# Mini DSP Dirac live tuning for horns?



## 3M* (Nov 2, 2020)

I really want to go down the route of going with an active two-way using an eight or ten inch high efficient mid in the doors paired up with some Steven's audio Neo comp full size horns. At this time, and probably will always be... I am a terrible tuner. I found out about dirac live a couple months ago and I've heard a lot of good things about it. my biggest question is, will this do a proper tuning for horns? I know they're vastly different than standard tweeters and there has to be cuts made to get a proper tuning for compression drivers.


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

A large portion of any tuning process is correct xo point selection and then level setting. This is especially so when dealing with efficiency mismatched that often occur between hlcd and midrange drivers.

Alot can be done with just getting the levels right and playing w xo points to minimize peaks in response.

Many years ago at Spring Break Nationals my digital eq failed and Eric was able to get the car sounding pretty darn good w just Xo and levels. Enough to trophy in a tough Pro class


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## 3M* (Nov 2, 2020)

Mic10is said:


> A large portion of any tuning process is correct xo point selection and then level setting. This is especially so when dealing with efficiency mismatched that often occur between hlcd and midrange drivers.
> 
> Alot can be done with just getting the levels right and playing w xo points to minimize peaks in response.
> 
> Many years ago at Spring Break Nationals my digital eq failed and Eric was able to get the car sounding pretty darn good w just Xo and levels. Enough to trophy in a tough Pro class


So pretty much the mini DSP would be completely useless for horns I gather?


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

Dirac is like APL. when people get it to work right it offers superb midrange transparency and the stage seems to completely disappear, but its a pretty big learning curve for most people and even people I know who have been using it since it came out, still struggle to get a repeatable results even following the same basic process.

once level setting is done correctly, Hlcd do not need any more EQ to sound good than conventional drivers. It is a huge misconception bordering on myth that horns need a ton of eq to sound good. this is mostly due to the fact that people did not and do not understand the importance of level setting, especially when one speaker is 110db efficient and they are trying to mate it with one that is barely 90db. The end result was people having to make massive EQ cuts just to make the spectrum level, when this could have been done using gains at the amp and dsp 1st, prior to moving a single eq band.


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## 3M* (Nov 2, 2020)

Mic10is said:


> Dirac is like APL. when people get it to work right it offers superb midrange transparency and the stage seems to completely disappear, but its a pretty big learning curve for most people and even people I know who have been using it since it came out, still struggle to get a repeatable results even following the same basic process.
> 
> once level setting is done correctly, Hlcd do not need any more EQ to sound good than conventional drivers. It is a huge misconception bordering on myth that horns need a ton of eq to sound good. this is mostly due to the fact that people did not and do not understand the importance of level setting, especially when one speaker is 110db efficient and they are trying to mate it with one that is barely 90db. The end result was people having to make massive EQ cuts just to make the spectrum level, when this could have been done using gains at the amp and dsp 1st, prior to moving a single eq band.


Sounds to me like I should just go ahead and get the arc audio DSP. With dirac live...can you go ahead and set the crossover points or just do it all on its own?


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

Sorry I have no direct experience w dirac, but several friends use it and the learning curve to have success is more than I want to get into.
I once went down the path of trying to "outsmart" a dsp to get it to do what I wanted to do with the Ms8...and I literally became so dumb at tuning that it took me a month to remember how to do a basic tune.
Literally spent months turning head this way, cover this, move here, turn gains up, turn gains down, cover one ear, cover other. Turn to 55 degrees but 45degrees. ...
Final straw was me actually straddling my center console w basically my arm rest half way up my ass trying to get the Ms8 to provide good width...
Dumped that thing. Went back to my Alpine and as soon as I could remember how to tune again. I ended up winning Meca Finals...🤷‍♂️


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

I have used Dirac with horns and it’s a godam champion hands down. 

Set the crossover point on horns to midbass and to sub , and let it take over and do the rest
Use Dirac how it was intended , it does nothing different for horns than any other speaker. It simply works excellent.

And the beautiful thing is it dosent over gain horns like most novice horn users like to do because they don’t distort and get super loud,
It simply does it right from the get go and nothing crazy that someone couldn’t do on there own with plain dsp except a few time domain things..

