Nice. I will try the upsampling tonight. I will talk about here after the testing.
@ DGrigorescu Very interesting the upsampling. I don’t know why I missed that. With your config eveything became detailed. I mean, everything in the right place, space between the instruments and voices. Very interesting.
The cons: the sound seems to be a little brighter than my taste, but with Ozone I can fix that a little and try to get better.
But thanks for the tip. I will improve here and do more tests. Really interesting.
Ah… SoX it’s harder to get the same as r8brain, but a lot of things to change there. Maybe one day.
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Using Toneboosters EQ V4. No complaints so far.
Edit: 29,- EUR for perpetual license.
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I use CanOpener & MidSide from Goodhertz. Tried Ozone yesterday but my CPU is too old and slow for such thing. So I stay with this config for the moment, at least until I buy a new machine. But hey! - sounds good now too.
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I use the Hang Loose Convolver by Mitch Barnett.
Works perfect with Audirvana for DSP with Acourate.
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Very interesting this topic. Someone (especially a beginner like me) can learn useful things. I’m glad to see many people using VST, it’s a big plus for A imo.
Interesting how things go full circle.
Back in the day [when people enjoyed music] we had the Loudness button, plus bass and treble controls. Then as folks made more money and audio became more popular the Audiophile was born…[purity was his calling] out with the loudness button, no eq, no bass or treble controls, Purity of signal was the Audiophile mantra, now the loudness button, along with bass and treble in a fancy new modern package is back. Eq it to your own personal tastes, upsample it, resample it, MQA it…your not IT until you massage that signal.
Hey have fun is what I say, what every it takes to enjoy the music.
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I’ve always been dead set against dsp (see clear’s post above) but I recently started using Blue Cat’s Triple EQ, a free plugin just to sort of get my feet wet. I have some asymmetrical hearing loss so I’m using it to boost high frequency on the left channel. I was in an explosion but that’s another story. Up until now I’ve been using LPads to raise tweeter volume on the left channel and while that is effective it’s also a little broad. I get some image smearing to the left for frequencies that are below where I have issues. The plugin solves that issue quite nicely but I still wonder if I’ve got the imaging right. Which leaves me at the “if it sounds good it’s fine” point I guess. At any rate I’m enjoying learning about plugins and how to use them and they’re helping me to enjoy music more. I’ll most likely be trying a premium plugin or two based on recommendations in this thread.
Thanks for posting!
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When the music plays and you go like this-----> 
, then its all good!
Enjoy
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Hey Jacob, I’m very intrigued and interested in using Dirac, so i could really use some advice ,as im not so sure how to install and use it on my windows 11 pc,
I would agree with all of this post.
-Speaker position,
-Listening position,
-and Room treatment,
…should in my view & experience, be considered and dealt with first, digital correction EQ in my view should be a last resort, especially in the context of the ‘perfect’ sound many of us here are seeking.
Just having an active/un-bypassed VST EQ plug inserted can change the sound even if the EQ filter is flat.
There is huge amounts of information online about this but mainly connected to setting up a studios/control rooms & mastering studios, not so much about hi-fi listening rooms.
Many analogue powered professional studio monitors have built in EQ controls working only in the analogue domain for the purpose of room correction.
It is well researched and documented how Digital filters can effect the sound negatively, i my view they are too much of a compromise, better try other solutions first.
Also worth noting is the non-fixed quality of our hearing and the ability of the ears & ear/brain connection to “adjust” to a listening situation over an ‘adjustment period’, leading to an altered (and perhaps a flatter more pleasing balance) perceived sound.
Being a live sound engineer for over 30 years i have observed this many times in a live concert situation. after maybe 15-20 mins the brain & ear can start to “normalise” and reduce the level of the louder areas of the frequency spectrum and also in my perception, can start to filter out and reduce venue/room noise. Not forgetting our own ears & ear/brain connections are all unique.
This is called “ear fatigue” due to exposure to high SPL’s for too long of a period of time…
All solutions to massage a sound to suit a subjective interpretation, will influence the contextual harmonics, the contextual dynamics and the contextual spatiality of the playback audio signal in any given playback system scenario… The choice of playback components and transducers, will influence the interpretation of the playback signal in the final audition… The application of EQ is a subjective decision and there is no single rule that covers a rationale to EQ or not to EQ… recording production mixing and mastering is an art form and not even the best of the best hit the mark every-time… Ask Bob Ludwig.… However, Intelligent use of EQ to compensate for hearing deficiencies and intelligent application of DSP used to manage speaker cross-talk, transducer alignment and elimination/mitigation of detrimental room influences, etc, etc, is a noble cause… Ask Floyd Toole or Sean Olive 
… The only things perfect, are the bits stored in the storage medium… after these are read from the storage medium and are in transmission, it is all subjective and the code is subject to a myriad of potential influences on the path to producing the sound-waves we hear and interpret with our hearing neurology and cognitive biases.
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I was actually talking about something else, i know what ear fatigue is. The physical ear, not the brain interpretation of, reduces it’s sensitivity to try protect it’s self from damage.
There is no neurological attenuation or cognitive attenuation of Sound Pressure.… The Ear is an electro-mechanical sensor/instrument… Ear fatigue is a neurophysiological warning-sign of physical damage to come or has been done… You are describing a neurophysiological condition that has progressed to a level of ‘Sensorial hearing loss’
I use the Hang Loose Convolver by Mitch Barnett for Room Correction via FIR filters made with REW and a few other tools… This creates a baseline room response along the lines of a Bruel and Kjaer room curve. To that I add a little air and sparkle to taste with an old style EQ like the Manly Massive Passive or the GML 8200 plug-in…
Oh, and I have bass and wide-band absorber room treatments… This is really the first place to start with before any room correction/EQ…
And I don’t upsample as my Chord DAC does a nice job of that itself…
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Sounds delightful… 
Note: My close friend and audiophile has M-Scaler + DAVE (modded LPS) and he finds using PGGB to upsample to 705.6 or 768kHz blows away M-Scaler…
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You can bypass the first (WTA1) filter in the Chord DACs by feeding it 705.6 or 768kHz using any number of upsampling methods… I have used PGGB, HQPlayer and my own modified SoX to mess with upsampling… It is really about the final filtering/noise shaping and analogue out stage that imparts the “sound”… As with EQ, the final filtering/noise shaping and analogue out is really about personal taste… For instance I feed all that is digital into a very analogue tube preamp…
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Hello Agoldnear,
With respect, you write often as if your opinion or view is fact. The physical ear can adjust to protect it’s self from damage:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Sound/protect.html
I have know this for many years.
Paul
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Thanks… I’ve seen this reference… a very good treatise…
However, it is a relatively slow action and cannot protect the ear from sudden loud sounds like a gunshot. The process is less effective in older ears.
The above is the premise for my response… What is being described in the information you linked is certainly a neurophysiological response to loud transient and loud sustained SPL … It is like the autonomic response of the iris of the eye responding to bright light… more information would be required to correlate the dynamic response of this protective mechanism to specific frequency intensities.
Thanks again for pointing me to the information…