I recently picked up a Umik-1, REW and have disappeared down the wormhole of room correction. I will soon be adding a pair of Rythmik subs to my LR bookshelf speakers so I suppose now is as good a time as any to pick up a DSP but I’m struggling with finding options that will work for my use-case and was hoping to get some recommendations.
Current setup is very simple (like me). Chromecast Audio to Rotel A12 via Toslink. The Rotel has Signal Sense which brings it out of standby mode as soon as it gets a digital signal (does not work with analog signals). My wife loves this since just clicking on LR Speakers in Spotify or asking Google Assistant to play something wakes the whole system up. No fiddling with remotes or anything like that. The subs will supposedly power on automatically with analog-in but I know if things start getting a lot more complicated, she is going to quit supporting the upgrades and this hobby will be banished to the dark basement man-cave.
What I’m looking for is a DSP solution that can handle room eq from REW, send analog signals to the subs and digital to the amp (to wake it up). Alternatively, the entire DSP’d signal could be sent to the amp via digital and the Rotel preamp outs forward the signal to the subs.
If I understand how all this all works (a big IF), the former would allow me to experiment with crossover functions to perhaps limit sending the bookshelf speakers anything below 50-55hz but would use the DSP DAC for the subs. The Rotel has a Wolfson DAC and I really have no idea how that stacks up against the DACs in these DSP units so I don’t know if one option is preferable for audio quality.
Lastly price, even with the subs, I only have about $3k in this system so spending more than $500 or so starts to feel misdirected. I also want to upgrade the bookshelves from B&W to Revel soon as well.
The miniDSP 4x10HD seems to check all the boxes but I’m having a difficult time understanding if this will work and some online reviews seem to indicate that its DSP filters don’t get applied to the digital outs? Worst case scenario is rolling my own with Raspberry Pi/HifiBerry DAC+DSP but I might never crawl out of that wormhole.
Thanks.
Current setup is very simple (like me). Chromecast Audio to Rotel A12 via Toslink. The Rotel has Signal Sense which brings it out of standby mode as soon as it gets a digital signal (does not work with analog signals). My wife loves this since just clicking on LR Speakers in Spotify or asking Google Assistant to play something wakes the whole system up. No fiddling with remotes or anything like that. The subs will supposedly power on automatically with analog-in but I know if things start getting a lot more complicated, she is going to quit supporting the upgrades and this hobby will be banished to the dark basement man-cave.
What I’m looking for is a DSP solution that can handle room eq from REW, send analog signals to the subs and digital to the amp (to wake it up). Alternatively, the entire DSP’d signal could be sent to the amp via digital and the Rotel preamp outs forward the signal to the subs.
If I understand how all this all works (a big IF), the former would allow me to experiment with crossover functions to perhaps limit sending the bookshelf speakers anything below 50-55hz but would use the DSP DAC for the subs. The Rotel has a Wolfson DAC and I really have no idea how that stacks up against the DACs in these DSP units so I don’t know if one option is preferable for audio quality.
Lastly price, even with the subs, I only have about $3k in this system so spending more than $500 or so starts to feel misdirected. I also want to upgrade the bookshelves from B&W to Revel soon as well.
The miniDSP 4x10HD seems to check all the boxes but I’m having a difficult time understanding if this will work and some online reviews seem to indicate that its DSP filters don’t get applied to the digital outs? Worst case scenario is rolling my own with Raspberry Pi/HifiBerry DAC+DSP but I might never crawl out of that wormhole.
Thanks.
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