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Room correction for Tidal through computer to DAC without Roon or DSP hardware?

Jmudrick

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Personally I'm very happy with $199 PW-Link. Includes mic and free Anthem Room Correction. Don't see reason to make life more complicated or expensive. I use wireless connection mostly. From PC does require a USB-optical bridge, I use my old <$100Topping S10 for that.
 

Kal Rubinson

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how about those tracks that are 44.1khz/ 88.2kHz based? Do they get resampled to 48/96 khz? Thanks
If set up correctly, the VST will handle all standard bit-rates up to 196kHz without resampling.
 

phoenixdogfan

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If set up correctly, the VST will handle all standard bit-rates up to 196kHz without resampling.
Just set JRiver to do no resampling. Set Windows for exclusive mode at 192/24 and set Tidal for at least 96/24. Vst plug in should then be able to handle everything natively. Check processing work flow in JRiver to verify. Losing MQA is no great loss. Archimago has done an extesive investigation. It's actually l.t. Redbook quality. You will never miss it.
 

Cote Dazur

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I am completely new to room correction but I understand it is perhaps the single most important thing that will drastically improve sound quality a HiFi system.
The most important factor is the recording, the second most important is speaker placement/ seat position within the room, then the room acoustic, if after making those right/optimum, you feel you still need to apply DSP/EQ to your music, then yes, it will most likely have more impact, hopefully positive, than changing from item a to item b in your hardware set up.
 
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JensenW

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The most important factor is the recording, the second most important is speaker placement/ seat position within the room, then the room acoustic, if after making those right/optimum, you feel you still need to apply DSP/EQ to your music, then yes, it will most likely have more impact, hopefully positive, than changing from item a to item b in your hardware set up.
Indeed. I am hoping to use some DSP to optimise my setup since my seat position cannot be changed (sofa cannot be moved out from the back wall, but luckily the room is at least fully carpeted with some soft wall fixtures and a few bass traps along one wall. Sound is not bad but could use a tighter bass and some sibilance control. I have a well-regulated piano in the room and notice some frequencies especially loud ringing when seated in some positions, so DSP could help, since family harmony dictates that no further acoutic panels be installed.
 
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JensenW

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Thanks! Nearly missed REW, which is completely free! Will Tidal and other music players (eg. HQplayer/ music bee/ VLC player/ playing YouTube in MS Edge browser) go through Equalizer APO automatically once I set up Equalizer APO or do I need to do some settings for each?
 

HarmonicTHD

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Thanks! Nearly missed REW, which is completely free! Will Tidal and other music players (eg. HQplayer/ music bee/ VLC player/ playing YouTube in MS Edge browser) go through Equalizer APO automatically once I set up Equalizer APO or do I need to do some settings for each?
They will go through EQ APO once setup correctly.

If you are on a budget or to test and don’t want to commit to Roon or Jriver yet. The cheapest solution (all free) for Windows is EQ APO with the Peace skin. And for Raspberry Pi it is Moode which includes Camilla DSP and Parametric EQ. IMHO.
 

Katji

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Yes, it takes over the Windows APO situation (the documentation explains it ok), and so it applies to the system, the OS.

APO : Windows Audio Processing Object, DSP for Windows audio streams.




Now someone can kindly tell me whether or not JRiver installs an APO, similarly, and does it mean JRiver would have to be loaded by Windows startup / does that part of it run as Windows service, or what.
And if not, then how would your system EQ apply to audio via web browsers and other audio/video players.
 

RosalieTheDog

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With regard to JRiver, I tried it out once. Do I remember correctly that routing sound through its EQ introduces a small delay (making it good for music, not for games/video)? Perhaps I made a mistake.
Thanks! Nearly missed REW, which is completely free! Will Tidal and other music players (eg. HQplayer/ music bee/ VLC player/ playing YouTube in MS Edge browser) go through Equalizer APO automatically once I set up Equalizer APO or do I need to do some settings for each?
It applies EQ to all Windows audio. You have to forego bitperfect and exclusive mode in Tidal though, exclusive mode to DAC bypasses windows resampling and EQ.
 
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JensenW

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They will go through EQ APO once setup correctly.

If you are on a budget or to test and don’t want to commit to Roon or Jriver yet. The cheapest solution (all free) for Windows is EQ APO with the Peace skin. And for Raspberry Pi it is Moode which includes Camilla DSP and Parametric EQ. IMHO.
Wonderful. I'm completely green to room correction and I have no network streaming/ sharing need, so a free/ low budget solution I can apply to equipment I already have will be best.

