Swedish digital audio pioneers Dirac today announced the debut of Dirac Live Active Room Treatment, the newest member of the award-winning Dirac Live family, which addresses bass resonance and room decay to deliver a purer and tighter bass experience than ever before. Dirac Live Active Room Treatment will be introduced in all StormAudio AVRs with a firmware update in Spring 2023. 

“Dirac pioneered digital room correction through our impulse response optimization technology found in our highly acclaimed Dirac Live Room Correction. Now, with Active Room Treatment, we go beyond traditional room correction and digitally reduce bass decay time without the need for bass traps or thick layers of wall absorption.”  

Dirac Live Active Room Treatment leverages Dirac's expertise in MIMO mixed-phase impulse response correction technology to enable spatial optimization where all speakers in a sound system cooperate with each other to achieve what passive acoustic treatments hard to reach. With digitally and automatically shortened decay times, listeners experience clear sound without booming, smearing bass – as if the room itself did not exist. 

Traditionally, to control bass response and room reflections, physical silencers had to be installed on walls or other areas. Dirac Live Active Room Treatment, on the other hand, works similarly to popular Active Noise Cancellation technology, using the system's own speakers to actively cancel out unwanted wavelengths emanating from other speakers. This is achieved by measuring the entire system as a unified system, rather than driving each speaker individually, and applying advanced spatial optimization to the entire system based on the needs of each individual room. 

In many listening rooms, e.g. For example, in home entertainment rooms, it can take a long time for the bass to die out - or stop bouncing around the room - resulting in ringing or booming. Dirac Live Active Room Treatment automatically evaluates and adjusts the bass characteristics of the entire system, using the strengths of each speaker to compensate for any deficits in other speakers. In this way, passive loudspeakers become active support units that strengthen the overall system. 

“By actively optimizing and coordinating the bass response of all speakers in a system, our latest Dirac Live feature shortens decay times, delivering an incredibly dense and transparent sound experience in any room.  

Mathias Johansson, Chief Product Officer at Dirac

Dirac Live Active Room Treatment complements the existing Dirac Live features – Dirac Live Room Correction and Dirac Live Bass Control – and dramatically improves the sound quality in any listening room. It can be used in any system with more than one speaker, with performance improvement dependent on the total number of speakers in the system. The more speakers a system has, the greater the effect of spatial optimization. 

“Passive treatments to control low-end resonances have been around for years, but they're not necessarily effective and require physical changes in the auditory area, so most people don't use them. Dirac Active Room Treatment is the only solution available that reduces decay time in the room, producing much clearer and tighter bass. StormAudio recognizes the transformative power of this world-first technology and we look forward to its debut in Spring 2023.” 

Mathias Johansson, Chief Product Officer at Dirac

Dirac Live Active Room Treatment will be included in all StormAudio processors and AVRs ordered from January 1, 2023 at no additional charge and will be made available through a firmware update in Spring 2023. StormAudio products ordered before January 1st can be upgraded with Dirac Live Active Room Treatment after the spring 2023 firmware update by purchasing a license from the Dirac online store for $299. 

“We have been a close partner with Dirac since 2017 and have always been at the forefront of successfully implementing their breakthrough technologies. We were the first to introduce Dirac Live Bass Control in 2020 and are now proud to once again lead the way with the release of Dirac Live Active Room Treatment. Our users have always praised the performance and results of calibrating with Dirac tools on our platform and now, in collaboration with Dirac, we can take it to the next level again.”

Olivier Thumerel, CEO of StormAudio