had time to calibrate our family room system today, and even just using the default groups and support levels without any tweaking I’m really impressed at how subjectively it cleans up the room boom but (at least in my space) preserves tactility and enhances “punch,” while unmasking lower midrange detail that was previously hazed over by room boom. I haven’t taken measurements yet, but hope to in the future at some point. I recently heard Tom’s incredible theater with the giant line array LCR (think modernized Infinity IRS-V), Powersoft M-Force infrasonic monster, and Trinnov Waveforming bass processing. Except for infra (ART cuts off at 20Hz, and in any event we have a shared wall with neighbors so infra is not on my priority list) I don’t think the bass quality here is much, if any, less astounding. But I welcome any advice on how to optimize ART.
As for the system…the only DIY part in this system at this point is the subs,. There are 4 of those roughly in the corners for the front wall. The height subs were built and installed by George Dratewski, who @ugly_woofer connected me with on the old version of this group, after I asked about cabinet makers. (Thanks, Nick!) The subs George built for me use BMS 18n850 woofers I bought from Paul Wright when he dismantled his “Octagon” system with the giant horns. The floor subs, built for me when we lived in Atlanta by a gentleman named Bruce Beigh and designed by me to have a midcentury aesthetic as well as some actual storage capacity, use, respectively, a pair of Aurasound NS15-992-4A 15” woofers and a JBL 2288 18” woofer. All the subs are closed boxes of about 85L volume. Here’s a shot of the front wall. George also built the floating shelves and center cabinet, which unlike the other “cabinetry” is just storage. Pardon the toys/Ultratouch in the corner when I took this shot!
The LCR and height speakers are JBL 7-series studio monitors: 708i and 705i, respectively. I’m a huge fan of these, even though they’re ugly. The sides/rears (not shown) are JBL CBT100 arrays, which I love as surround speakers because CBT arrays don’t “hot spot” like point sources do, but also don’t stretch images like standard line arrays.. Amps are all Crown DCI Network model (and remote because the fans are terribly loud), with 600W to each bed and height speaker and 1250W to each sub.