It works great


Like mic said , for goodness sakes do a good gain structure first and don’t be a dope


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## 3M* (Nov 2, 2020)

oabeieo said:


> I have used Dirac with horns and it’s a godam champion hands down.
> 
> Set the crossover point on horns to midbass and to sub , and let it take over and do the rest
> Use Dirac how it was intended , it does nothing different for horns than any other speaker. It simply works excellent.
> ...



This sounds awesome. what mids do you run with your horns if you don't mind me asking? What type of substage do you use?


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

Horns don’t need any more eq than any other speaker that


3M* said:


> This sounds awesome. what mids do you run with your horns if you don't mind me asking? What type of substage do you use?


Stevens! Although my van is my only horn car right now. And it has beyma cds and Stevens mb with veritas horns , normally my own cars primarily use Stevens drivers.... there good and work excellent for the application. 
Otherwise a set of beyma 8G40s from 2017 are hot also... I also really like the 6nd430s I have a set that I’ve bridged 700w 4ch amps on a set and they take it to 70hz and have a 300hz punch like no other. But overall the Stevens mb line will do whatever you want. I have a set of MB8s and 3 sets of mb6s that get down...

Right now my car uses Stevens SA components and I’m not using horns (first car of my own in over 25yrs to not have horns) but I’m going back when my TAD drivers are finished


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## 3M* (Nov 2, 2020)

oabeieo said:


> Horns don’t need any more eq than any other speaker that
> 
> 
> Stevens! Although my van is my only horn car right now. And it has beyma cds and Stevens mb with veritas horns , normally my own cars primarily use Stevens drivers.... there good and work excellent for the application.
> ...


I have 8g40 mids pair it up with hertz mille tweeters. We had to turn the gain down on the mids to match with less efficient tweeters. I thought about going with a bigger mid to pair up with horns with my future build or possibly adding another 8g40. I want good solid kick drum coming from the front and I'm almost pretty certain I'm going to go with the infinite baffle


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

Use the g40s
You won’t be disappointed.... there to die for with horns full-size horns crossed at 800-1200

Minis or a cross closer to1.6 the g40works just fine but the 1.6k response starts beam a tad bit. With full size one of the if not the best driver for the task

I feel you don’t like it , than either 1 your crazy or 2 have an install/tuning problem or multiple problems compounded. It’s an excellent choice and plays to 80....

If you want to just try something new , than go for it , that 8g40 is very hard to beat

The jbl 2118h is very good midrange , not a very good midbass....unless in a large sealed box like .7 it won’t play below 250-300 very much at full power , at modest power it can play to 150hz but than it’s just no fun , 

I used the 2118h for awhile and loved it , although I was using a 4way system with carefully managed linear phase crossovers 
So it worked , otherwise I would always always keep a horn system a 3way 

Sub mid horn


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## CrimsonCountry (Mar 11, 2012)

oabeieo said:


> Use the g40s
> You won’t be disappointed.... there to die for with horns full-size horns crossed at 800-1200
> 
> Minis or a cross closer to1.6 the g40works just fine but the 1.6k response starts beam a tad bit. With full size one of the if not the best driver for the task
> ...


Listen to this man! He's been around the block a few times with all these setups. Lol.

I'm actually running the 2118s right now with my Mini horns and can verify they sound GREAT up higher. BUT, are pretty anemic in the midbass area. I've had to "help out" the JBLs by crossing my sub up higher around 100hz as well.

I've been wanting to step up to the 8G40s or MB8s for a while now but have yet to pull the trigger. Maybe I'll do it soon and discover what I've gotten used to missing out on.


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## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

Mic10is said:


> Sorry I have no direct experience w dirac, but several friends use it and the learning curve to have success is more than I want to get into.
> I once went down the path of trying to "outsmart" a dsp to get it to do what I wanted to do with the Ms8...and I literally became so dumb at tuning that it took me a month to remember how to do a basic tune.
> Literally spent months turning head this way, cover this, move here, turn gains up, turn gains down, cover one ear, cover other. Turn to 55 degrees but 45degrees. ...
> Final straw was me actually straddling my center console w basically my arm rest half way up my ass trying to get the Ms8 to provide good width...
> Dumped that thing. Went back to my Alpine and as soon as I could remember how to tune again. I ended up winning Meca Finals...


I felt that way just watching the forums explode with people trying and get the ms8 to sound right. Its a **** device. Thru n thru.

