Questioning the MiniDSP 2x4 sound quality.

[andreasmaaan]

Opened the unit up and it was set for 0.9Vrms. Switched it to 2.0 just for the hell of it and the only difference is lower volume available.

i wish I could describe the poor sound quality. Its like the dynamic range and openess to the sound is squashed. no space between instruments and somewhat harsh. It is not distorted or noisey though.
The best i can come up with is the comparison to my motherboard's realtec soundcard. Sounds a lot like it.

If I were you, before spending money on new equipment, I would just check your gain staging. It's important to make sure that the signal going into the MiniDSP is approaching 0.9V (with the jumper set to 0.9V ofc), and that the 0.9V output from the MiniDSP is sufficient to drive the monitors. I'm not sure if you mentioned which monitors they are, but most should have adjustable input sensitivity.

And at what point and how are you controlling the volume?

I don't mean to come across as arguing with your perception of the sound btw. It's just that I don't think it's possible that you could be hearing the poor sound you're describing with the components properly gain staged (if that is possible in the first place).

 

[noobie1]

Question for you guys about the Minidsp 2x4 (Non HD) My unit was purchased in 2015 and it is the old Rev A version with 0.9vRMS.

Using this with a Windows PC based system to control two studio monitors and a sub. it is being fed by a hiFime S2 DAC. I am trying to upgrade my Creative Soundblaster AE-7 soundcard. It has rudimentary crossover and bass management. Sounds OK but can be kind of noisey and i feel there must be better options.

I have been swapping around different components and noticing that the 2x4 doesnt sound very good through the analog inputs. Horrible actually. seems like very poor dynamic range. I tried using my Creative soundcards stereo outputs into the miniDSP and it sounded lifeless and lowfi. Terrible. The sound has the same quality of my motherboards soundcard. Going from a USB DAC into the minidsp 2x4 is the same. I thought it was the cheap DAC I was using initally but trying the DSP on the soundcard showed this was not the case. i upgraded the DAC somewhat to a 9038 based unit and the minidsp is still crushing the sound.

I love the control but not the quality it is outputting overall. Would the 2x4HD or even the DDRC-24 sound better through analog inputs? (I have read the DAC on the 2x4 HD isnt very good.) Would i have to step way up to get great sound quality by purchasing the miniDSP SHD? i want the DSP control between my monitors and subs like the minidsp provides but this sound is a deal breaker.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? I noted a review here of the SHD and it seems like a great unit. That's alot of money though and i don't need streaming at all. Was also considering the emotiva PT-100 preamp and using the 2x4 off the sub outputs.

Any thoughts or recommendations would be greatly appreciated

Do you have a headphone amp? A quick way to check the miniDPS is to route it to a headphone to see if there is sound degradation.

Also you should be using the -10dBV setting on your Adams since your signal is weaker than pro audio interfaces. I already assumed you were using -10dBV since you said your USB DAC sounds fine.

 

[vlad335]

Sorry for disappearing from this thread but i work as a nurse and work is horrible right now.

Couple days ago I rewired this system. Out of the S2 DAC, I went directly to the sub, set the high pass to 80hz and out to the studio monitors. The sound quality is night and day! The MiniDSP went back into the drawer.

I bought a Topping E30 and will compare it to the Hifime S2. I thank everyone here for your help and suggestions here. I love this forum!

 

[Pdxwayne]

Sorry for disappearing from this thread but i work as a nurse and work is horrible right now.

Couple days ago I rewired this system. Out of the S2 DAC, I went directly to the sub, set the high pass to 80hz and out to the studio monitors. The sound quality is night and day! The MiniDSP went back into the drawer.

I bought a Topping E30 and will compare it to the Hifime S2. I thank everyone here for your help and suggestions here. I love this forum!

I have two minidsp 2x4 that I simply store. Not using it because of lacking bass dynamics. I am sure there were other issues too, but bass dynamics was the main reason I stopped using it.

Minidsp 2x4 HD is better, but I am still not using it (it is slightly less clean than using KTB when I did comparison a while back). I currently directly connect my E30 to my stereo amp and sub and it sounds fine dynamic wise.

 

[GDK]

I thank everyone here for your help and suggestions here.

Given you are working as a nurse right now, I think we would all want to thank you as well!

 

[Vuki]

I agree that audio quality of minidsp 2x4 is really poor and not hifi.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

What is your input sensitivity jumper setting at on the 2x4? According to the manual, setting it at the higher value (2.0V) will result in 7dB insertion loss (page 38):

http://www.minidsp.com/images/documents/miniDSP 2x4 and Kit - User Manual v2.1.pdf

This is the miniDSP 2 x 4, not the miniDSP 2 x 4 HD, there is a big difference between the two. For one thing the earlier 2x 4 will output a max of .9vrms, while the 2 x4 HD will output 2vrms.

