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Hi Kids.

Awhile back I snagged a used nanoAVR-DL on Ebay, just to see what all the fuss is about with this Dirac stuff.

I connected it in place of my HDMI switcher, just ahead of the HDMI splitter that feeds the 2 nanoAVR-HDAs in the current Gonzo 2.0 setup. I then removed all the driver correction & room curve EQs from the HD configurations leaving the crossover settings of course.

After many hours of messing with this setup, trying lots of different mic setups & room curves, I was completely underwhelmed. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get a sound with Dirac that was anything close to what I've been enjoying for the last few years now with Full Gonzo ver. 2.0. The sound was either too thin, too off-center, or any number of things just weren't right. Finally I decided, okay this isn't for me, and so the Dirac box came out of the loop and went into the closet,

Another thing I've wanted to try is just a third nanoAVR-HD (non-Dirac) ahead of the splitter. For one thing, this would allow a single IR volume control, eliminating the dual-IR tracking issues that still crop up from time to time with Gonzo 2. Beyond that, it would allow me to store global settings like room curves in the upstream unit, and might also allow smoother transitions between different incoming sample rates.

So I pulled the Dirac box out of the closet and flashed it back to a plain-vanilla HD unit! And hey, it works just fine. No more volume tracking anxiety, lots & lots of different config possibilities. Using the Air App Duplicator app, I had no trouble adding the third instance of the plugin, and I can work with all 3 boxes at once from a single laptop - I just Alt+Tab back & forth between the app windows.

I realize nobody cares about this Gonzo stuff anymore, if they ever did - the nanoAVR isn't even a current product these days - but I'm still having fun with it, not to mention listening to some beautiful music! By god I'm gonna squeeze a few more miles out of these little boxes, heh.

- Jim