Agreed, but it all depends on your room and the issues. I have low ceilings (6'5"-house built in the early 1800's) and hardwood floors and my speakers have fairly wide dispersion. I found Dirac to really clean up some of these issues when using it in my MiniDSP unit. End result was improved clarity, especially at higher volumes, as well as a higher image height.
Manufactures want to offer a full feature package to compete with other brands, but they have to keep the price point in line. Companies like Dirac and Audyssey want to sell their software as well. I believe the manufacturers work like this so both can improve business, keep price points in line, and offer the product to those that care since so many features are ignored in mass market devices.
I think there’s a way you can unregister the DDRC-24, then register the NAD. @Flak should be able to enlighten us here.
If I had a defective unit and that was their solution I would get it back to them for a return. That is not acceptable in my opinion.
I would have bought the MiniDSP if the feature set worked for me. Their lack of being control system friendly was a dealbreaker for my solution. But agreed, really nice product and great pricing.
My sub pre outs work fine. I would swap it out.
Thanks for the feedback. What do you mean by being not control system friendly? What kind of feature is missing?
I use a control system for automation of my entire house, including AV. It allows for a seamless experience to run my system (kind of like an app, but everything is in it instead of just a single device, and devices can speak to one another without input from the user). To work well with a control system you typically would want to have IP control over it, where you can send specific commands to a device to do a task (turn up volume, go to input 3, turn Dirac on/off, etc), and be able to query a device and ask it a question, and have the device respond to it (example: if listening to SiriusXM and the word Bieber is in the artist field of the metadata, skip to the next song). The MiniDSP products are controlled via IR, which is OK, but it is one way, meaning I can just send a command and not get a response...like asking a teenage son a question. Worse yet, the IR commands are very limited, for example instead of having a command for power on and power off, it would just have a power on/off toggle. Another example is having a source up and down button, instead of having codes for direct sources. The UI experience is something that is an afterthought on many of the less popular brands. It's expensive to have engineers create code libraries and employ processing for control. NAD does an excellent job of it. I get full two way feedback, including album art on my remote control (not an app) since I have two way control over it. I am passionate about sound, but I also love technology in general. I work for Universal Remote Control (the people that created it) and we have a control system called Total Control that I need to "beat up" for work and push to the limits. The C 658 is awesome for control! Probably a longer answer than you wanted, but not sure how else to explain it. I have attached a image of what my table top remote looks like when listening to Tidal from the C 658. I just can't get this level of integration with the MiniDSP without using a computer or a phone.
