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New second generation Dirac Live


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Also when will Dirac be de-bugged so that it actually will work with current OSX? I paid several hundred dollars for a piece of software that became utterly useless to me when Apple made certain changes to its OS that apparently Dirac cannot figure out how to correct for. I got a half-assed recommendation to utilize a third-party software solution that is ridiculous. It is readily apparent to any who watch what this company is up to that they are getting paid money by equipment manufacturers to come up with versions of Dirac that work with their equipment (especially true for the elusive "Version 2.0") while just plain shitting on their customer base who, like me, paid HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS for Dirac for Macintosh. 

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Welp. The timing of my last post/tirade was impeccable. I very much look forward to being able again to use Dirac on my Mac Mini. FWIW, the compatibility problems arose after I purchased a 2018 Mac Mini to replace my 2011 model, which no longer had the processing power to run both Roon and Dirac without dropouts, etc.   The law of unintended consequences of course struck again. 

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  • 6 months later...
14 hours ago, flak said:

We are looking into automatically migrating the Dirac Live 1.x licenses so that Dirac Live 1.x owners will be able to use the new Dirac Live Processor together with the Dirac Live 2.3 calibration tool.

Great news, and as a Dirac Live 1.x licensee I can't wait to try it out. Has the compatibility issue with Roon on Mac OS (using Dirac as an endpoint) been resolved?

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12 minutes ago, flak said:

 

My understanding is that there is no compatibility issue, Roon simply doesn't support standard AU, VST plugins nor AAX ones so the only solution seems to be a virtual cable like Audio Hijack:

http://diracdocs.com/Roon_&_Dirac_Live_2.0.pdf

(exclusive audio should be disabled when using Audio Hijack as that bypasses their audio capture engine)

I was able to use Dirac Live as an endpoint with Roon for several years. I had both Roon and Dirac Live running on a 2011 Mac Mini. In autumn 2018, I upgraded to a 2018 Mac Mini, and with that to the then-latest version of Mac OS. At that time, it became no longer possible to use Dirac Live as an endpoint with Roon. Dirac did tell me at that time (early 2019) that Audio Hijack was a work-around, and I was in fact able to use Dirac Live as a plug-in with Audio Hijack and could get Roon to play with Dirac Live in that way. However, it is an awkward work-around that also, to my ear, degraded the sound quality of both Roon and Dirac Live. Perhaps the issue is compatibility between Roon and Mac OS updates since autumn 2018? Or something about the combination of Roon, Dirac Live and 2018-and later updates to Mac OS?

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That could be, as I did try with no success to use an early Dirac Live 2 beta.

 

However, the problem originally arose with Dirac Live 1.x. It showed up spontaneously when I moved to the new 2018 Mac Mini with updated Mac OS late in 2018. 
 

Again, the problem was that before the OS upgrade, I was able to select Dirac Live 1.x as a Roon endpoint (where my 2011 Mac Mini was serving as the Roon core and also running Dirac Live application), but immediately after I switched to the new Mac Mini with updated Mac OS and tried to run the same programs in the same way, I was no longer able to do so - i.e., I could run Roon just fine, but I could no longer open Dirac Live and point to it in Roon as a Roon endpoint. Audio Hijack was a workaround suggested by Dirac that, as I noted above, worked but was not 100% satisfactory. 

I very much look forward to trying Dirac Live 2, final non-Beta version, to see whether it plays well with Roon on my 2018 Mac Mini running the current update to Mac OS (Catalina)! Let me know when the license transfer for Dirac Live 1.x licensees such as myself becomes available. Thanks!

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18 hours ago, michael123 said:

 

Of course it will sound worse. Dirac should be also available as a plug-in for Roon DSP engine, or otherwise we will wait fot VST support there.

 

Another option on Windows not Mac I use is having output redirected to JRiver WDM driver, sound is good. But having multiple applications is awful

And while we can always hope that Dirac somehow manages to turn back the dial to allow Roon + Dirac as endpoint, until such time there are alternative solutions. The one I chose is Home Audio Fidelity (HAF), which with its crosstalk correction actually has one big thing up on Dirac (voices reproduce better and stand out from background music better an more realistically).

 

That said, the impulse response control with Dirac was intoxicating, especially for a lover of jazz or other music with a lot of percussion or pizzicato. So there is a trade off.

 

But from the practical perspective, HAF wins hands down. HAF creates convolution filters from your measurements that work beautifully with Roon, no Audio Hijack or other applications required. You can't fiddle around with your measurements and filters like you might with Dirac, as you have to pay HAF to process your measurements for you and create new convolution filters files whenever you materially change your listening room or system. But if your listening room and system are not likely to have any material changes in the foreseeable future, locking into something like HAF's convolution filters files is just fine. 

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