Volumio Documentation
 

Drc with Volumio

DRC with Volumio and Brutefir

Doc by b@lbuze

Update November 1st 2020 by thegarbz thanks!

With this plugin you'll be able to apply Digital Room Correction (DRC) to your system.

The plugin uses : brutefir as convolution engine to apply FIR filters.

The plugin is also able to generate FIR filters in few clicks, using the : DRC-FIR tool.

What is Digital Room Correction?

DRC is the process of applying filters to correct for undesirable accoustic effects caused by interaction between the the room and speakers. A good source of information is the : wikipedia DRC page

How do you apply DRC with this plugin?

There are several requirements to use this plugin :

For your device

  • Having a working Volumio system (obvious)
  • Having the plugin installed (Installation instructions on the : Brutefir3 git-hub)

Software on a computer

  • REW - Used to make measurements : REW.
  • (Optional) Rephase - to generate filters and tweak them "by hand" : Rephase.

Other Hardware

  • A good Microphone. Idealy, you should use a calibrated measurements Mic. You can easily find such Microphone on internet. An USB model is about 100€ This is a very important point. If you make your measure with a poor mic, you'll get poor results...

What you can do with the plugin

The plugin uses brutefir to apply FIR filters to the signal.

  • It can work with up to 2x4 channels.
  • Separate filters may be used for each channel
  • Filter type is auto selected and must be :
    • text- 32/64 bits floats line (.txt) in rephase
    • S16_LE- 16 bits LPCM mono (.wav) in rePhase
    • S24_LE- 24 bits LPCM mono (.wav) in rePhase
    • S24_LE- 32 bits LPCM mono (.wav) in rePhase
    • FLOAT_LE- 32 bits floating point (.pcm)
    • FLOAT64_LE- 64 bits mono (.wav) from Acourate
    • FLOAT64_LE- 64 bits IEEE-754 (.dbl) in rephase
  • Filter sampling rates can be up to 96kHz. Brutefir resamples and outputs at the chosen sampling rate.
  • When a filter is selected, a test for clipping is provided and attenuation is measured and applied.
  • With a specific namming of files, you can swap in realtime between two set of filters.
    • You have to create 2 set of left and right filter according to the following naming convention:
    • For left XXXX_1.YYY and second filter XXXX_2.YYY
    • For right ZZZZ_1.YYY and second filter ZZZZ_2.YYY
    • Filters must have the same attenuation, and be same format.
    • Then in the plugin,, select filter named with _1. Save, a new button appears to enable swapping!

An exclusive feature called VoBAF (Volume Based Adaptative Filtering) can apply varying filters with volume change (e.g. to mimic a "Loudness" filter). Up to 7 seven levels can be used with configurable thresholds.

The plugin can work with supplied FIR filters or generate FIR filters directly using DRC-FIR. Simply proivde an impulse response from a REW measurement, a desired target curve, and the plugin will calculate an FIR filter.

Measurement "Tools" such as frequency sweeps and pink noise can be played from within the plugin.