An important factor in enjoying quality sound for music and movies at home is how your room reacts. Wait, “room reacts”? What does that mean?
A little back story…sound (which is simply air) ricochets in all directions, bouncing off walls, ceilings, and floors.
Or think of it this way: Imagine being in a “ball pit” where kids bounce around and colorful balls fly everywhere in opposite directions. Realistically, we’re in that ball pit every day, but the balls are miniscule vibrations of air. Our ears capture the bouncing vibrations, and our brains perceive it as sound!
Listening Through Muddy Windows
Remember what it’s like in a gymnasium? Clap your hands and hear the echoes reverberate. That effect is created by the cavernous space, where sound waves have nowhere to go. So when you clap, the sound waves created bounce around off walls and ceiling and benches and people and back to you…and by the time the original sound reaches your ears, it’s the audible equivalent of looking through a mud-stained window. It’s blurry. These auditory reflections blur the original sound.
While most people aren’t using their AVR in a gymnasium, the same concept applies to any room. Typical living rooms and listening spaces are rectangular and have all sorts of obstacles (like furniture) that sound may bounce off, creating unintended reverberations and muddy audio. Who wants to listen through a “muddy window”? Not us at Onkyo…
Introducing Dirac Live Room Correction
In response to this need...Onkyo has partnered with Dirac, a global audio technology company from Uppsala, Sweden. Dirac Live room correction technology, which is built into many Onkyo AV Receivers, measures your room, and through a series of precise, sound-correcting algorithms, removes the effects of the room from the original audio. The result is clear sound, just the way filmmakers and musicians intended when they created the media you love to consume.
In the next blog, we’ll explore how to set this feature up in your home. Until then, happy listening!
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