miniDSP Tide16 - Holy Grail with 16 Channel Atmos/DTS:X, high SINAD

[peng]

I’m hoping the Tide16 will allow me to get rid my 2 channel preamp and dac. If the Tide16 can’t achieve that then I may as well get the AV20 and keep my 2 channel or just stick with my XMC2.

Do you think things will sound worse with the Tide16 and ART?

I think you can look at specs and measurements and that would likely tell you more. "sound" as told by others are not reliable and even if it is, could be so subjective that really only you can answer your own question that way.

 

[Lsc]

I think you can look at specs and measurements and that would likely tell you more. "sound" as told by others are not reliable and even if it is, could be so subjective that really only you can answer your own question that way.

I’d like to know why he thinks the Tide16 won’t sound good ie ruin the sound. Looking and specs and measurements will not help since it won’t tell me what he is thinking.

I appreciate you telling me that sound could be subjective. I guess you learn something new everyday.

 

[peng]

I’d like to know why he thinks the Tide16 won’t sound good ie ruin the sound. Looking and specs and measurements will not help since it won’t tell me what he is thinking.

Me too, but.....

I appreciate you telling me that sound could be subjective. I guess you learn something new everyday.

Sure, it is a fact that if we ask 10 people that same questions, you will have potentially more than 1, up to 10 different answers. That's why it isn't that I don't trust or value others opinions but logically speaking, specs and measurements are far more useful/reliable. For example, if the devices has very low distortions and noise, frequency response flat to within +/- 0.5 dB, low enough output impedance, high enough input impedance, high enough output voltage to drive any power amps, that chance is excellent that the thing will be transparent, and if we don't like the sound quality for whatever reason, then in this case we will have to tweak Dirac Live and possible use some manual EQ options that the Tide 16 likely support very well. The more I look at the Tide 16, the more I find it attractive, especially in this case, being in Canada there is no Tariff so we may actually expect lower price than those in the USA.

 

[Curvature]

But what’s certain is that below the Schroeder frequency (200-300hz for most rooms) the room modes dominate

Room modes below 100Hz. SBIR 100-300Hz.

Each one of these DSPs deals with the room effects differently, but they all do what room treatment can’t do at lower frequencies.

Room treatment very much works. It's just expensive and requires space.

 

[Lsc]

The more I look at the Tide 16, the more I find it attractive, especially in this case, being in Canada there is no Tariff so we may actually expect lower price than those in the USA.

I’ve never looked at a product and compared to the price in Canada. It never crossed my mind. I’m sure the maple syrup I get at Costco is cheaper in Canada along with Canada Goose jackets. I didn’t know it was a factor in Canada.

 

[Keith_W]

Room treatment very much works. It's just expensive and requires space.

And it's also difficult to tune for a narrow band of frequencies and you'll still need DSP anyway for time and phase alignment, especially if you have multiple subwoofers. I personally don't see the point of trying to use room treatment alone for low frequencies, it's crazy. It's less precise, intrusive, ugly, and as you say - expensive. The only people who should consider this are anti-DSP nutjobs (I know you're not one of them).

 

[PGAMiami]

And it's also difficult to tune for a narrow band of frequencies and you'll still need DSP anyway for time and phase alignment, especially if you have multiple subwoofers. I personally don't see the point of trying to use room treatment alone for low frequencies, it's crazy. It's less precise, intrusive, ugly, and as you say - expensive. The only people who should consider this are anti-DSP nutjobs (I know you're not one of them).

Agree. Very difficult to use room treatments for room modes. You would need huge devices to do much of anything to modes below 50 or 60 hz. Even from 100-200 hz it gets big, expensive and ugly. The harmonics of the room modes also need to be dealt with. That’s what the Schroeder frequency defines. Simplisticly it’s the frequency below which your room essentially resonates. Above that it reflects. Reflections above 150hz or so can be addressed with room treatments but even these are not cheap and can be ugly for sure. SBIR is different. ART can help there too if these are below 150hz.

 

[dsd4life]

Most, if not all people are prone to Placebo effects and different sorts of biases, so if given enough reasons (including those not applicable), they would believe what they heard, thought they heard regardless. It is like believing and hearing even power amplifiers with verified audio specs that indicate transparency for normal humans still have audibly different sound signature described in a spectrum of cold to hot, sound stage from narrow to wide, dry to soaking wet, soft and sweet to crisp and punchy, etc etc..

So yes, they can hear >>24 kHz, and often mentioned more "air" as proof..., probably because some professional reviewer started saying so long time ago so that one has taken root.