 

[AldenB]

Opened the unit up and it was set for 0.9Vrms. Switched it to 2.0 just for the hell of it and the only difference is lower volume available.

i wish I could describe the poor sound quality. Its like the dynamic range and openess to the sound is squashed. no space between instruments and somewhat harsh. It is not distorted or noisey though.
The best i can come up with is the comparison to my motherboard's realtec soundcard. Sounds a lot like it.

Not sure if this thread is still active, but felt compelled to mention that I've had precisely this listening experience, in my case with the miniDSP 4x10HD. I'm using the DSP as an electronic crossover in converting from a passive to active configuration. My other equipment is QUAD, Kef, and Arcam. While there are evident improvements in the active configuration - a more muscular sound, more defined and taut sound stage, and all of that - I also notice a clear and obvious degradation in the quality of the sound similar to that described by Vlad335. It is of course diffcult to convey without sounding pompous, but the best description I can come up with is that compared to the passive crossovers, with the DSP the sound completely loses sonic authenticity. With my analogue crossovers, a single note on a piano, or the striking of a cymbal, are satisfying sounds in themselves, but with the DSP it sounds muddy and blurred; the authentic musical texture is all gone. Mine isn't a particularly high end set up compared to some but to my ears the DSP can't compete with a decent analogue crossover.

 

[mdsimon2]

Not sure if this thread is still active, but felt compelled to mention that I've had precisely this listening experience, in my case with the miniDSP 4x10HD. I'm using the DSP as an electronic crossover in converting from a passive to active configuration. My other equipment is QUAD, Kef, and Arcam. While there are evident improvements in the active configuration - a more muscular sound, more defined and taut sound stage, and all of that - I also notice a clear and obvious degradation in the quality of the sound similar to that described by Vlad335. It is of course diffcult to convey without sounding pompous, but the best description I can come up with is that compared to the passive crossovers, with the DSP the sound completely loses sonic authenticity. With my analogue crossovers, a single note on a piano, or the striking of a cymbal, are satisfying sounds in themselves, but with the DSP it sounds muddy and blurred; the authentic musical texture is all gone. Mine isn't a particularly high end set up compared to some but to my ears the DSP can't compete with a decent analogue crossover.

Switching from passive to active is not a trivial excerise. I assume you measured the electrical response with the passive crossover? And then implemented your crossover in DSP and measured again to ensure it matched?

You know, to ensure that you weren’t comparing completely different filters and then making a comment on how the differences were due to passive vs DSP.

Michael

 

[Everett T]

Not sure if this thread is still active, but felt compelled to mention that I've had precisely this listening experience, in my case with the miniDSP 4x10HD. I'm using the DSP as an electronic crossover in converting from a passive to active configuration. My other equipment is QUAD, Kef, and Arcam. While there are evident improvements in the active configuration - a more muscular sound, more defined and taut sound stage, and all of that - I also notice a clear and obvious degradation in the quality of the sound similar to that described by Vlad335. It is of course diffcult to convey without sounding pompous, but the best description I can come up with is that compared to the passive crossovers, with the DSP the sound completely loses sonic authenticity. With my analogue crossovers, a single note on a piano, or the striking of a cymbal, are satisfying sounds in themselves, but with the DSP it sounds muddy and blurred; the authentic musical texture is all gone. Mine isn't a particularly high end set up compared to some but to my ears the DSP can't compete with a decent analogue crossover.

Maybe explain the process that you used to do the conversion, including equipment and what speakers.. It's not a simple FWIW.

 

[AldenB]

Switching from passive to active is not a trivial excerise. I assume you measured the electrical response with the passive crossover? And then implemented your crossover in DSP and measured again to ensure it matched?

You know, to ensure that you weren’t comparing completely different filters and then making a comment on how the differences were due to passive vs DSP.

Michael

Thanks for the response. I should say that technically this is way beyond my skills, but I've been working with an engineer who did all the detailed measurements and designed the filters and programmed the DSP. All the curves look fine so I think the difference I'm hearing is due to the DSP hardware. The sound becomes a bit compressed, a bit lifeless, not something you want to listen to for very long. It's an ongoing project but would be interested to know if anyone has has this experience and whether there are other aspects of the setup to consider

 

[Tangband]

Everything in the music chain makes things slightly worse in the sound . In passive loudspeakers, no matter how good, the crossover components makes the sound slightly worse. In an active loudspeaker, its the active filtering making the sound slightly worse , in this case the mini dsp .
Everything in the signal chain makes the music less transparent . From microphones , mixing/mastering in the studio, streamers at home and amplifiers and ofcourse - loudspeakers.
Digital crossovers that are REALLY good is not cheap . Unfortunately.

