I calibrated Dirac Live for a customer based in London. His awesome system consisted of the NAD M10 V2 powering Wharfedale Linton speakers supported with a KEF KC62 subwoofer. He also had a stunning 77″ LG OLED tv and Apple TV.
This is the customers first system and he wanted it to be very high performance but also styled extremely nicely to match his modern designed home. Interestingly even though the customer was new to home audio he knew exactly the sound he was looking for because he had been out and had some demos of different systems.
The customer had really liked the sound of Klipsch tower speakers but didn’t think the aesthetic or the size of them would work well in his space but he wanted that sound. He asked me to use Dirac to try and get the Lintons to sound more like Klipsch speakers which is not really what Dirac is for and I knew it would be a real challenge however I said I would do my best.
The challenge of this calibration was three fold, firstly to balance the system and integrate the subwoofer. This is what I do best and was able to achieve a seamless integration where bass sounded like it was coming from the speakers even though it was coming from the subwoofer.
The second challenge was to try and make the very relaxed easy going Linton sound more lively and upfront and out in the room like how Klipsch speakers sound. This was not easy and required me to do some out of the box thinking but I was able to achieve it somewhat.
Lastly and the curve ball of the calibration was the customer uses the M10 v2 to watch movies and he wanted a more ass kicking sound for movies than for music. This should be easy but the NAD has quite limited controls so I set the customer several Dirac calibrations for either watching movies and TV or listening to music. These were nearly identical with just a focus on the sub bass being different.
This calibration was a lot of work and really pushed me to deliver what the customer wanted but I feel I did an excellent job for him.
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