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Colinear Acoustics - new 8 channel DSP preamplifier

Also, just because a price is high, doesn't mean it does much more, much better nor that it even that it has a higher cost build !

We should all know that from the high end hifi world ..

The jump in cost from the previous generation Deqx to the recent was very high, a very large jump. They may now sell through retailers and have middle-men margins integrated into their pricing, plus costs for possible customer service help (which I think I remember being good for Deqx .. or I could be thinking of Trinnov).

A good case in point is Trinnov: internally there is not that much difference between their commercial cinema product and their Altitude home cinema products, yet the former is about £2500 and the latter £8/10/12000 without checking - just ballpark figures.

Pricing is rarely directly comparable other than at the cheaper end IMO
 
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The minidsp HTx is somewhat comparable and has a similar asking price. Minidsp has integration with dirac and is 8 channel which may be of benefit for some applications (even if it is 2 channel only) while CoLinear has more Taps for Fir and more PEQ slots (just more processing power in general). Colinear may have better output DACs.

So I would understand the price is very reasonable. There also is no competition that does the same for significantly less (minidsp Flex 8 for example is rca only and less processing power).
 
Not comparable. Just because two devices do DSP does not mean they are the same.
I never ment to imply that. I'm just saying that getting both a pre, way more powerful DSP and 8 outputs, is a pretty good deal - if it works as promised, with no hick-ups, hiss, pops and cracks during turning on/off, better software etc.
Let's see what it can do, when someone buys it, test it... Since almost everything on the homepage is just glorified and with 0 proof.

I've had a great DSP for years, even when minidsp was still just a bad 4 channel product with lots of noise and questionable software. I fully agree that things can improve over time, and it seems to do so :)
 
I personally think that the DEqX is overly expensive, but I bet it is much more user friendly and also I believe has some automatic features for creating crossovers etc - so there is a lot on the software side you may be paying for with the DEQX.

This Colinear Acoustics box looks to be a box of relatively powerful DSP in a quite basic form, for DIYers who don't mind getting their hands dirty with setup.. which will in turn reduce costs for the end user.

That and direct sales are probably a large part of the pricing seeming relatively positive..

If I knew how to test it, I would (when it arrives). Alas, I don't, nor have the equipment ..

.. but it is said they've sent one to Amir (maybe I should have waited for his testing, but I thought Id beat a rush if it turns out to test really well.. If not, I'll use it anyway as functionality is my main requirement ).
 
Absolutely. Good software development takes time and cost money.
Just see all modern cars and that freak show of software running on those flashy center screens, simply to control absolutely basic stuff :facepalm:
It must be very difficult... Because very few get it just to a usable state in the first go.
 
I currently do all the DSP for my 4-way active speaker setup in Roon, feeding an Okto dac8. It's been working brilliantly for coming up to 4 years now. But I might give a DSP-8C a go, just to try it. (And Scotland's reasonably local ;).)
 
I currently do all the DSP for my 4-way active speaker setup in Roon, feeding an Okto dac8. It's been working brilliantly for coming up to 4 years now. But I might give a DSP-8C a go, just to try it. (And Scotland's reasonably local ;).)
Don't you mean the Okto dac 8Pro? Seems like you're covered, and won't benefit much from the DSP-8C, as long as you are happy with your current configuration and usability.
 
Don't you mean the Okto dac 8Pro? Seems like you're covered, and won't benefit much from the DSP-8C, as long as you are happy with your current configuration and usability.
They did a DSP version with miniDSP Nano inside . Missed one in Sweden for sale, but after shipping and import duty, likely would have cost close to the price of this one ..
 
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I currently do all the DSP for my 4-way active speaker setup in Roon, feeding an Okto dac8. It's been working brilliantly for coming up to 4 years now. But I might give a DSP-8C a go, just to try it. (And Scotland's reasonably local ;).)
Been a Roon user for a couple years and had no idea it could do all that. Makes me wish I had no analog sources!
 
