Klipsch has announced its new Flexus Core 300 soundbar, which it claims is the industry’s first to utilize Dirac’s Live Room correction technology to optimize its sound specifically for the room where it’s installed and where listeners are sitting. Dirac Live is typically only featured in amplifiers and receivers that are part of a more complex — and more expensive — home theater setup.
The $999 Flexus Core 300 will be “available this winter,” according to What Hi-Fi? and features eight side-firing, front-firing, and up-firing 2.25-inch speakers, plus four 4-inch subwoofers. Connectivity includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ethernet, 8K passthrough HDMI, HDMI eARC, USB-C, and a digital audio port. Switching inputs and adjusting settings like EQ is handled through Klipsch’s Connect Plus mobile app available for iOS and Android.
Altering the sound output to compensate for the layout, size, and shape of a room isn’t a new feature for soundbars, but its execution varies. Samsung’s SpaceFit Sound relies on a microphone located on the soundbar itself to determine how sound is affected as it bounces around a room, while LG’s AI Room Calibration uses a mobile app and the built-in microphone on a smartphone to perform tests and determine what sound corrections need to be applied.
The Dirac Live Room Correction technology is more comprehensive, relying on a Windows or macOS app and a microphone attached to a laptop to take sound measurements from several different locations in a room where listeners will sit. Dirac Live uses all of those measurements to calibrate the soundbar to create a “coherent and natural sound environment” that “enhances the clarity of dialogue in movies and the purity of vocals in music.”
Out of the box, the Klipsch Flexus Core 300 comes with the “Limited Bandwidth” license for the Dirac Live software, which only corrects frequencies up to 500Hz. Dirac also plans to eventually make a “Full Bandwidth” license available for the soundbar, which corrects frequencies it says extend across the entire range of human hearing — up to 20kHz — for an additional fee.