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[retro]

Yes it's true..

http://www.dirac.se/en/consumer-products.aspx

Anyone tried it..?

[Matt]

There are some amazing third-party room correction solutions supported nicely in JRiver.

You might start with this thread:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=68828.0

[retro]

Matt,

I know that very well. I bought Audiolense many years ago and used it with JRiver, of course.
However, I never really accepted the results, maybe I should have given it more time. Also, Audiolense is much more advanced and probably better today.

But the thing with Dirac is that it's supposed to be very easy to use, which can not be said about Audiolense (sorry Bernt).
Also, it adds a virtual soundcard which means it works with every win (or mac) application.

I am very tempted to buy and try...

[Mikkel]

Has anyone in here bought Dirac Live (beta-version)... and even better: has anyone compared it with Audiolense?


Best regards,
Mikkel

[hulkss]

Looks good for 8 channels max, no active XO, and no bass management.

[BradC]

They have a 14 day trial available

I am donwloading it, and will compare to the results achieved with acourate

[glynor]

What I'd love would be if JRiver would do the same thing.

Release a JRiver Engine driver as a separate product (for $19.99 or something) that installed as a "virtual sound card" that could be used in Windows, but gave you access to the whole Audio and DSP engine (including JRSS and room correction and Parametric EQ and plugin support and everything) currently built into MC.

You'd just install it and select it as your default sound device in Windows, then open it up and pick your "real" sound device as the "internal device" (just like you do now under Options -> Audio in MC).

Even better would be if you could set up separate Zones too on it and have different profiles available in via a right-click on a tray icon mechanism.  That way you could use JRSS on some stuff, like Web Video, keep some stuff two-channel stereo untouched, and let other stuff pass through, like multichannel games and HD audio from applications.

That, plus a built-in, simple-to-use Room Calibration wizard that uses a microphone (ala Audissey on Denons and whatnot) and they'd really, really have a nice little product.  All the audio prowess of MC, for your web browser and your other dumb applications.

That. Would. Be. Sick.

[Scolex]

Glynor
I think that would be the final step to Media Center heaven as far as technical aspects go and would just add that much more distance between MC and it's competitors.
Having it as a separate entity doesn't really make much sense to me though.

[Matt]

Glynor, I've wanted to do your idea for a long time. 

You can use loopback (experimental feature in v17) today to accomplish something similar.

A native WDM driver that funneled data to our engine would be even better.  From my experimentation, WDM driver programming isn't exactly a "oh, I'll throw that together today" sort of project.  An ASIO driver is that easy, but I don't think that helps.

I wrote to the author of Virtual Audio Cable and he had no time to help, even for pay.

If anybody reading this thinks it'd be fun to make a WDM audio driver that writes data to a memory map so JRiver could use it, please contact me.

[glynor]

Having it as a separate entity doesn't really make much sense to me though.

Three main reasons I suggested that:

1. I think it could be handy even for people who, for whatever reason, choose not to use MC proper.

2. It could actually lead to more exposure for MC itself.  It would be cheaper.  And it could appeal to other audiences.  I can think of lots of "professional" uses for things like MC's DSP engine (having the Parametric EQ would be awesome in some cases for pro-audio and AV use).  It might bring in new customers to MC itself who first "drink the kool-aid" because of the cheap, neato driver.  And then before long they want the same treatment for video playback and file management (and not to have their other application's crappy audio engines ...iTunes, cough, iTunes... messing stuff up before it even gets to the JRiver driver engine).

3. It could lead to additional revenue for JRiver, which could then be used to make MC even better.

They could, of course, choose to "give it to you for free" with MC itself.  That would be a nice hat-tip, though personally, I'm with Fry.

Even still, once they did the initial investment of time to make the soundcard emulation driver thingy-magig and the UI for setting options and picking Zones, most everything else could be "stolen" from MC itself and the compile process to keep it up-to-date should be basically completely painless (or as painless as compiling MC itself is anyway, if one works, the other should, if you're just linking the same libraries and code).

After that, any extra cash it generates is basically gravy which means more resources for developing MC itself (or yet another Bentley for Jim, of course).  

[glynor]

Glynor, I've wanted to do your idea for a long time.

I knew that, I've heard your mumbles.

A native WDM driver that funneled data to our engine would be even better.  From my experimentation, WDM driver programming isn't exactly a "oh, I'll throw that together today" sort of project.  An ASIO driver is that easy, but I don't think that helps.

