Can you elaborate how Dirac made a substantial difference over Audyssey in your case?
Can Dolby Loudness be used with Dirac?
In my case, there is only one subwoofer and the room acoustics is terrible (I don't really have options for treatments, since this is our living room, besides a rug on the floor). I said I can live without Dynamic EQ yesterday, but then I played with it some more and I realized how much better the movies sound with it. When I had it turned off the gain on the subwoofer was too high, so when I tried turning it on in the past the mids and highs didn't sound good. Yesterday I lowered the gain on the sub and now Dynamic EQ sounds very good to me. Tipicaly I watch movies at -35db to -30db volume on Denon.
Well the first comment I need to make is about Audyssey - I had Audyssey on my previous Integra DTR 70.4 and Onkyo SR876.... it was fixed to Audyssey tuning defaults, unlike the current Denon/Marantz versions with the Apps allowing tweaking of various parameters.... according to others who have compared fully tweaked audyssey vs Dirac Live, they are much of a muchness.... but that requires substantial effort to allow Audyssey to match Dirac.
In my case, Dirac immediately and noticeably improved dialogue clarity, cleaned up the midrange and improved imaging.... My preferred target curves do not boost the bass and are therefore very similar to the default Audyssey targets (not the "Harman" style curves).
Yes Dolby Loudness can be used with Dirac - and that is how I use it.
Dynamic EQ applies a Fletcher Munson perceived loudness curve to the signal - so if you are listening at a lower level than "reference" - the bass and highs are boosted - and that boost increases as the level is lowered.
This however only works with signals that are in fact recorded to a reference levels (as movies are) - the downside is that Music has no reference level standard - and therefore no perceptual EQ can logically be applied (other than manually - by ear!)
Some integrated amps and receivers of the "golden age" (1980's/1990's) used to have and adjustable loudness dial to allow exactly that kind of adjustment by ear - a very smart feature! (and something we could all use nowadays!)
-35 to -30 does not provide much of a reference.... is that 30db down from reference level? (Reference level is 85db - so the average listening level would be assumed to be 55db.... that is whisper quiet and makes no sense)
I suggest you use an SPL meter... to determine the average level at your listening position (MLP) - then you can determine where you stand vis-a-vis reference level.