I have constructed some of my loudspeakers with dsp filtering and theres a lot that can make the sound worse if youre not careful.

 

[mdsimon2]

Thanks for the response. I should say that technically this is way beyond my skills, but I've been working with an engineer who did all the detailed measurements and designed the filters and programmed the DSP. All the curves look fine so I think the difference I'm hearing is due to the DSP hardware. The sound becomes a bit compressed, a bit lifeless, not something you want to listen to for very long. It's an ongoing project but would be interested to know if anyone has has this experience and whether there are other aspects of the setup to consider

So you don't know what he did, got it.

If it was me I would measure the electrical response at the driver terminals with the passive crossover in place. I would do this at a few different volume levels and hope that response stays pretty consistent. I would then import that frequency response for each driver in to REW and then generate biquads to match. With those biquads in place in the DSP I would again measure the electrical response at the driver terminals at different volume levels and compare to the passive crossover to ensure I was getting consistent performance.

I wouldn't even touch acoustic measurements until I had a good baseline that matched the active crossover electrically. If your engineer used acoustic measurements to match the passive and active crossovers it is definitely not an apples to apples comparison as there is much variability in acoustic measurements.

We haven't even talked about bias in sighted listening tests but there are a lot of variables to get consider when doing a conversion like this and commenting that the sound difference is due to DSP being inferior is dubious.

Michael

 

[Tangband]

So you don't know what he did, got it.

If it was me I would measure the electrical response at the driver terminals with the passive crossover in place. I would do this at a few different volume levels and hope that response stays pretty consistent. I would then import that frequency response for each driver in to REW and then generate biquads to match. With those biquads in place in the DSP I would again measure the electrical response at the driver terminals at different volume levels and compare to the passive crossover to ensure I was getting consistent performance.

I wouldn't even touch acoustic measurements until I had a good baseline that matched the active crossover electrically. If your engineer used acoustic measurements to match the passive and active crossovers it is definitely not an apples to apples comparison as there is much variability in acoustic measurements.

We haven't even talked about bias in sighted listening tests but there are a lot of variables to get consider when doing a conversion like this and commenting that the sound difference is due to DSP being inferior is dubious.

Michael

Ofcourse you can do it like that IF you want the active loudspeaker to sound exactly the same as the passive . The active approach has only benefits beyond the EMK area.

But often a conversion to active ( with lots of measurements ) makes the sound much better than the passive loudspeaker - because most passive loudspeakers are really bad constructed.

One of the great benefits with active filtering is that you often can make a better loudspeaker than the passive one, if you know what youre doing , ofcourse you have to do a lot of listening and measurements.

A really good passive loudspeaker sound almost as good as an active one. If they are near perfect in the construction.

 

[mdsimon2]

Ofcourse you can do it like that IF you want the active loudspeaker to sound exactly the same as the passive . The active approach has only benefits beyond the EMK area.

But often a conversion to active ( with lots of measurements ) makes the sound much better than the passive loudspeaker - because most passive loudspeakers are really bad constructed.
One of the great benefits with active filtering is that you can make a better loudspeaker than the passive one, if you know what youre doing , ofcourse you have to do a lot of listening and measurements

Obviously, but if you are making claims about DSP degrading sound you need to make sure you are actually comparing the same filter response!

Michael

 

[Tangband]

Obviously, but if you are making claims about DSP degrading sound you need to make sure you are actually comparing the same filter response!

Michael

Thats true.

 

[Lorenzo74]

Ofcourse you can do it like that IF you want the active loudspeaker to sound exactly the same as the passive . The active approach has only benefits beyond the EMK area.

But often a conversion to active ( with lots of measurements ) makes the sound much better than the passive loudspeaker - because most passive loudspeakers are really bad constructed.

One of the great benefits with active filtering is that you often can make a better loudspeaker than the passive one, if you know what youre doing , ofcourse you have to do a lot of listening and measurements.

A really good passive loudspeaker sound almost as good as an active one. If they are near perfect in the construction.

