Sonnie
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Updated testing is complete: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...sp-shd-review-updated-dsp-dac-streamer.18681/
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Review and Measurements of miniDSP SHD DAC, DSP And Streamer
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
Dear SHD users. I'm considering one of these units as the only viable option to fit a unit which currently houses a slimline AVR with the very basic level of Audyssey.
I'd expect the SHD to be my steamer for Spotify and/or Tidal, take a stream from my TV and also Xbox for BluRay. Obviously it'll do the room correction bit very well and improve upon what I have now by some margin.
Once setup, it needs to be fiance proof! She enjoys streaming Spotify and appreciates quality sound too.
Is it all fairly easy to use? Can I switch between inputs without too much hassle? Can you adjust lip sync etc?
Lastly, I'm looking to use my two Adam Audio active speakers and a Kef sub woofer with this unit. Do you forsee any issues?
Thanks for any assistance all.
I'd expect the SHD to be my steamer for Spotify and/or Tidal, take a stream from my TV and also Xbox for BluRay. Obviously it'll do the room correction bit very well and improve upon what I have now by some margin.
Once setup, it needs to be fiance proof! She enjoys streaming Spotify and appreciates quality sound too.
Is it all fairly easy to use? Can I switch between inputs without too much hassle? Can you adjust lip sync etc?
Lastly, I'm looking to use my two Adam Audio active speakers and a Kef sub woofer with this unit. Do you forsee any issues?
Thanks for any assistance all.
nothingman
Senior Member
Very easy to stream Spotify Connect and the SHD even jumps to the LAN input when you start playing something. Beyond that inputs are super easy to switch abe the screen is easy to read. I wish they let us rename the inputs for easier layman usage (eg stop confusing my wife with “spdif” and let me rename it “tv”) but everyone learns.
There’s already a lot on lip sync on the “updated” measurements thread (see link just above). In short, no, the SHD itself can’t help there. It has about 24ms of lag itself but some users like myself don’t notice. It’s too system dependent to tell you if it’ll work since it’s mostly a question of how fast your tv can deliver an audio signal. My old Samsung tv had controls for this sort of thing but my TCL Roku tv doesn’t, but thankfully it spits out 2 channel pcm quickly.
There’s already a lot on lip sync on the “updated” measurements thread (see link just above). In short, no, the SHD itself can’t help there. It has about 24ms of lag itself but some users like myself don’t notice. It’s too system dependent to tell you if it’ll work since it’s mostly a question of how fast your tv can deliver an audio signal. My old Samsung tv had controls for this sort of thing but my TCL Roku tv doesn’t, but thankfully it spits out 2 channel pcm quickly.
It cannot, PCM is indeed the only way .
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The unit is fiancé proof once setup with only a volume up and down. If she needs to do the setup it’s fairly complex and technical. All music control for mine is done from Roon which is super easy.
nothingman
Senior Member
Yeah I’ll just add that it takes a fluent Win/Mac desktop user for setup. Nothing about any of the software is particularly pretty, but it works.
I have the SHD in my main audio room which I love. In our living room, I went with passive speakers and the NAD M10. For the living room setup, I find it really good. It has HDMI/Arc and lip sync adjustment, dirac, amp is based on the hypex nc252 module. It is roon certified and does a nice job for what i need it to do. The screen is nice a well too displaying album art when doing roon. Not to discourage you from the Minidsp in any way, but the M10 is a nice option if you are doing passive speakers.
Appreciate your thoughts, thanks. Currently using active speakers and unlikely to change them any time soon.
I am also interested in bi-amping speakers and running two subwoofers. Excuse my ignorance but why can't the 1&2 and 3&4 XLR go to power amplifiers for bi-amping and the RCAs to be used for two subwoofers? Can you still use crossover and all features with this set up? Many thanks
You can absolutely do that, but you have the same signal on the 4 XLRs as on the 4 RCAs - only 4 output channels to do crossovers on.
But in your case, if you're willing to feed your mains full-range (their woofers not low pass filtered), then you can use those same two channels (say 3 and 4) off the RCAs to also feed the subs. The mains' woofers lows will roll off naturally and you can then try to match that with subs' own crossover setting, assuming they have one. No control over subs delay with SHD this way tho. Mid/highs (say 1 and 2 XLR) on mains would get proper treatment on the SHD, you could high-pass them since they'd be on non-shared outputs.
I guess it would work, but ideally you'd want another pair of channels to really tweak the low end.
This all seems very tricky. Much cleaner to add another MiniDSP 2x4 after the SHD. It would take full analog RCA signal in, and output to sub 1 and 2 and main left and main right woofer.
I'd say your suggestion is more tricky
but you're right that it would give full eq and delay control over the 6 stereo pairs.Late to see this, but I have the exact same setup. My subs are dual Rythmik F15HP. Wondering what you chose and whether you are still liking this setup.
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Love it, everyday driver for music
Followed AudioJunkie's initial setup on Dirac and it is a really good system. I have my expensive phono stage on the analog side (Herron VTPH-2A) and it is just super transparent. I think most people worry about the wrong things - the ADC is quieter than the phono and the benefit of Dirac on my 2 channel is without saying. I can see keep this configuration for a while and maybe doing a few configs for different types of music and preference curves.
I am aiming to do the same for my nc400 monoblocks. Do you have any pictures of the finished cable (with the 12v trigger cable hanging off of it) and/or soldering?Ok, a quick drawing of what I did:
View attachment 66601
data sheet for the relay:
https://omronfs.omron.com/en_US/ecb/products/pdf/en-g6k.pdf
I modified this cable by soldering the relay in the output XLR connector:
https://www.bax-shop.nl/xlr-xlr/devine-vb2015-xlr-male-2x-xlr-female-1-5-m
View attachment 66602
The relay used is exactly the one used already inside the SHD to which audio.
Its a good relay for high quality audio signal switching.
You need to make this cable for every channel you want to bypass/switch.
In my case I needed only 2 as I used the summing L R inputs of my SVS subs to sum the channels of SHD and AVR together.
I added mute commands to my Harmony remote activities for both my AVR and the SHD to make sure only one is generating a signal.
Have fun soldering it together
I don't know if this is applicable to your situation, but I used this device to make a trigger from the Benchmark DAC3 power on a Raspberry PI4 that provides a Roon endpoint.
When I used a simple relay, there were some clicks, my EE friend think it needed additional grounding.
I switched to this programable device to detect the trigger power, wait a few seconds and then power on the RPI.
- Rich
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