DSP options for 2.0

[Greyfox]

Hello Everyone!

I have a pair of Monitor audio silver 100 speakers with a NAD amp and a SMSL dac. I'm relatively happy with the sound, but the bass is not tight enough due to the room design. I don't have a lot of options for acoustic treatment of the room or other placement of the speakers, so I'm left with software correction.

I did a test to see how much better I could make the sound with EQ. So I connected a pc to the source of the DAC and after REW measurement I tried to improve it with APO EQ.
And well, good god. The difference is sky high even though I probably didn't get the optimum result on the first few tries.

I decided that I needed a simple solution for room correction, which corrects the signal which is coming from my DAC, so I can enjoy the room correction all of my sources coming thru my dac.
I can see three options now, but it's hard to decide.

Minidsp 2x4 HD (260€)
There was a test here on this site with not very encouraging results.

thomann t.racks DSP 4x4 Mini (100€)
This was also tested by Amir, with relatively positive results, but some of the comments on the site mention some clipping issues and harmonic distortion, not sure how serious the problem is.

Minidsp Flex (650€)
Well. Based on the reviews it is the best and most expensive solution.
The question is whether this is overkill. Probably.


Do you have experience with the cheaper solutions above? Would the flaws impact the sound quality more than I benefit from the EQ?

Thank you!

 

[staticV3]

I decided that I needed a simple solution for room correction, which corrects the signal which is coming from my DAC

Do not correct the signal that is coming from your DAC as that necessitates an additional A->D and D->A conversion on top of the D->A conversion of your DAC.
It just makes your SMSL DAC pretty pointless.

You either want your DSP to also be your DAC, or a DSP with fully digital I/O so you can plug your SMSL into it after the signal has been corrected.

A WiiM Pro or Pro Plus could be used as DSP+DAC to replace the SMSL outright, or as a fully digital DSP upstream of the SMSL.

However, it currently only supports four PEQ bands (LS/HS/Peaking).
More filter bands will be added in the future via FW update.

The 2x4HD could be used as a DSP+DAC with its Toslink input and is, despite Amir's measurements, most likely fully transparent anyway.
Plus it has way more extensive DSP capabilities than the WiiM.

 

[Greyfox]

Thank you for the suggestion!

Good point on the extra conversion. The problem is, I often use the DAC to stream music over bluetooth.
I have two main source which should be EQ-ed: Optical out from TV (movies, games) and the bluetooth music from DAC, both handled now with the DAC, the only thing I'm missing the possibility of EQ-ing.

It seems if I would like to avoid double AD conversion AND have bluetooth streaming in the same time is the DSP flex which is about 650 EUR.
I'm not sure that's a reasonable investment for a stereo system without sub.

 

[staticV3]

Good point on the extra conversion. The problem is, I often use the DAC to stream music over bluetooth.

With the WiiM, you could replace lossy Bluetooth streaming with lossless WiFi streaming.
Either from your streaming service (Spotify, Tidal, etc), or from local storage via DLNA/UPnP.

 

[Greyfox]

With the WiiM, you could replace lossy Bluetooth streaming with lossless WiFi streaming.
Either from your streaming service (Spotify, Tidal, etc), or from local storage via DLNA/UPnP.

That is true, but what about the sign which is coming from the TV? (optical)
I can see there is an optical input on the WiiM, but is it possible to apply EQ on that source too?

 

[renaudrenaud]

Daphile allows convolution via REW files. You need a X86 computer. Even an old one.

I think this is the cheapest solution for DSP.

Daphile – Digital Music Convenience for Audiophiles

Daphile is an audiophile class music server & player OS – targeted to dedicated headless PC. It manages the bitperfect and gapless playback of common audio formats including the high resolution files.

www.daphile.com

The core system is the Logitech Media Server : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logitech_Media_Server

The LMS has numerous plugins. Some examples are material skin for a nice interface, Spotify, Deezer and Tidal for streaming, thousands of radios via shoutcast and TuneIn radio, a special plugin for Radio Paradise for true FLAC radio, a podcast plugin app etc. It's free and open source.

 

[staticV3]

That is true, but what about the sign which is coming from the TV? (optical)
I can see there is an optical input on the WiiM, but is it possible to apply EQ on that source too?

Yes. the WiiM applies EQ to all of it inputs.