The DAP accepted only PCM sources (no DSD) and, at the time of the review, only up to 24/96. In its original implementation, the Dirac Audio Processor (DAP) acted as a virtual audio device, inserted into the signal chain between your music program and your DAC. I reviewed the original release of the Dirac Live Correction System (DLCS) in 2014 and installed it into both my systems, for multichannel and stereo. Not only was it more flexible and precise than those convenient built-in products it was audibly more capable of dealing with problematic room effects. For those of us who accepted the job, it was an ear-opener. As such, its use was limited to the more intrepid and technical audio consumers. When it first appeared, Dirac Live was a software product that the user could buy, download, and install into a Windows or Mac computer used for music playback (footnote 1). There's a place in the two-channel world for room-correction DSP. And yet, these days, most two-channel audiophiles spend at least some of their time listening to digital, whether it's from a streaming service, locally stored downloaded or ripped files, or old-fashioned shiny silverdiscs.

Stereo listeners are much more likely to integrate analog sourcesturntables, reel-to-reel tape, and old-fashioned radio tunersinto their systems and to resist converting that pure analog signal to digital so that it can be processed and room-corrected.

Small, standmount speakers often benefit from uncorrected room modes to extend their range. In the two-channel world, things have proceeded much more slowly. Most work well, providing precise level balance, compensating for unequal pathlength differences, and correcting in-room frequency response for all the speakers. Today, some arrive installed in AVRs and preamp-processors others come as standalone devices or computer software. Audyssey was the first such utility to gain wide acceptance. Help quickly came in the form of setup utilities that required no knowledge of acousticsonly a willingness to position a microphone for a series of measurements and let the system do the rest. Its fans were expected to install several loudspeakers in a full-range setup that included at least one speakerthe subwoofer(s)that functioned exclusively in the problematic bass region. Adoption of DSP-based speaker-and-room correction in home theatera parallel universe to audiophiliais almost universal.

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