- Ampli home cinema dirac live install#
- Ampli home cinema dirac live password#
- Ampli home cinema dirac live plus#
- Ampli home cinema dirac live professional#
There are also some fairly large fans at the rear of the Astral 16. There are two USB ports (one for connecting a USB microphone and the other for service), an Ethernet port for the web-based UI (there's no built-in Wi-Fi), an IR input/output, and four 12V triggers. There are also three optical and three coaxial digital inputs, along with eight analogue phono connectors that can be assigned as four stereo inputs or one 7.1-channel input. These are fairly straightforward with the emphasis on seven HDMI inputs and two mirrored outputs, all of which support 4K/60p, HDR, HDCP 2.2, and, in the case of the first HDMI output, ARC as well.
Ampli home cinema dirac live professional#
The Astral 16 offers the kind of flexible configuration only seen on very high-end processors, and once fully set up by a professional installer it’s best to avoid any unwanted fiddling.īefore I go through the installation and calibration of the Astral 16, I’ll run through all the connections at the rear.
Ampli home cinema dirac live password#
The resulting screen gives you a choice of remote or setup, with the latter password protected – the reason for which is obvious once you access it. You simply plug the Astral 16 into your router, get its network address from the front display, type that into your browser and you’re good to go.
Ampli home cinema dirac live plus#
On the plus side, the web-based user interface is well designed and highly effective. Lacking a control system or an iPad, I was forced to use my laptop – which was a pain when all I wanted to do was change the volume without getting out my seat. For those without smart home integration there’s also an iPad remote app. The logic is simple: the Astral 16 is designed for custom installers who will use some form of control system (it’s compatible with automation brands including Control4 and Crestron), making a remote redundant. That’s because despite costing as much as a family car, Focal has decided not supply it with a remote control. The volume dial is very granular in terms of adjustments, but while the three control buttons (Edit, Enter and Exit) allow for minimal adjustments, the Astral 16 can only be set up and fully controlled using a web-based interface.
The design has a simple elegance, with a large (4.3in) central TFT display that provides general information, three control buttons, a sizable volume dial, and a power switch.
After all, the chances are it’ll be sitting in an equipment room (and comes with rack ears). As such, the Astral 16 has an industrial design often associated with dedicated home cinema builds, where the emphasis is on robust construction rather than looks.
Ampli home cinema dirac live install#
All this multichannel potential can be corralled using Dirac Live, but if you prefer a more hands-on approach there are filters, EQ curves and bass crossovers galore.Īt £20,000, this is clearly a high-end product aimed squarely at the custom install market. The Astral 16 has the processing power to utilise all those channels, delivering a hat-trick of immersive audio formats: Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and Auro-3D. The remaining four channels use balanced XLR outputs, and all channels are fully configurable from 2.0 to 9.1.6 and just about everything in between, including bi-amping speakers and any number of subwoofers. The result is a 16-channel AV processor that includes 12 channels of Class D Pascal Audio amplification, able to deliver, it's claimed, 200W simultaneously to each channel.
However, this is no solo effort thanks to the involvement of Immersive Audio Technologies, a company with a long home cinema history via its association with Storm Audio and Auro Technologies.
Steve Withers dabbles in astral sound projection with Focal’s 16-channel home cinema processor and amplifierįocal is known as a speaker manufacturer, which makes its Astral 16 AV processor/amp something of a new direction.