NAD M17 V2 w/ Dirac Live - WOW!

[BobK]

My NAD M17 SSP died in mid-August due to a bad PS. While in for repairs, I decided to upgrade the audio and video boards to V2 status. This also changed the room correction from Audyssey to Dirac Live.

I was finally able to complete the Dirac Live calibration yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, and it was not easy. I originally tried on Friday for more than 4 hours using my iPad, and the calibration kept bombing with only 3 of the 17 required locations remaining. I started again from scratch Saturday morning with the same results. The program bombed with 3 locations remaining. So after another 3 hours into this, I called my dealer (Timbre...outstanding dealer, BTW). He stated that there was a known bug with the iOS and this has been reported to NAD. Great!

So I started for a third time with a laptop, carefully measuring each location because I did not want to do this again. I loaded the calculated curve into the M17, took a shower and sat down to watch a movie.

Holy cow...I was gobsmacked! I frankly didn't expect anything that different form the Audyssey calibration, and I was so wrong. Dirac Live completely changed my HT. Everything was smoother, better balanced and with significantly improved dialogue intelligibility. Perhaps I just got lucky, or had a really poor Audyssey calibration, but this Dirac Live has so far impressed me beyond words.

Also, since the M17 was out of the loop during the repairs, I had to run a BetterCables HDMI directly from my Xfinity box to the non-4K TV (60" Pioneer Elite). I now have the WireWorld Silver Starlight 7's back in the loop (Xfinity to NAD/NAD to TV). Another holy cow experience! Highly recommended.

 

[joeinid]

Congratulations, great news. I’m curious about some of the new offerings from NAD. I guess software is a quirky but I’d love to hear them.

 

[NekoAudio]

My understanding is that Audyssey measures the frequency response over a time window (to account for the room) and then applies PEQ filters.

Dirac does that but also measures the delays of individual frequencies within a single channel, in order to align them (i.e. compensate for the speaker crossover and drivers). This is the impulse response correction you see in the Dirac measurements/results graph. Your Devialet Expert 440 Pro Dual does this too with SAM, but to a lesser degree as it only focuses on the bass driver time alignment while Dirac does a full-spectrum time alignment.

As a result, you get a significant improvement in clarity throughout the entire frequency range.

You didn't have a poor Audyssey calibration. Dirac is simply a better product and better solution. Trinnov further exceeds Dirac, especially if you use active crossovers, but it costs a whole lot more.

 

[nicoff]

My understanding is that Audyssey measures the frequency response over a time window (to account for the room) and then applies PEQ filters.

Dirac does that but also measures the delays of individual frequencies within a single channel, in order to align them (i.e. compensate for the speaker crossover and drivers). This is the impulse response correction you see in the Dirac measurements/results graph. Your Devialet Expert 440 Pro Dual does this too with SAM, but to a lesser degree as it only focuses on the bass driver time alignment while Dirac does a full-spectrum time alignment.

As a result, you get a significant improvement in clarity throughout the entire frequency range.

You didn't have a poor Audyssey calibration. Dirac is simply a better product and better solution. Trinnov further exceeds Dirac, especially if you use active crossovers, but it costs a whole lot more.

Agree that Dirac and Trinnov are at a different level than Audyssey (and Anthem's ARC for that matter). To paraphrase the old car commercial, the new DSP processors are not like "your father's Oldsmobile". With Dirac, Trinnov, and a few other state-of-the-art DSPs that can adjust time and frequency domains, for a mere fraction of the cost one can accomplish much more than randomly applying room treatments or using expensive cables and interconnects.