Take a look of the following, bs (I trust he truly believe it, so unintentional bs):

miniDSP Flex HTx Digital Audio Processor Review - HomeTheaterHifi.com

Hong Kong-based miniDSP has been manufacturing affordable, high-performance audio DSP(digital signal processing) products for the past...

hometheaterhifi.com

Give him the credit of seemingly attempted to ensure apples-to-apples comparison, but also seemingly didn't bother to do it blind, even the simpler just level matched single blind, yet he managed to notice that suble difference, did use the expression "might be attributed to the 48 kHz...., but then serious/sure enough to contact miniDSP support team. Presumably he would know that miniDSP is not going to say, you need to do it under DBT and the differences heard would disappear, as even honest engineers have to make a living by selling..

this makes no sense giberish: "I reached out to miniDSP for comment, and the support team indicated that the 48kHz limit applied to both the Dirac and non-Dirac versions of the Flex HTx and that higher sampling rates would increase the cost of the Dirac Live license, which would drive up the overall cost of the product. "

Increase the license?

No people DSP is fantastic. It needs to work at high frequency's. Steering, filtering, delay, reverb, etc. Are AI data centers to blame?

 

[peng]

this makes no sense giberish: "I reached out to miniDSP for comment, and the support team indicated that the 48kHz limit applied to both the Dirac and non-Dirac versions of the Flex HTx and that higher sampling rates would increase the cost of the Dirac Live license, which would drive up the overall cost of the product. "

Increase the license?

No people DSP is fantastic. It needs to work at high frequency's. Steering, filtering, delay, reverb, etc. Are AI data centers to blame?

So much bs on the internet, people should do their research in depth before believing in hearsay too soon but then unfortunately, even if they try, they probably have hard time understanding Fourier, and Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem anyway. There is no point arguing with someone who don't see "sense" in known math proven facts, while believing in hearsay about what people claimed to hear. I do hope people will hear what they expect to hear if and when miniDSP come up with 192, even 384 kHz sampling rate capabilities. Have a great day!

 

[101geo]

So much bs on the internet, people should do their research in depth before believing in hearsay too soon but then unfortunately, even if they try, they probably have hard time understanding Fourier, and Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem anyway. There is no point arguing with someone who don't see "sense" in known math proven facts, while believing in hearsay about what people claimed to hear. I do hope people will hear what they expect to hear if and when miniDSP come up with 192, even 384 kHz sampling rate capabilities. Have a great day!

Indeed, especially when most can't hear above 15Khz.

 

[peng]

Indeed, especially when most can't hear above 15Khz.

Higher sampling rate used in the production phase/process (not so much in playback) can be of benefits, but not going to get into details as people can, and should do their own search for information if they are interested in the reasons. Also, when I purchase my music files from places like HDTracks.com, NativeDSD.com etc., I don't mind paying more for the higher sampling rate recordings but that's because by experience, the probability of those are from recordings of higher quality tend to be higher. Regardless, I do very much would like manufacturers to include >48 kHz sampling rate capabilities, for their higher, and more expensive models anyway, so avoid down sampling that lots of people object to and affected at least psychologically if for no other reasons, though I also understand there are always budget constraints, forcing them to make tough choices.

miniDSP seems to be smart in making such choices, of the 3 miniDSP I have ever owned, the cheapest one, the 2X4HD is 96 kHz capable, yet the two more expensive ones, the HT and HTx are limited to 48 kHz, but it is easy to understand why they had made such choices, one reason being the 2X4HD has much fewer channels so DSP "power" is not much of an issue relatively speaking. The Tide uses a more powerful DSP chip but then with 16 channels, and full blown Dirac Live on top of their own PEQ/BIQUAD among other additional processing intensive features, they had to stick to 48 kHz, at least for now, while leaving hope (or just wishful thinking) it might upgradable later.

 

[markus]

Higher sampling rate used in the production phase/process (not so much in playback) can be of benefits, but not going to get into details as people can, and should do their own search for information if they are interested in the reasons. Also, when I purchase my music files from places like HDTracks.com, NativeDSD.com etc., I don't mind paying more for the higher sampling rate recordings but that's because by experience, the probability of those are from recordings of higher quality tend to be higher. Regardless, I do very much would like manufacturers to include >48 kHz sampling rate capabilities, for their higher, and more expensive models anyway, so avoid down sampling that lots of people object to and affected at least psychologically if for no other reasons, though I also understand there are always budget constraints, forcing them to make tough choices.

miniDSP seems to be smart in making such choices, of the 3 miniDSP I have ever owned, the cheapest one, the 2X4HD is 96 kHz capable, yet the two more expensive ones, the HT and HTx is limited to 48 kHz, but it is easy to understand why they had made such choices, one reason being the 2X4HD has much fewer channels so DSP "power" is not much of an issue. The Tide uses a more powerful DSP chip but then with 16 channels, and full blown Dirac Live on top of their own PEQ/BIQUAD among other additional processing intensive features, they had to stick to 48 kHz, at least for now, while leaving hope (or just wishful thinking) it might upgradable later.

