Minidsp SHD ; Initial Impressions; set up etc

[PierreBCN]

Stumbled on this nice thread while looking for info on the MiniDSP SHD.

Great music on the videos! I discovered "The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale" Love it!

Anyways, any updates on the use of the MiniDSP SHD? I am on the fence. The unit seems very promising with great flexibility, tons of features and it measures well.......but don't know if they ironed out most bugs and made it a bit more user friendly. Right now I am using a Wiim Pro Plus and looking for a similar user experience. I just would like to try DIRAC to eq my room.

Happy new Year!

 

[Glasvegas]

Stumbled on this nice thread while looking for info on the MiniDSP SHD.

Great music on the videos! I discovered "The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale" Love it!

Anyways, any updates on the use of the MiniDSP SHD? I am on the fence. The unit seems very promising with great flexibility, tons of features and it measures well.......but don't know if they ironed out most bugs and made it a bit more user friendly. Right now I am using a Wiim Pro Plus and looking for a similar user experience. I just would like to try DIRAC to eq my room.

Happy new Year!

Happy New Year.

There were a lot of “self-induced” bugs last year due to the release of a new user interface (New Device Console). These all seem to have been resolved, as I can’t see any complaints in the last two months on the miniDSP forum. Personally, I haven’t upgraded to the new interface, so I can’t comment on it.

I can say that I’ve alway found the miniDSP/Dirac user interface to be very user friendly.

If wouldn’t rely on the streaming capabilities of the SHD. It has Spotify and Tidal connect, which work fine. Apart from that, I’ve always found Volumio to be a nightmare. They’ve recently upgraded to a new Volumio version. Again, I haven’t tried it.

I you’re happy with the Wiim, have you considered the miniDSP Flex?

Sorry, I can’t give any feedback on using the recent software updates - but this might prompt other users to post their experiences.

 

[PierreBCN]

Happy New Year.

There were a lot of “self-induced” bugs last year due to the release of a new user interface (New Device Console). These all seem to have been resolved, as I can’t see any complaints in the last two months on the miniDSP forum. Personally, I haven’t upgraded to the new interface, so I can’t comment on it.

I can say that I’ve alway found the miniDSP/Dirac user interface to be very user friendly.

If wouldn’t rely on the streaming capabilities of the SHD. It has Spotify and Tidal connect, which work fine. Apart from that, I’ve always found Volumio to be a nightmare. They’ve recently upgraded to a new Volumio version. Again, I haven’t tried it.

I you’re happy with the Wiim, have you considered the miniDSP Flex?

Sorry, I can’t give any feedback on using the recent software updates - but this might prompt other users to post their experiences.

Hi there,

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. This is what I suspected...that the streaming platform might not be as polished as the Wiim one.

The miniDSP Flex looks good. It's got an analogue input as well which is perfect for my scenario as I plan to hook it to the processor loop of my vintage integrated amp (Sansui au-X901). It is cheaper too.

Still, might consider a vintage equalizer like the Technics SH 8055. It seems to measure reasonably well and like the looks too! We'll see where all this take me.

 

[Glasvegas]

Maybe someone will post their experience with the latest version of Volumio. Problem is, it’s third party software, So, no matter how bad it is, miniDSP can’t modify it. In fact, we‘re lucky if we see an upgrade every two years or so.

At least the Wiim gets regular updates.

Best of luck with your project.

 

[tw99]

Personally I wouldn't want to rely on the SHD's embedded Volumio as a full-featured streaming solution. I do use it, but just as a Logitech Media Server player using the Squeezelite plugin. Even this is broken in the upgrade to Volumio 3, so I'm still running the previous version. MiniDSP themselves don't seem to care much about Volumio issues.

That said, I found the SHD DIRAC to be very effective before I ended up getting active speakers with built-in PEQ, so I don't use it any more. So maybe a Flex with DIRAC would work well for you, along with your existing streamer. Or just wait until Wiim implements more PEQ...