I covered Dirac ART in my Focal 1000 Utopia review here.
https://www.audioholics.com/outdoor-speaker-reviews/focal-1000-utopia-speaker-review
I have before and after measurements of ART as well as my impressions. I was running Dirac Live Bass Control DLBC in the set up for about eight months or so prior.
ART is a watershed moment for the product. It is superior at handling frequencies in almost textbook fashion below 150 Hz as advertised.
There are three critical aspects to ART: 1) it will flatten the frequency response of your system superior to DLBC (assuming you have support speakers) 2) what it does with decay time is palatable— the whole system just tightens up and 3) minimizing seat to seat variation of bass response across the room is vastly improved.
Users do need to understand that above 150 Hz
there’s no difference in the product. And, in order to maximize performance, you need to have supporting subs and speakers within that frequency range. Additionally, there are some issues at the transition to infrasonics (between 18Hz-20Hz) where you may get a peak or null.
I’m
exceedingly happy with ART’s performance. I will note, however, that there are some best practices that are not obvious. For example, do not use the Center channel as a sports speaker for other groups, set the left and right main speakers at -5 to support each other. Anything higher than that (-6 or greater) can collapse the stereo imaging. And add 20dB headroom to the -3dB point if your speakers. The older versions of ART set all speaker support groups to 50 Hz, whether or not the speakers were capable.
Finally, I am very much indebted to StormAudio’s Matt Trinklein and the team at Dirac for supporting me during my review to maximize the system’s performance. And note that StormAudio’s implementation of Dirac and the feature set of the Storm platform is head and shoulders superior to other platforms.
