Volume Calibration lets you feed pink noise to the monitor channels and adjust the output level and mic input gain so that the input level meter hits the green range and you're not deafened. With the input mic selected, clicking the 'Proceed to Volume Calibration' icon opens the next window.
My system identified three possible input devices (my USB interface, a webcam mic and the UMIK‑1 mic) and the first move was to select the UMIK‑1 by clicking on its icon and uploading the calibration file I'd previously downloaded from the MiniDSP site on entry of the specific mic serial number. Once the Dirac Live application has found the Dirac plug‑in you're up and running. So the first thing to appreciate when using Dirac Live in a studio context is that it needs the plug‑in host application to be running, with the plug‑in instantiated on an output channel, otherwise it won't find a Dirac device. However, the application is more normally to be found working with network-enabled hardware in which the Dirac functionality is embedded, so actually what it means in the studio context by a 'device' is the Dirac plug‑in. Not being aware of any new device, I found this slightly confusing. On launch, the Dirac Live application searches for a Dirac 'device'. Dirac Live may be many things, but a compressor it isn't.
The only slight oddity was that when I opened Pro Tools to look for the Dirac Live plug‑in, I found it listed under 'Dynamics'.
Dirac Live requires Windows 10, or Mac OS 10.14 or later. They are downloaded and installed separately which, in my case, went very smoothly.
The two Dirac software elements are the Dirac Live analysis and EQ filter generation application (this is common with the consumer flavour of Dirac) and the Audio Unit, VST, VST 3 or AAX-format plug‑in.
The UMIK‑1 is a USB mic so it connects directly to the Mac or Windows PC running Dirac rather than via an audio interface, although a conventional mic and interface connection option is also available. Other measurement mic options are available, of course, but they need to have an appropriate calibration file using an uncalibrated mic would be akin to using a ruler with no length scale markings. The hardware element is an omnidirectional measurement mic, and Dirac recommend the MiniDSP UMIK‑1 USB from as a suitable option, so that's what I used. There are three elements to Dirac Live For Studio: two software and one hardware.
Now however, with the launch of the Dirac Live For Studio plug‑in, Dirac is joining Sonarworks, ARC and Trinnov in the pro audio room and monitor acoustics correction market. To date, Dirac has been found primarily in the consumer and automotive audio sectors where companies such as Arcam, Focal, NAD, BMW and Volvo have built Dirac functionality into their hardware. The Dirac Live 'room correction' system was originally conceived in 2001 by a group of PhD students in the Signals and Systems group at Uppsala University in Sweden.
If you're interested, I've explained, or at least tried to explain, a little about how Dirac's work found its way into a room-correction plug–in in the box. That's the thing about theoretical physics: ideas that, at the time of conception, seem almost beyond the esoteric and of absolutely no practical value can turn out years (or even decades) later to have real-world applications. The founders of Dirac the company chose the name because Dirac the physicist's work plays a fundamental role in their monitor and room acoustics correction algorithm.
So why am I telling you all this? Well it perhaps hasn't escaped your notice that the subject of this review is also called Dirac. Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with Erwin Schrödinger (he of the infamous live/dead cat thought experiment), but is probably best known for his eponymous equation and work on the mathematics of impulse signals. He served 37 years as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University (a post that both Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking held), and his 1930 book The Principles Of Quantum Mechanics is still relevant today. Paul Dirac was a British mathematician and physicist who made huge contributions to the theories of quantum mechanics.
The Dirac Live For Studio plug‑in runs on the monitor output channel in your DAW and applies the correction filters that are calculated through the measurement process.Ĭorrecting the frequency response of a monitoring system is one thing, but Dirac claims to correct time-domain response too.