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Choices for DSP for room speaker correction, active cross over, ect.

wmilas

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Dec 23, 2020
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First post.

So for years I've been building simple diy speakers, on and off. Low power AB amps here and there. Some terrible class D stuff. Basic tinkering. I've always adjusted speaker/room response by measuring then tweaking the passive crossovers, moving speakers around, adding some dampening to the room, ect. I've decided to graduate, move to the 21st century and explore the world of active correction, active crossovers, ect. I need some help on my initial setup, I'm looking to use bookshelves plus 2 subs. I have tons of full range speakers but I really want to mess with smaller 2 ways and dual subs for this application. These are the options I see that make sense for me:

1) Easiest to start with. MiniDSP SHD. This unit has a good DSP, and lets me play with DIRAC. It does not have FIR, only has what looks like quads, only has 4 analog outputs. This means I can't use it for active crossovers because I'd need 6 channels. No FIR, just parametric eq, or advanced parametric using REQ's quad outputs. I'd have to use volumio as a streamer? I guess it has inputs so thats not entirely true, I could hook up whatever streamer I want. If I wanted to incorporate this into a HT this would be pretty simple as I could just pass the HT processor through the analog inputs here. My guess is internally the DSP resamples to 96 khz? This would be acceptable. If its 48khz that would not be ideal. This option would be the cheapest $ and the most elegant, but i'd lose active crossover support if I want to keep the subs, and I definitely want subs.

2) More advanced. Use roon as the digital back end with a pi as the client. Use software to generate FIR to load into roons convolver. Use my own dac. In theory here I could then use this for both active Xover for the mains + subs, plus room correction. I'd be doing the work myself instead of relying on DIRAC. All my music would have to stream through roon and a roon endpoint. I'd have to buy a multichannel USB DAC. I have no experience with streaming 6 channels through a roon endpoint to a multichannel dac. Is this even doable? If its not and I have to do the active xover in hardware... I don't see the point. I don't see how this would be able to be integrated into a HT setup though.

My basic needs are (in order)
1) I'd like room correction
2) Most of my music comes from a streaming service. I currently use Tidal.
3) I'd like to keep the sample rate as high as possible with low THD. I'd i don't want a unit that maxes out at 48khz and only is good for 15 bits with THD.
4) I'd prefer Fir
5) I'd like the ability to play with active crossovers.
6) I'm not particularly price sensitive.... up to a point. If It costs me 30k to do this I might as well just buy a pro active setup. The idea here is I want to tinker and learn as I do this.

Can someone point me at the correct work flow chain here? Or even in the general right direction?

Thanks much!
 
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wmilas

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Dec 23, 2020
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I just realized I can use the Minidsp 88D, run Fir through roon, feed the 88D from roon and have it output to a 8 channel Dac. that way I can have my cake and eat it too? I'm not sure what the 88D's sampling quality is like though.
 

Vince2

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Been exploring something similar. Since you are stream using tidal, use your computer for the streaming and room correction with equalizer apa. Use motu 8a or Ulta lite mk4 as dac, output to 8 or 10 channels xlr. Do your cross overs and driver eqs in motu. Can also go the route of hypex plate amps, 2 or 3 way, and use the build in eq and xo design in hypex software. Use a chromecast audio to digitally feed the plate amps from phone, tablet or computer, or use a usb to digital out like topping d10 to connect computer and amps.
 

dualazmak

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