Guest Blog: Dirac on The Future of Immersive Home Audio
Dirac’s core mission has always been to improve audio experiences through innovative software that maximizes the performance of users’ hardware. McIntosh, meanwhile, has spent over 75 years providing only the best audio products to customers, whether that be in two-channel stereo or home theater systems.
It was therefore a perfect pairing for the two companies to embark on a collaborative effort that leverages their collective strengths and delivers immersive, audiophile-quality home audio solutions that can be easily optimized for any room shape, design, or size.
Give The People What They Want
This collaboration comes at an inflection point in the home audio space. Audio engineers, listeners and home audio integrators are all increasingly pursuing immersive audio, which, similar to home theater surround sound, is intended to envelop listeners in every note and sound in the films and songs they love.
Homeowners today increasingly expect technology-enhanced performance from their home entertainment systems that didn’t even exist just a few years ago. One of the core aims is to enhance multichannel and spatial audio experiences using a combination of cutting-edge software and leading hardware components known for their premium sound reproduction.
Just as Dirac has pushed the boundaries of software-enhanced home audio with the industry’s leading room correction technology, McIntosh has continued to advance component design and aesthetics to please the most discerning customers. Working together, Dirac and McIntosh integrated Dirac’s leading software optimization tools into the McIntosh MHT300 Home Theater Receiver to offer customers truly immersive audio experiences.
Dirac Live® Room Correction Full Bandwidth (including the license) comes with the MHT300 and delivers advanced room adjustment and correction.
The Weakest Link
The one thing no audio engineer, hardware manufacturer, or software designer can plan for is the specific shape, size, and design of the room in which a system will be used.
Dirac is focused on making it as easy as possible for McIntosh dealers and users to achieve dramatically enhanced audio experiences and enjoy the best possible sound from their home theater systems. The McIntosh MHT300 Home Theater Receiver does just that by offering the award-winning Dirac Live Room Correction Software.
According to McIntosh, the company had been following Dirac’s progress as it gained a very positive reputation in multiple audio environments, and through the MHT300 integration, aimed to show how each installation could unleash the true sound the system was designed for, regardless of room peculiarities, while faithfully reproducing the wide variety of audio formats and styles popular today.
The Secret Software Sauce
Powered by patented technologies, Dirac Live is the market-leading room correction solution. It automatically addresses common acoustic challenges that all home audio systems have, but hardware alone can’t address – or takes too much time, expertise, or cost to do so. It accomplishes this through a patented mixed-phase impulse response correction technology that corrects not just magnitude response, but also time domain, which is critical for tight bass and accurate staging and clarity.
When a sound engineer develops their final studio mix for a film or song, they can’t factor in the infinite variations presented by the home environments and audio systems of their listeners. That’s where Dirac comes in.
The best sound system is one that transports the listener into the scene or recording studio. Dirac Live is helping deliver that experience by ensuring MHT300 owners get the best audio experiences out of their systems, regardless of speaker locations, room size, or furniture placement.
To learn more about Dirac Live, visit dirac.com/live.