I also have an iPad. Is there an easy room correction solution I can use on iPad too, since a google search finds REW not compatible with iPad/ IOS?
 

Katji

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You could use some sort of equivalent to EAPO...if there is some way to use the REW data to set it up.
 

ppataki

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Now someone can kindly tell me whether or not JRiver installs an APO, similarly, and does it mean JRiver would have to be loaded by Windows startup / does that part of it run as Windows service, or what.
It installs a WDM driver, will look like this:

1655224021434.png


You just select it as an output device in Windows and that's it :)
Then sound will go through its DSP engine if Jriver is open

Wrt to delay there is an option in Jriver to minimize that:

1655224127550.png


With that I do not have any visible lipsync issue any longer playing YouTube or whatever in Chrome
 

ppataki

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@JensenW
If you have a multiway system I would strongly recommend Dirac vs REW since Dirac will be able to time-align your drivers too (even for a passive system) - this will clearly be visible on your step response curve
You can start playing around in REW and use Equalizer APO (both free of charge) and then you can try Jriver (free trial) with Dirac (again free trial) then decide whichever option stays
 
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JensenW

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My setup is 2 speakers and no sub. I guess I had better stay with Windows. Don't want to repeat the room corrections with different OS platforms. I'm looking at this Mini PC which costs ~350 dollars which I can hide easily.


Should be good investment if it is powerful/ fast enough to run EQ APO/ REW, and I remote control it from my android phone.

Found a cheaper one, the GMK Nucbox 5 (Nucbox5 / Intel® Celeron N5105 / Intel® UHD Graphics / LPDDR4 8GB 2933mhz / 256GB SSD / Window 11 Home), USD250 only.
 
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bloodshoteyed

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Found a cheaper one, the GMK Nucbox 5 (Nucbox5 / Intel® Celeron N5105 / Intel® UHD Graphics / LPDDR4 8GB 2933mhz / 256GB SSD / Window 11 Home), USD250 only.

just a friendly tip, if you're looking at pc's like that, forget any celeron/pentium cheap cpu's, please
go for at least an i3 or a ryzen

you'll thank me later
 

phoenixdogfan

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My setup is 2 speakers and no sub. I guess I had better stay with Windows. Don't want to repeat the room corrections with different OS platforms. I'm looking at this Mini PC which costs ~350 dollars which I can hide easily.


Should be good investment if it is powerful/ fast enough to run EQ APO/ REW, and I remote control it from my android phone.

Found a cheaper one, the GMK Nucbox 5 (Nucbox5 / Intel® Celeron N5105 / Intel® UHD Graphics / LPDDR4 8GB 2933mhz / 256GB SSD / Window 11 Home), USD250 only.
If you are going to run streaming video such as Netflix, you might want to be sure your Window's box supports rendering HRD10, otherwise you'll be stuck with a machine that only does 8 bit colorspace. The Mele Quieter 2 which I bricked after 5 weeks use (and returned) did not support HDR 10 and it would not even do Netflix in 4K without badly stuttering (juddering?). It had a dual core Celeron J4125.

My Dell I3 got put back in the rack, even though it's over seven years old, because it, at least, could do 4k video and run fairly quiet.

Ultimately I'm looking to replace it with an Mac M1 Mini. I think even 8g memory will do the job for that one.
 
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JensenW

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just a friendly tip, if you're looking at pc's like that, forget any celeron/pentium cheap cpu's, please
go for at least an i3 or a ryzen

you'll thank me later
Thanks for your tip and that from @phoenixdogfan , so the problem with lesser CPU is mainly with the video?

Is the USB audio output quality also worse with such cheap CPU's, like compared to an i5 PC or with an iPad/ Android all playing the same Tidal audio track?
 

HarmonicTHD

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Wonderful. I'm completely green to room correction and I have no network streaming/ sharing need, so a free/ low budget solution I can apply to equipment I already have will be best.

I also have an iPad. Is there an easy room correction solution I can use on iPad too, since a google search finds REW not compatible with iPad/ IOS?
Regarding IOS. I used to use our iPads/iPhones to stream to a RasPi running Moode via UnPnP/DLNA client and mConnect (iOS App). mConnect allows you to stream Tidal and Quobuz. The Room EQ is handled by Moode/PEQ/CamillaDSP running on the Pi. mConnect establishes the stream btw the Pi and the Tidal/Qobuz server and acts as a “remote”.

BTW. mConnects (DLNA, UnPnP) also streams Quobuz, Tidal to eg the Denon AVRs.
 
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