Help with a multichannel Dante setup please

[Rja4000]

By the way, in the past, I measured the impact of the Dirac live correction using a hardware DSP in a miniDSP DDRC-22D
This device is purely digital (no analog Input or Output), so the degradation here is purely due to the DSP (or to the algorithm)

We see 25dB degradation of SINAD (almost 35dB impact on SNR) when corrections are active.

MiniDSP DDRC-22D DIRAC measurements

Hi After all those talks about AVR and their poor performances, I measured my MiniDSP DDRC-22D Dirac for SINAD, just to check what impact the DSP and Dirac can be in that story. The MiniDSP DDRC-22D is stereo only. Note that Dirac Stereo forces the sampling frequency to 96kHz, so that's how I...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Note that, in that case, the device being all digital, the resulting SINAD is still around 115dB, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

 

[Keith_W]

Thank you for your reply DSPMan. I did not post this earlier, but we received a reply from a Powersoft rep about using Dante for HTPC. Here it is, auto-translated from Italian:

The Dante virtual soundcard on Windows can be used in WDM or ASIO mode, only the ASIO mode allows you to have more than two channels aggregated at a time, up to 64x64. You need to make sure that the player you use supports ASIO mode because not all of them do.

Having said this, I personally have many doubts about the reliability of the Dante Virtual Soundcard, it is software that relies on the realtime performance of the CPU and (especially on Windows) is very unpredictable, especially if the computer is busy doing important tasks such as decoding video files.

Also you definitely won't be able to listen to Dolby Atmos content, as far as I know the only way is to have an AVR that decodes the atmos signal coming from HDMI, there are no software players that allow you to output the video in HDMI and the audio in PCM decoded to a sound card.

Personally I would advise you to do something more traditional and rely on a dedicated preamplifier, like the Marantz, perhaps with balanced XLR outputs to reach the amplifiers in the cleanest way possible.

The acoustic correction with FIR filters, if necessary, can also be applied directly in the DSP of the eight channels, as these support FIR filters up to 2048 taps. Unfortunately, the media do not support fir. Even in this case, however, in my opinion, often a few well-made measurements, and above all averaged in several points, and some traditional IIR filters are more than sufficient for linearization. Often doing a complete reversal of the response with FIRs does more harm than good.

I thought that was a very honest reply, especially the section which I highlighted in bold. It comes as a surprise to me given that DVS is a professional tool and many pros swear by it, but this reply comes from Powersoft themselves. I myself run 8 channels in my own system with an i9-9900 PC and using Ravenna, but my PC only does music and not video. As for his PC, he will be building it himself based on his requirements, which includes a graphics card for MadVR and other HT applications.

Based on this reply, my friend and I decided to go for a more traditional solution with an RME Fireface UFX III or a Motu 1248. This was my recommendation from the very beginning, because futzing around with unfamiliar pro audio network protocols and overcomplicated pro audio features is not an idea I find particularly attractive. The Dante idea has been shelved for now unless there is a really compelling reason to use it.

As part of my research, I did look at the RME M-32/M-16 that you recommended, but rejected it because it has no built-in mic preamp. I know that you can add a mic preamp to it by simply plugging it into one of the digital inputs, but that is additional expense and adds more boxes to the system.

He still wants to upgrade his subwoofer, and he is looking at a stonking huge pro audio sub and a speaker designer local to him recommended he look for a 3000W arc welder Class D amp. That lead me to a search for a high powered Class D amp, which was when I found that every amp I looked at performed poorly, which made me again think about the issues with Powersoft amps.