But i really wish you would consider Dirac. Erinh has a great review on it. This isn't another gimmick auto tune device. It honest to god works the way its meant too. There's a reason no one is complaining or selling it. 

As for difficulties setting it up.

Open rew. 
Do full range signal sweeps on each driver individually. 
Set up levels.
Identify crossovers. Use the parametric eq to bring down any peaks. Then use the rest to smooth out the crossover region. 

Dirac does its algorithm best when all drivers are playing at the same time. So getting their x/o to play well together before doing the Dirac sweeps works really well.

Then do Dirac sweeps. Modify your curve or upload your own with unlimited power to change every frequency.(no seriously)

And hit done.

Its not hard and it just. Works. 

I got trophies to prove it.





Sent from my XT1710-02 using Tapatalk


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

I've listened to quite a few people using dirac as well as judged. While tonally many sound good there is always something off as well as some technical errors.
And I actually know several very successful competitors who are dumping dirac after using it successfully bc if it's instability and other issues.

If you enjoy it, great! Use it. 
But at this time I'll stick to my regular old Dsp which work just as well for my intended purposes .

You also may want to consider, why is it that the top cars don't use dirac or any sort of device yet they are consistently in the top?
Judged purely on sound, no install it isn't dirac or apl cars that come out on top.


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

Jscoyne2 said:


> I felt that way just watching the forums explode with people trying and get the ms8 to sound right. Its a **** device. Thru n thru.
> 
> But i really wish you would consider Dirac. Erinh has a great review on it. This isn't another gimmick auto tune device. It honest to god works the way its meant too. There's a reason no one is complaining or selling it.
> 
> ...


Your a ****n stud man..... perfectly said , impulse correction is a must have in a car.
trying to eq left and right seperate any other way with only minimum phase eq is simply making a de-correlation filter and imaging goes to **** quickly.

when I tune cars at work I won’t do any seperate left rights on anything except make a big peak on a tweeter and that’s about it. It also forces you to only make cuts to sound right.... the dips are unusually non minimum phase


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

Mic10is said:


> I've listened to quite a few people using dirac as well as judged. While tonally many sound good there is always something off as well as some technical errors.
> And I actually know several very successful competitors who are dumping dirac after using it successfully bc if it's instability and other issues.
> 
> If you enjoy it, great! Use it.
> ...


I can think of way more technical errors caused by not using Dirac than using Dirac . 
so yes you have a point....

with everything there compromises, and some degree of error. Especially in a car, even the best cars have anomalies. Period

The thing is with standard dsp I can name those errors. Nobody can really say for sure with Dirac what those errors are. Tjat the thing. There a lot of getting used to it’s sound. It’s easy to get used to but hard to pick apart... 

there is some things about the allpass that is creates that sometimes I miss about having both sides playing exactly the same. Because that what I’ve always known as good sounding and correct, and truth bolth sound good. But when all things said amd done , Dirac produces a more correct soundstage, placement is better, and stage depth is superb. It definitely brings out bad recordings, when the recording engineer didn’t make the vocal so center and a little diffuse..... where a standard dsp doesn’t show that as much. But it’s still more correct and faithful to what time and frequency is in the recordings two ch.

I’ve gone back and forth about 6x from Dirac to non Dirac in past 4years or so.... and I always keep ending back up with a 2ch Dirac to ice that cake! 🤓🥳🥳😌


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

oabeieo said:


> I can think of way more technical errors caused by not using Dirac than using Dirac .
> so yes you have a point....
> 
> with everything there compromises, and some degree of error. Especially in a car, even the best cars have anomalies. Period
> ...


That's the big thing as you mentioned. It's easy to identify what's going on with a conventional dsp. With any auto tuning device when something is off you have no idea what happened,why it's happening and therefore cannot come up with a solution to mitigate the problem .

I like the Ms8 and what it could do but honestly got dumber trying to outsmart what it was doing to get the results I wanted.

I tried APL for several months and just the going back as forth with other users with try this, try that, what if we tuned flat first then did this and did that.. exhausting

I have enough very close friends running dirac who are happy with it. Cool. 
But listening to them talk about everything they need to do to get to a point is also exhausting.
I'm always interested when people can push the boundaries of what people.can do in cars so if dirac gets to a point where it's consistent, reliable and repeatable then il consider making the investment. But it isn't to that point yet.