That's too bad.  That would, of course, be the toughest part.  It could be worth it if it was released as a separate product though.  Like I said, once you do that hard work (the UI wouldn't probably take too much effort, and could also mostly be stolen from your UI toolkit from MC), it should just work until Microsoft messes up the WDM model somehow.

And, of course, if they do that, you have allies when you complain.

[Scolex]

Three main reasons I suggested that:

1. I think it could be handy even for people who, for whatever reason, choose not to use MC proper.

2. It could actually lead to more exposure for MC itself.  It would be cheaper.  And it could appeal to other audiences.  I can think of lots of "professional" uses for things like MC's DSP engine (having the Parametric EQ would be awesome in some cases for pro-audio and AV use).  It might bring in new customers to MC itself who first "drink the kool-aid" because of the cheap, neato driver.  And then before long they want the same treatment for video playback and file management (and not to have their other application's crappy audio engines ...iTunes, cough, iTunes... messing stuff up before it even gets to the JRiver driver engine).

3. It could lead to additional revenue for JRiver, which could then be used to make MC even better.

I see it doing the opposite since IMHO the true value of MC is in the audio engine/DSP and if they were included in the Virtual Sound Card there would be less need for MC in many people's
mind since they could have the sound quality without the base program. Maybe I am just misunderstanding what you would have included but that is the way I see it.

Why would they need MC for Video couldn't they just use a splitter/extractor to separate the audio and send it to the Virtual Audio River (I like that name/play on words)

If I were developing it I would package it as an add-on for MC and it would only work with other players on a trial basis so a person could see the potential of a true audiophile grade audio engine/DSP.
This would of course require capturing the data before it reaches the windows audio stack to prevent substandard engines/effects from tainting the stream.
That may be difficult than I realize, I am just an enthusiast after all.

On a side not if such a device were created I would like the ability to record the post process data for multichannel playback on a different device.

[glynor]

I see it doing the opposite since IMHO the true value of MC is in the audio engine/DSP and if they were included in the Virtual Sound Card there would be less need for MC in many people's
mind since they could have the sound quality without the base program. Maybe I am just misunderstanding what you would have included but that is the way I see it.

Perhaps, but I don't think you can really worry about cannibalizing sales too much in this industry.  As Jobs said, "If anybody is going to cannibalize us, I want it to be us. I don't want it to be a competitor."  Plus, I don't know about you, but I know that for me, if I buy one program from a particular software vendor, and I like it, I tend to be willing to try their other offerings and I'm a lot more willing to click "buy".  I think your view of the value of MC might be a little clouded by your particular niche interest and your reason for trying MC in the first place.  MC does a lot more well than just have awesome, pristine sound quality.  A whole lot more.

The big point of this application would be to bring that audio power to your other applications.  It annoys me that when I want to watch web video in my browser, that I can't apply JRSS to it and expand it to all of my speakers.  It prevents me from using the built-in Room Correction in my living room for the same reason, because I want games and web video and other applications to all be corrected too.  So you can't really use MC as an "receiver replacement" if you are interested in more than just music and recorded/downloaded video on your PC.

This solves that, and could solve other problems in the pro-market as well.  And I think all those uses combined might be a broader market than the people looking for an application like MC itself might have.  More potential customers means more people might like it, and then might look at your "flagship product".  Which is, of course, built from the ground up to take the best advantage of all of this bit-perfect audio system stuff.  It integrates fully.

Why would they need MC for Video couldn't they just use a splitter/extractor to separate the audio and send it to the Virtual Audio River (I like that name/play on words)

That's a perfect example.  Two words: Red October.  "Just use a splitter/extractor", even installing pre-packaged codec packs, is often a nightmare of flaky installations that mangle other applications and conflict with one another.  For regular people, that's a great feature.

And it manages your audio files so well, and it syncs with your Android phone.  And look over here, there's a sweet remote control and streaming app for your girlfriend's iPhone or your iPad.  And it looks up the metadata for your TV Shows and Movies automatically and there's a whole, nice Home Theater front-end that works with a remote and is fast.

If they are really worried about cannibalization, then they could certainly disable or cripple a few things here and there, but generally I'd caution against it.  That kind of "plus pack" scheme is distasteful if not done extremely well (there are lots of studies to support that it often turns off as many people as it entices when the feature that is disabled "feels arbitrary" to a casual observer).  One place it might make sense would be in supporting those third-party filters and plugins that Matt mentioned earlier in the thread.