Exactly, the reason for 48kHz is that virtually all program material fed into the Tide16 is 48kHz. There is essentially no movie content outside of 48kHz (and yes, I’m sure someone will dig up a rare exception just to prove the point). While Dirac Live is capable of generating 96kHz filters, doing so dramatically increases the processing and memory requirements, which would demand much more powerful – and expensive – hardware than most users are willing to pay for.

 

[EWL5]

this makes no sense giberish: "I reached out to miniDSP for comment, and the support team indicated that the 48kHz limit applied to both the Dirac and non-Dirac versions of the Flex HTx and that higher sampling rates would increase the cost of the Dirac Live license, which would drive up the overall cost of the product. "

Increase the license?

No people DSP is fantastic. It needs to work at high frequency's. Steering, filtering, delay, reverb, etc. Are AI data centers to blame?

These companies are in business to make money. If only 0.5% of the population is asking for processing above 48kHz, should companies be forced to R&D and then sell products to satisfy that 0.5%?!!!

 

[PGAMiami]

There are many fantastic sounding CDs that are 44/16. I would think there are reasons beyond the sampling rate that contribute to why high sample rate music sounds great, such as carefully transcribing the music to whatever sampling rate using the best possible master tapes and equipment. Modern DACs don’t need high sample rate sources to properly filter high frequency noise. As I’ve noted previously, use something like Roon that has impeccable sample rate conversion so the Tide16 only sees 48/24. I would be shocked if anyone can hear a difference in a properly constructed test.

 

[Harryharryharry]

What are peoples thoughts on risks buying the first manufacturing run Vs waiting for second? Software bugs could be lived with as they can be fixed. any risk of hardware issue?

I suppose minidsp support pretty good so sure they'd sort any issues.

 

[Mort]

What are peoples thoughts on risks buying the first manufacturing run Vs waiting for second? Software bugs could be lived with as they can be fixed. any risk of hardware issue?

I suppose minidsp support pretty good so sure they'd sort any issues.

Honestly I think this is a consumer myth. At least as it applies to a small high performance manufacturer with little history of problem.

 

[PGAMiami]

Honestly I think this is a consumer myth. At least as it applies to a small high performance manufacturer with little history of problem.

Others have commented that miniDSP is easy to service and that they send parts to users in the US when needed. That said I believe this is the most expensive and complicated product they have made. And then we have the tariffs. So yes, there is some risk. You can wait until late spring and buy from Deer Creek if you are worried but that’s an extra few months and an extra $500. I probably will order from miniDSP directly. Mostly waiting to see how the APR-16 turns out. It’s should have better support and uses premium DACs, but it’s also almost 2x the price. And it’s also new with all the risks and benefits of that.

 

[Mort]

Others have commented that miniDSP is easy to service and that they send parts to users in the US when needed. That said I believe this is the most expensive and complicated product they have made. And then we have the tariffs. So yes, there is some risk. You can wait until late spring and buy from Deer Creek if you are worried but that’s an extra few months and an extra $500. I probably will order from miniDSP directly. Mostly waiting to see how the APR-16 turns out. It’s should have better support and uses premium DACs, but it’s also almost 2x the price. And it’s also new with all the risks and benefits of that.

Time will tell. I'm likely to be an early adopter. I've owned many many minidsp devices.

 

[peng]

What are peoples thoughts on risks buying the first manufacturing run Vs waiting for second? Software bugs could be lived with as they can be fixed. any risk of hardware issue?

I suppose minidsp support pretty good so sure they'd sort any issues.

It is hard to say with certainty. We do know a few AVPs by others did have some non trivial issues that early adopters might wish they got fixed sooner. For miniDSP, the Tide is their first AVP that has high channel counts and up date features except the HDMI section. While they don’t have the depth of experience like D+M, Onkyo, Arcam or even Anthem AVPs/AVRs, they do have a good track record in terms of almost bug free products at launch time and long term reliability.

 

[Lsc]

I’m not so worried about quality control vs. an updated version with HDMI 2.1 and a new chip that does DTS: pro as a fast follow.

Software bugs are ok as long as they are not debilitating but hardware upgrades require module(s) to be replaced or the whole unit.