So why am I telling you all this? Well it perhaps hasn't escaped your notice that the subject of this review is also called Dirac. And that's not a coincidence. The founders of Dirac the company chose the name because Dirac the physicist's work plays a fundamental role in their monitor and room acoustics correction algorithm.
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The basic concept of room compensation is not really rocket science. You measure the frequency response of the monitoring system at or around the listening position, and then create an inverse equalisation curve that's applied to the monitor signal to pre-shape the frequency response so that the audio integrated by the ears at the listening position is nominally flat (or of some other desired shape). As demonstrated by the other commercial systems available, it can work pretty well, but it's not a complete solution to either room acoustics or monitor response errors.
Firstly, there are some room acoustic characteristics that it simply isn't feasible to correct. If a dip in the frequency response at a particular location in the room is a result of the direct radiation from the monitors being cancelled by a reflection at the same frequency that happens to be 180 degrees out of phase (ie. delayed by a time equivalent to half the wavelength), no amount of correction gain at that frequency will fill it. For example, there's usually no point in trying to flatten, through applying gain, the response dip that's commonly caused by reflections from the wall just behind the monitors.
Secondly, both the monitor and the room acoustics can produce time-domain errors that vary with frequency, and a correction system that operates only in the frequency domain does nothing to fix them. And this is where Dirac believe their approach is slightly different to that taken by some other systems. Dirac's argument is that unless the time-domain response of the system is corrected (as far as it is possible to do so without either contravening the laws of cause and effect, or imparting unacceptable overall system latency), correction in the frequency domain alone can only achieve so much. This is one of the reasons why multiple measurements are needed (the other being to ensure that the EQ-based correction is not entirely focused on one listening position): the Dirac system looks for time-domain errors that are common to multiple positions and infers that they then must be either inherent to the monitor itself, or to the way the monitors and room acoustics interact over a range of locations. Either way, Dirac will generate its own frequency-variable time-domain correction to put the impulse response right as far as is possible (and that's where Paul Dirac's maths joins the party).
The next stage with Dirac's measurement procedure is to click on Proceed To Filter Design, which results in the Filter Design window appearing. For clarity, I've chosen to show just the left monitor channel in the screenshot. The curves displayed are the Dirac measured frequency response, the response target and the frequency response after correction. The target is perhaps the most interesting aspect because it illustrates that rather than simply correcting the monitor and room so that the frequency response is nominally flat for the listener, Dirac enables non-flat, voiced targets to be created by dragging nodes attached to the target curve. But, I can hear you asking, "Surely the whole point of monitor and room correction is to produce a flat frequency response?" Well, yes and no. From Dirac's perspective, the point is to correct as far as possible the major flaws in the time and frequency domains, and when that's done, it's perfectly valid for a user to tweak the overall balance to suit personal preferences. The default Dirac target curve is a gentle 5dB downward slope from LF to HF, but I immediately found that too dull for my tastes, so I modified it to something like the target shown in the screenshot.
So are there any down sides to Dirac? From a mix point of view, I uncovered no negatives beyond its slightly quirky nature and a feeling that it's not as mature and well sorted a package as its direct competition. Having written that, though, one must of course observe the usual health warnings associated with room and monitor correction. Firstly, it's undoubtedly sensible to have a benign listening environment and sensible monitoring setup before resorting to correction, and secondly, all monitors have their limits and it's possible for the EQ applied by correction systems to exceed them. Dirac is no different in these respects.
Dirac, however, conceived of and developed a mathematical description of the quantum behaviour of electrons moving at near the speed of light. The Dirac Equation was among the very first hints that solutions to the intractable incompatibility of quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity might be found, and it won Dirac his Nobel Prize. Dirac's insights, however, didn't only help describe the esoteric fast-moving electron (and at the same time introduce the concept of anti-matter), it also produced a new mathematical framework for the analysis of impulse signals. It's this, known as the Dirac Impulse (or the Dirac Delta Function), that plays a role in the Dirac room correction algorithms.
I've felt slightly uneasy about room and monitor correction in the past, but Dirac is a technically impressive achievement that appears to bring something genuinely unusual and worthwhile to the concept. 2ff7e9595c
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