I do like your Virtual Audio River name idea though.  

[Scolex]

Perhaps, but I don't think you can really worry about cannibalizing sales too much in this industry.  As Jobs said, "If anybody is going to cannibalize us, I want it to be us. I don't want it to be a competitor."  Plus, I don't know about you, but I know that for me, if I buy one program from a particular software vendor, and I like it, I tend to be willing to try their other offerings and I'm a lot more willing to click "buy".  I think your view of the value of MC might be a little clouded by your particular niche interest and your reason for trying MC in the first place.  MC does a lot more well than just have awesome, pristine sound quality.  A whole lot more.

The big point of this application would be to bring that audio power to your other applications.  It annoys me that when I want to watch web video in my browser, that I can't apply JRSS to it and expand it to all of my speakers.  It prevents me from using the built-in Room Correction in my living room for the same reason, because I want games and web video and other applications to all be corrected too.  So you can't really use MC as an "receiver replacement" if you are interested in more than just music and recorded/downloaded video on your PC.

This solves that, and could solve other problems in the pro-market as well.  And I think all those uses combined might be a broader market than the people looking for an application like MC itself might have.  More potential customers means more people might like it, and then might look at your "flagship product".  Which is, of course, built from the ground up to take the best advantage of all of this bit-perfect audio system stuff.  It integrates fully.

That's a perfect example.  Two words: Red October.  "Just use a splitter/extractor", even installing pre-packaged codec packs, is often a nightmare of flaky installations that mangle other applications and conflict with one another.  For regular people, that's a great feature.

And it manages your audio files so well, and it syncs with your Android phone.  And look over here, there's a sweet remote control and streaming app for your girlfriend's iPhone or your iPad.  And it looks up the metadata for your TV Shows and Movies automatically and there's a whole, nice Home Theater front-end that works with a remote and is fast.

If they are really worried about cannibalization, then they could certainly disable or cripple a few things here and there, but generally I'd caution against it.  That kind of "plus pack" scheme is distasteful if not done extremely well (there are lots of studies to support that it often turns off as many people as it entices when the feature that is disabled "feels arbitrary" to a casual observer).  One place it might make sense would be in supporting those third-party filters and plugins that Matt mentioned earlier in the thread.

I do like your Virtual Audio River name idea though.  

You got me with the section in bold as I pride myself on being loyal and it is true of most people.
I wouldn't consider myself a niche user though as I want everything to look, sound, and run flawless, doesn't everyone want their cake and eat it too.

Yeah I think the name fits which made me wonder if the term Stream factored into the naming of J. River since they are synonyms.
I am guessing it is just coincidence since the term stream as a description for media wasn't really commonplace back when the Co was founded.

[Mikkel]

They have a 14 day trial available

I am donwloading it, and will compare to the results achieved with acourate

Great! Looking forward to hearing your conclusions 

[MartinG]

I would like to go back to the beginning of this post:
Any experience made with DIRAC?
What about differences compared to ACOURATE (beside support of OSX and no support of 192kHz files).

Martin

[Mikkel]

I would like to go back to the beginning of this post:
Any experience made with DIRAC?
What about differences compared to ACOURATE (beside support of OSX and no support of 192kHz files).

Martin

*BUMP* Did any one pursue the Dirac-track and with what results compared to e.g. audiolense and acourate?

Mikkel

[nealsal]

I did play with their beta version and got good results.  Ultimately chose not to purchase the package because of price and because my surround processor has DIRAC on their upgrade path.  Worth a try!

[rlebrette]

I wrote to the author of Virtual Audio Cable and he had no time to help, even for pay.

Few days ago I was chating in Homecinema-fr.com forums, and one of my contacts have raised an interesting point.
Could the Rogue Amoeba folks (authors of Airfoil) be approached on this subject? The author of VAC is doing this as an hobby, but the Airfoil team is doing business, I think people would pay for some kind of Airfoil version over the MC engine.

[Ser_Renely]

Any reason why I Would want to use these over my AVR's room correction?

[Neco]

Only benefit I could think of, is it could/would be universally applied to whatever is playing on your PC, and with profiles it would be easier to tune it for different sources, or not process them at all.

I could probably correct my receiver for gaming for instance, but then movies and my TV would sound different.