I calibrated the Dirac Live for a customer who had recently bought an Arcam AVR850 and was using it with Bowers and Wilkins 700 series front speakers, SVS SB4000 Subwoofer, Arendal on wall rear speakers and an Oppo 203. The system was 5.1.2 as there was some in ceiling speakers too for Dolby Atmos.
I knew the challenge of this calibration was going to be the centre speaker, being off centre and recessed into the wall ingress under the OLED TV. The customers Brother had setup the system previously and had done a decent job with Dirac considering he had never used it before but there was still a lot of room for improvement.
I started by taking a set of measurements and got to work on finding the right sound balance by using Dirac and using the other settings within the Arcam to dial in the system. At the same time I was figuring out how best to integrated the centre speaker into a seamless front sound stage so it didn’t sound off centre – a near impossible that I managed to accomplish.
Switching over to listening to some 2 channel music unlocked the key unleashing this systems performance. I spent a lot of time fine tuning the Dirac Live Curve for the best 2 channel sound from the Left and Right Bowers and Wilkins 703 S2 speakers without using the subwoofer which resulted in an excellent musical performance. This curve then formed the basis for the full system calibration and I used the tricks I had worked out previously for the centre speaker and then integrated the subwoofer to the exceptional high standard I always do and the end results was a fantastic sounding system. A massive improvement made for both music and movies – a job very well done and one to be proud of.