Blog - Dirac

February 13th, 2018

Q&A on the New Dirac Live

As some of you may have noticed, things are happening with Dirac Live. We announced a brand new mobile version (for Android and iOS) at Cedia back in September, and in December we announced a new version of the PC based calibration tools (for Windows and OS X). So far so good. But we haven’t really said much about the hows and the whys, and what it all means for existing customers. Thus, the following was written with the intent of clearing up as many questions as possible.

January 29th, 2018

CES 2018: My car is hopelessly outdated!

More than two weeks after attending CES in Las Vegas and one thing remains on my mind: Cars.

December 1st, 2017

The New Smartphone Trends that are Putting Audio Quality at Risk

So, you’re going to buy a new smartphone. What will you go for? A year ago, the must-have features on your list might have included: thin, lightweight, good camera, powerful chip, decent ROM&RAM, and great sound. Today, you would probably add to that a dual rear camera and large screen-to-body ratio. Yes, dual rear camera and large screen-to body ratio are some of the hot trends—among others such as face recognition, augmented reality and finger sensor—which, according to experts, will sweep over the smartphone industry in 2018.

October 31st, 2017

How to Obtain a Good Stereo Soundstage in Cars

Designing a sound system for a car has a different success formula than designing a sound system for a living room. In a car, neither the loudspeakers or the people listening to them can be placed precisely according to the standard.

July 6th, 2017

Dirac Modes: Soundstage Control at Your Fingertips

Let’s say you have quite a firm opinion about how you want your music to sound. You want it to sound clean and tonally well balanced with just enough bass—not too much. You want the center image to be right there, dead in the center no matter how you move or where you sit, and you want the sound stage to stay symmetrically within 30 degrees to each side of the center image.

June 27th, 2017

Creating the Perfect Sound System with 3D Sound Reproduction

Over the last decades there’s been a lot of research devoted to figuring out how to record a sound event and exactly reproduce the original sound field in a different location. So far, this has not been possible to achieve for sound reproduction in a consumer environment with a reasonable number of loudspeakers. However, recently we have seen a lot of innovation in spatial sound reproduction, with applications ranging from TV and cinema, to games and VR.

May 31st, 2017

How VR/AR Can Give Teleconferencing a Much Needed Makeover

In today’s global business environment, the ability to work remotely offers a huge work life improvement and ultimately saves on travel and environmental costs. One thing still holding us back, however, is the lack of proper teleconferencing systems. Despite the various solutions available, attempting to work remotely and conduct conference calls with 5-10 people located in various places across the globe is a hugely disappointing and unproductive experience.

May 5th, 2017

Rescuing Smartphone Audio with Digital Soundstage Widening

It wasn’t too long ago that portable audio meant blurry playback on a Walkman, and portable movies were, of course, completely unthinkable. Yet today we consume portable audio in all kinds of environments and for a range of different purposes— for music, games, audiobooks, GPS systems, audio assistants like Siri… the list goes on. And it’s all delivered in the convenient package of a smartphone. For the longest time portable audio also necessitated the use of headphones, and this is still very much the case. The tiny speakers in smartphones, while significantly better than ten years ago, can only do so much. Sure, advanced signal processing has enabled improvements in output level and sound quality over the past few years, but watching a movie on a smartphone without headphones remains a less than massive audio experience. What’s the problem?

April 7th, 2017

3 Audio Trends Spotted at the 2017 Mobile World Congress

The Mobile World Congress (MWC) takes place in Barcelona every year. With over 100,000 exhibitors and visitors, it’s by far the most important event in the industry. It also offers a key to understanding the trends of the future—not only in the mobile industry but in relation to how we live our lives. Mobile goes beyond mobile phones and everything you can think of is getting connected. Including some things you might not even imagine.