Using Dirac Live charts to configure Roon Parametric EQ

Hi,

My digital chain starts with Roon core on a sonic transporter i5. I feed that to my network bridge, to a dac, to my amp, to my speakers. I recently purchased a minidsp shd unit which comes with Dirac live. I placed that between my sotm network bridge and my mytek Brooklyn dac+ in my chain.

The improvements were very noticeable, and it helped compensate for several of my room’s challenges, like taming a bloated bottom end. I had to give up MQA, though.

My question is this: Now that I have my Dirac Live charts (impulse response, frequency charts) is there a way to use that info (replicate that) to set up Parametric EQ directly in Roon? That way I can simplify my chain my removing the minidsp and regain MQA? If yes, how?

Btw, I am not suggesting anything untoward, as I have purchased my Dirac license through minidsp.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

No, Dirac Live is a closed box system – in both its software and hardware iterations. It does not offer user exportable impulse response files for other convolution engines.

AJ

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Thank you.

Just to clarify, I didn’t mean I was looking for a way to import the file into Roon directly. Is there a way for me to look at the Dirac charts visually, and then configure Roon Parametric EQ manually to get it to look alike?

I’m not an expert on how Dirac works, but if it’s just curves (i.e nothing in the time domain) it’s possible with a good USB sound card with analog inputs. Run your digital signal into the Dirac unit, and run the output into the sound card. Calibrate the sound card with any signal processing switched off, and then switch it on and run a sweep in REW. You should then see exactly what processing is happening.

I’ve successfully done this on an analog EQ - the inline box that comes with Bose 901s has some extreme curves to compensate for the speaker design. I know the EQ will die some day soon, so did the above method to find out exactly what the EQ curves where at each setting on the box. Worked perfectly and I could bypass the Bose EQ by using the curves in Roon.

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Dirac Live corrects time domain as well. I believe it uses mixed filtering – IIR for some amplitude correction, FIR for phase correction and clean up. In a nutshell, using parametric EQ IIR to emulate a Dirac Live measured target curve will not produce the same results.

AJ

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Thanks much, gentlemen! Roon Parametric EQ has a speaker distance input function (measured from the listener, for each speaker), which I thought makes some time domain adjustments. Is that not the case?

The time domain referenced is also known as phase response or group delay. It is frequency dependent and arises from inherent resonances, crossover filters, parametric EQ, etc. Loudspeaker distance compensation has no effect on intrachannel time coincidence.

AJ

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As mentioned you can measure the response of the Dirac correction by recording the mini DSP output of a sweep file, connecting miniDSP output to a sound card.
REW can do the job.
Then export the stereo impulse to a WAV file and import it into Roon convolution engine.
This will replicate Dirac’s IIR and FIR processing.
NB: I don’t know if they do some sort of non linear correction but in this case it can’t be measured with the loopback technique.

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Thank you, Nic, Alec and Andrew!