Noone needs to try and sell me on the benefits. I've heard enough to know what it can doz talked with people who have a much greater understanding of the process and what it's doing than I know and at this time I'm still not interested enough to buy


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## Jscoyne2 (Oct 29, 2014)

Mic10is said:


> That's the big thing as you mentioned. It's easy to identify what's going on with a conventional dsp. With any auto tuning device when something is off you have no idea what happened,why it's happening and therefore cannot come up with a solution to mitigate the problem .
> 
> I like the Ms8 and what it could do but honestly got dumber trying to outsmart what it was doing to get the results I wanted.
> 
> ...


I just wanna preface this by saying i am absolutely not a Meca extreme world champion by any stretch. However in my own experience, i can say that most the SQ cars i have heard are absolutely atrocious. No stage. **** tonality. Worst than stock in most cases, just with less distortion and louder. And i'm talking rather large SQ events. Sadly as well, most the people i have met at SQ events really had no idea what they were doing. I try to talk to them about an all pass filter or diffraction or even basic acoustic vs electrical crossovers and they just look dumbfounded or try to BS their way through the conversation. This happens a lot with the older crowd who still have 90s tuning in mind even though they have all $10,000 Mcintosh amps and a Helix dsp.

I feel like maybe i'm being duped and people refuse to show off their tunes when i ask for a demo and they just tell me its their competition tune when its just a "all eq off" tune.

I hate to say this but i kinda just ignore most people's advice and thoughts when it comes to car audio because most are going off hearsay and what they heard from a forum guy who heard from another forum guy who heard from who knows what. Everyone thinks there is some magic they gotta figure out when its just physics. Read, educate yourself, apply it. Most the stuff i have learned on this forum has been through linked white papers and a lot of old Andy Weymeyer posts.

When Dirac first came available for the mobile audio crowd to play with. It was in the 2x4 box and was prohibitively expensive for most of us running 6-8 speakers. So the c-dsp 8x12 dirac was really exactly what everyone wanted(especially at its price point vs helix) and that is where i believe everyone started talking about Dirac. The Dirac thread was a lot of people talking about what if this, and what if we try that. Mostly because the Minidsp manual wasn't done yet and we weren't sure how to use the damn thing. The big issues were Dirac per channel vs Dirac per side (L and R), and pre-tune or no pretune. That kinda thing.

But the manual came out. Oabeieo did in a lot of work explaining his experimentation with Dirac and found out the best way to really implement the technology for what we were aiming for in the mobile audio world. ErinH did his review and put in his $.02 about using the Dirac as a 2 channel dsp with a pretune. Those 2 things gave the DSP and everyone paying attention to it a lot of trust in it.

Ultimately i think we have figured out how to use it correctly. Thinking about it now, i really don't see Dirac as an auto tune device. More of a device that has a lot larger margin of error to get a good tune. You can be dumb and set your crossovers like **** and do a ****ty pretune or no pretune at all and Dirac will still give you a pretty decent stage and tonality. It corrects the human error with some level of accuracy versus something like a tradition Parametric where if you **** up. You'll know instantly. I don't see that as a bad thing. The better you are at overall tuning. The better your Dirac tune will be. It's as simple as that.

As for APL. I am SO glad i didn't buy into that. Its cool tech but the UI was so immensely barren and hard to use that it was an uphill battle from the start. Reading the APL thread was the same as the MS8 thread. Quality entertainment.


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## thehatedguy (May 4, 2007)

Dirac huh?


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

Mic10is said:


> That's the big thing as you mentioned. It's easy to identify what's going on with a conventional dsp. With any auto tuning device when something is off you have no idea what happened,why it's happening and therefore cannot come up with a solution to mitigate the problem .
> 
> I like the Ms8 and what it could do but honestly got dumber trying to outsmart what it was doing to get the results I wanted.
> 
> ...


Okay Mic, 
I like where your head is at! 
now your making sense to me, sorry about that. Man yes I whole heartedly agree. Pushing the envelope... I love it. And yes, it takes some cutting edge thinking to get there, but we both know the brunt of good car audio was discovered by guys like Eric and dare I say Richard and David at A2K, but they also helped pioneer and all the CA&E articles and all the cars , like my 96 Jetta that had my first set of full size horns , a pair of converted Alexis MEQ-230s , anyway my point being
What happened to proper placement and equal path lengths.... that has seemed to be completely put on the back burner these days with an expectation that DSP can solve this issue and it simply can not.... acoustic center and origin..... okay I’m preaching to the choir..

