I calibrated Dirac Live within an Arcam AVR 20 AV Receiver with Dynaudio Contour speakers at the front and KEF LS50 for rear speakers and a REL S5 subwoofer in a 5.1 home cinema system with other toys like a 4K Sony projector and more
The customers home is a stunning very modern open plan architectural property with stone floor, lots of glass and open space, the system was setup on one side of a very large open plan area that led into the kitchen. The room was very live with a long reverb time and naturally this is very difficult acoustical conditions to create great sound and the fact the system was off to the side slightly made things even more difficult.
Even though the customers main focus for this system is home cinema as he will be setting up a separate high end HiFi system I wanted to give the best music experience from the home cinema system as I could.
In total I spent about 8 hours on site, admittedly chatting probably for two of them but I really worked hard on this system to maximise its sound for music and then home cinema. The customer was amazed by how huge but tight and focused I made the system sound with the combination of Dirac and my setup skills and in the main I was able to overcome all the obstacles of the room, the systems off centre placement and a few other factors. All in all I am very proud of the calibration I did here taking extra time to give the customer a separate night mode for late evening listening / viewing.
Customers Comments
“Terry’s work is exceptional – he has completely transformed my system. It sits in an open-plan, large, awkward L shaped room, something Terry took as a personal challenge. The results are extraordinary – I never believed that a single-box AV receiver could produce the soundstage and image that Terry has extracted from it. It’s a huge, expansive and dynamic sound, in no small part due to how expertly he has integrated the subwoofer, bringing scale, weight and impact to both movies and music alike.
Terry is a dedicated master of his craft – he spent hours on end fine-tuning and perfecting the set up so that it was equally excellent for Atmos, and for hi-res music.. In fact, I had never believed that it was possible to achieve such nuanced hifi results from the Arcam unit.
His work has revolutionised my home cinema entirely. It is the single most impressive upgrade I have ever made to it, and well worth the investment. I have no hesitation in recommending Terry’s work. On top of that he’s a thoroughly nice guy and has great chat. All round brilliant service – thanks again Terry!”