Arcam's 2022 AVR line-up: everything you need to know

[What Hi-Fi?]

A round-up of Arcam's 2022 AV receiver line-up to help you choose the best product to meet your home cinema needs.

Arcam's 2022 AVR line-up: everything you need to know : Read more

 

[leemccann1]

£600+ for dirac? Is it worth it? im not familiar with feature, is it just a 1 time function?

 

[Sliced Bread]

£600+ for dirac? Is it worth it? im not familiar with feature, is it just a 1 time function?

I have Dirac on my receiver and it is a very capable room correction system, however to get the most out of it you need to be willing to spend *a lot* of time with it.
Over about 6 months I created nearly 50 curves and multiple measurements. The result was improved integration between my speakers drivers (very impressive) and a very natural presentation.
At first I loved it but then I started to hear something was not right, which I confirmed with measurements. It seems Dirac never managed to correct the bass in my living room very well and kept adding a rather large null in the crossover region of the subwoofer, even though the room does not have a null there. I imagine that in my use case at least the software was not correctly resolving the phase of the subwoofer. This is weird because measured without Dirac there is no problem at all in this region. Dirac we’re not able to resolve the problem. Interestingly their more advanced bass management system made it worst.

For this reason I actually stopped using it.

Your mileage may vary and I can see that in the right circumstances it will do a wonderful job, but I would not personally buy it again.

 

[Smokiro]

It really shines with Kef LS50 Meta.

 

[Sliced Bread]

It really shines with Kef LS50 Meta.

Is that Dirac or the Arcam?

I heard an Arcam AVR30 with Dirac off running a set of Kef R speakers in Sevenoaks and that was pretty darn good.

I didn’t get to spend much time with it for music which was a shame, but for movies it was wonderfully cinematic!