So what beats Dirac....... so Dirac I will say , does have some tuning things like exactly that you mentioned, you have set the gains the way it likes to tune , and do all this setup the way it likes to tune and yes you can yield a excellent tune... but what’s better .... well ... A purely linear phase system before the room correction. And that’s why I just sold my CDSP 8x12dL.... (lol yeah listen to me bark about Dirac and I just sold mine for something else.....okay I’m not a complete hypocrite lol) 

what I really like about using the mini DSP with the 2x4hd is I can run 3 of them , have 3 SHARC processors running. And building a linear phase crossover is sinch, than a pass of Dirac over top of it.

linear phase crossovers really make getting driver alignment done super easy and there’s if any fighting between drivers. For example, my dash and my kicks were 180deg out at267hz q5.2 so I had to cross at 267 and invert the kicksso they would be in phase , than Make Dirac repair the rest of the kicks in band stuff that was now flipped in it’s all pass.... it worked.... and sounded good, with linear crossover the dash and kicks are not out of phase. The dash just has a dip at 265 and I use it as part of the slope, so I engage a 12db filter and get a 36db filter , with mild driver eq at the very bottom of the stop band to pull down 200. I net a smooth 48dbacoustic filter and make it linear phase and my kicks disappear. The kicks sound like there coming from the dash speakers and way far back.
I truly believe most of the magic is getting a linear phase crosssover....

I still use my upstream ddrc22d and run Dirac over top of everything to do my main eq and room correction.... it sounds excellent.
The sub is simply to die for how it blends with the front mid bass.... without linear phase crossovers only part of the sub would blend super good with the fronts.... now all the sub blends extremely well with the fronts.

Dirac does do a good job at blending the sub and the fronts, using linear phase crossovers and Dirac is a different sound and is better. It’s audible. If two speaks are playing the oppose direction in the time domain at crossover, and you move the sum of both drivers in the time domain, you can get a pleasant sound that is more correct... but if those two drivers didn’t have that opposite direction time curves at all , the sum would already be the same so all you have to do is correct it’s shape

So I agree ...... once again your logic is sound and my goodness you would make a good Dirac tuner ....


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

So ..... Dirac and horns .... 

Let’s just hit on this for a second....

and I’ve been thinking about this all week since someone gave me a PM.

let’s just be clear , Dirac does an excellent job at getting the response right with midbass and the timing right between left and right... and makes a good one seat tune ....

Here’s the caviat.
Horns were designed to work properly for both seats. Having a system with reduced path lengths on all the drivers and having the horns mounted properly and the midbass put in an ideal location is the whole idea behind the controlled dispersion for both sides of the car. No amount of Dirac or any DSP can even come close to how good a car will sound with proper placement and minimized path length difference’s.

so I want it to be known that I am in no way saying Dirac will be able to tune your way to an award winning car for both-seats and that horns will always work much better if your willing to go to the extent of doing all the laborious tasks of getting the install done the way the manufacturer suggests. I’ve done it on several cars and there is nothing (and I mean nothing) like the sound quality and the coolness of having excellent top tier imaging in both front seats.... people usually think there’s some trickery or a center speaker hidden and just can’t believe how good the imaging is on both sides of the car, I once had a guy insist that I hold my hand up and stand in front of car and make sure I wasn’t doing something when he moved to other side of car for a listen. Horns will do that for you. And when it comes to HF it’s kinda the only way to do it (unless you install that dreaded center speaker). And the bragging rights (omg) your the boss now! Nobody can touch your car when both sides have excellent imaging and excellent staging and response


so I can’t see how a horn manufacturer like Eric could possibly endorse or give a nod to any product that diminishes or completely removes the coolest part of the speakers design.

OTOH switch gears , if you just want horns for how awesome they sound and the dynamics and all the other fun things that horns do , Dirac will tune them just fine for one seat and may even patch up some install issues and make it pleasing the ear. If you have one of those cars that you insist on using far less than optimal locations, and only care about one seat.. Dirac does a very nice job.

so definitely something to think about..... how do you want to set up your horn car? What kind of path lengths do you have and what can be done about it? Are you willing to do just a little custom work if needed and get the system to really perform?

anyway.... so we’re all clear


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