Last weekend my new all digital audio setup has gone live
I stream my Spotify/Tidal music via the miniDSP SHD Studio to my Dutch & Dutch 8c speakers via AES3. This works very very good and sounds amazing! With the UMIK-1 I have setup room correction using Dirac Live. The room correction needed with these amazing speakers is minimal but it does brings back the balance. Everything is working solid.
The device itself can be configured via the SHD software and connecting my computer via USB to the miniDSP. Updating the firmware is quick and easy and is done via my computer. Dirac Live is configured the same way. It is semi-integrated in that the 4 presents on the device are used for channel mapping and Dirac Live configuration but have to be store separately via the SHD and Dirac Live software. A bit strange behavior. The Dirac Live software most me started from inside the SHD software. Another strange behavior of the miniDSP SHD Studio is when I configure the display to turn off after a period, when the display turns off it shows the red LED, which is the same as when it is in standby mode. This makes it confusing to see if the miniDSP is active or in standby.
The Volumio UI is a hit and miss. Configuring the audio settings in the miniDSP via Volumio works good and solid. But the Tidal integration is a big miss in my opinion. The artist art work is not displayed in the correct aspect ratio but the album covers are. I do not know why this is. Not all Tidal options are available. So mostly I like an album in the Tidal app and then look it up in Volumio. This is the reason why I mostly stream using Spotify Connect. This works perfectly. I do have the option to play the Tidal music on my computer via USB to my miniDSP. But my computer is not close to my listening position. Since Volumio has released Tidal Connect, I hope miniDSP will release their version very soon!
Volumio has no problem with my local music library on my Synology NAS. It works good and does find most of the metadata, artist images and album covers. I did notice that some collection albums are not grouped together based on the metadata in the mp3's (it's an old catalog
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I did notice that from time to time, that the Volumio playback progress bar is out of sync. Sometimes it does not update the current played song in the UI even though it plays the song it without any problems. A refresh of the browser resolves this. It's annoying. But that's why I use Spotify Connect most of the times.
My TV is also connected via TOSLINK to my miniDSP. This makes it for me a perfect device to accomplish a minimal setup that sounds amazing.
Beside all these little mostly Volumio quirks, I enjoy my new and minimal audio setup. The 8c's just sound amazing and with Spotify Connect it is so easy to use. I can highly recommend this setup.
[edit] One more thing I must mention is the excellent documentation that comes with the miniDSP!