Thanks for the response. I should say that technically this is way beyond my skills, but I've been working with an engineer who did all the detailed measurements and designed the filters and programmed the DSP. All the curves look fine so I think the difference I'm hearing is due to the DSP hardware. The sound becomes a bit compressed, a bit lifeless, not something you want to listen to for very long. It's an ongoing project but would be interested to know if anyone has has this experience and whether there are other aspects of the setup to consider

With active speakers you can easily apply steep low pass filter (24-48db/octave) to the subs never achievable passively due to huge coils and expensive big caps.
With passive you typically have subwoofer leakage into midbass.

Then you cannot hipass the woofer at 80-100Hz to prevent high excursion unless you use many expensive and heavy coils and caps.

Finally the woofer to tweeter xover is an area where active excels with ease. A nice 24db/oct allows lower xo to the tweeter improving dispersion and waterfall in the 1-2 kHz regions while preventing nusty resonances from stiff woofer cones (alloy-fibers) in the 3-4kHz region…

Image the degradation of sound quality (increase of noise and distortion) when few watts has to go through meters of copper wires and laminated foils insides caps.

Maybe I will look like a bit provocative and agains legacy but there still someone advocating a passive XO network could be equal or better than tuned active one? With all the possibilities to adjust in the digital domain the response of drivers?

Don’t tell it to Martijn Mensink, Andrew Jones or Bruno Putzeys…

I would love to get @John Atkinson view on this… to my knowledge he’s among the few that have both objective and subjective data on this topic, beyond undisputed reputation.
Looking forward
My Best

 

[Pdxwayne]

With active speakers you can easily apply steep low pass filter (24-48db/octave) to the subs never achievable passively due to huge coils and expensive big caps.
With passive you typically have subwoofer leakage into midbass.

Then you cannot hipass the woofer at 80-100Hz to prevent high excursion unless you use many expensive and heavy coils and caps.

Finally the woofer to tweeter xover is an area where active excels with ease. A nice 24db/oct allows lower xo to the tweeter improving dispersion and waterfall in the 1-2 kHz regions while preventing nusty resonances from stiff woofer cones (alloy-fibers) in the 3-4kHz region…

Image the degradation of sound quality (increase of noise and distortion) when few watts has to go through meters of copper wires and laminated foils insides caps.

Maybe I will look like a bit provocative and agains legacy but there still someone advocating a passive XO network could be equal or better than tuned active one? With all the possibilities to adjust in the digital domain the response of drivers?

Don’t tell it to Martijn Mensink, Andrew Jones or Bruno Putzeys…

I would love to get @John Atkinson view on this… to my knowledge he’s among the few that have both objective and subjective data on this topic, beyond undisputed reputation.
Looking forward
My Best

The minidsp HD series do not measure that well....

For 2x4 HD, analog input measured even worse per Amir.

The issue is the overall sound quality based particularly on minidsp HD series. I have the 2x4 HD. Adding it to the chain added significantly louder hiss to my speakers.

Not only that... I tried it, again, a few days ago, comparing DAC to minidsp to amp, vs DAC (xlr out and not RCA out) direct to amp. I much prefer the sound quality of DAC direct to amp, even without the benefit of minidsp high pass the speaker....So, it is out of my chain again....like before....

 

[mdsimon2]

The minidsp HD series do not measure that well....

For 2x4 HD, analog input measured even worse per Amir.

The issue is the overall sound quality based particularly on minidsp HD series. I have the 2x4 HD. Adding it to the chain added significantly louder hiss to my speakers.

Not only that... I tried it, again, a few days ago, comparing DAC to minidsp to amp, vs DAC (xlr out and not RCA out) direct to amp. I much prefer the sound quality of DAC direct to amp, even without the benefit of minidsp high pass the speaker....So, it is out of my chain again....like before....

The 2X4HD and 4X10HD are nothing alike so not sure what you mean by "HD series". Different DACs, DSPs, ADCs, ASRCs, etc.

The 2X4HD and 4X10HD measure fine (especially given the price / functionality).

It is fine if you do not want to use it but don't put off others by spreading misinformation.

Michael

 

[Pdxwayne]

The 2X4HD and 4X10HD are nothing a like so not sure what you mean by "HD series". Different DACs, DSPs, ADCs, ASRCs, etc.

The 2X4HD and 4X10HD measure fine (especially given the price / functionality).

It is fine if you do not want to use it but don't put off others by spreading misinformation.

Michael

OK. My bad about assuming HD series are basically the same in term of performance....

I only see measurements for 2x4 here by Amir. Do you have a link for 4x10 measurements?

Anyway, my observations for hd2x4 are the same, from months back or from a few days back. Not good enough for my chain in my living room.

Note that it all depends on the room and chain. In my computer room, even non HD 2x4 works good enough with my 2.1 setup.