@ghemink would you mind posting a few pictures of how the unit and display looks turned on? I am really curious as all pics only show the unpowered unit
1758996404079.jpeg

This is with the display at the lowest intensity level, the display can be set to turn off after a certain time or keep it on forever, I like to keep it on so that I can see the volume setting. The remote can be used to control the volume, switch inputs, change settings etc. Another one where the remote is not reflected in the display.

1758996662193.jpeg
 
So how is it working in practice? Functionality, filter transfers etc. Is there no signal presence or level indication of any kind?
 
So how is it working in practice? Functionality, filter transfers etc. Is there no signal presence or level indication of any kind?
It works great so far. I was using a miniDSP flex 4 channel before and wanted 8 channels out preferably XLR. Was looking into getting a miniDSP flex 8 (not XLR) but then somehow found this unit here on ASR and bought it immediately. No regrets. There are no signal presence indicators, I have given the feedback to the developers that it would be useful to have some form of indicators. Does not have to be as fancy as with miniDSP but at least something that indicates signal coming in and going out and a clipping indicator would be nice as well. The filters are great, it can handle a lot more parametric filters than the miniDSP, I generate the filters using REW, save them as text and the filters can then be imported directly in this unit. Benefit of importing as txt instead of biquad is that they can be further edited. Biquad import is also possible and working. I use rephase to generate FIR filters to get linear phase x-overs. 4k FIR length per channel is great, have not used longer than 2k so far. I have used the 8k long FIR filters on the input channels to do room correction. Those filters were generated with Focus Fidelity software. I am still developing some new experimental speakers so mostly measuring and adjusting stuff, not much extensive listening yet.
 
Hi,
Mine arrived 3 days ago. Use it for open baffle system with two 15inch bass, fieldcoil midbass and fountec neo pro10i.
Before i used nanodigi wit 3 separate dacs 9039pro.
The colinear is in every aspect much much better in sonics.More dynamics , better texture, less distorsion.. Software is ok .
 
Yes, I meant the dac8 Pro.

Roon's DSP does everything required for an active setup and is a doddle to use (https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ting-up-an-active-crossover-using-roon.29882/). So, trying the 8C would be just for fun... and helping out a (reasonably) local business.
I too use OKTO DA8PRO in USB-only mode which receives 8-channel digital audio signal from software DSP "EKIO" on Windows 11 PC running JRiver MC as digital music player with VB-Audio Matrix as system-wide ASIO-VASIO-VAIO routing center.

For the details of my latest active system setup, please visit #931 and #1,009 on my project thread.
 
A couple of things, that can probably be fixed in a next software release and some things maybe somewhat harder to change. For example, Minidsp has signal level indicators on the inputs and output channels, nice for debugging and easy to see how much headroom you still have, not sure how hard it is to implement that. Minidsp has an option to toggle on/off individual IIR filters or enable/disable all of them in one click (to be fair, the enable/disable all was only added very recently in Minidsp). That can be convenient if you quickly want to measure with and without filters. Same for the FIR filters, there is no on/off switch. Once coefficients are loaded the FIR filters work, if you want to turn it off, you have to delete the coefficients. So you will have to load them again if you want to re-enable the FIR filters. For the IIR filters (PEQ section) the GUI shows the amplitude and phase response of each filter (nice) but it shows each filter individually, not the effect of all enabled filters together, would be nice to have that. For the FIR filters you can also see both amplitude and phase response which is nice. The “issues” are not dealbreakers for me but certainly some opportunities to make it easier to use. Especially initially when you are setting up the system and doing measurements, on/off switches to enable/disable stuff can be handy. I use REW for measurements and IIR filter creation, I use Rephase for simple FIR filters and often use Focus Fidelity for longer room correction like FIR filters. What I really like is the capability of having an 85ms long FIR on the input, that should be much longer than what DIRAC can do on the miniDSP, and it does it at 96kHz while Dirac is limited on miniDSP to 48k sampling rate.

I got the unit yesterday, today it has already replaced my miniDSP in my setup. I am sure the software will get better, all the above I have given as feedback to the developers. Hope they will be successful.

Gertjan
Did you get a response that they would improve on some of these?
 
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