Mini DSP With Dirac Room Correction.

Posted by: tonym on 07 August 2015

I've just ordered a Mini DSP Nano with inbuilt Dirac room correction. This takes 7.1 PCM from my Oppo BluRay player, applies Dirac, then passes the HDMI audio/video to my Anthem processor. The latter uses ARC room correction but based on my experiences using Dirac with two-channel the latter is much more sophisticated.

 

I'll have fun setting it all up and there's lots of different possibilites; for instance setting up a series of different filters depending on what type of movie you're watching.

 

Once it's up & running I'll report back. Incidentally, far cheaper buying direct from the USA.

Posted on: 10 August 2015 by Felty99

Tony,

 

Very timely as I've recently been looking into the MiniDSP range of Dirac Live products.

 

It seems the nanoAVR is limited to PCM audio via HDMI, so for me the DDRC-88A looks a slightly better fit in my system being fed by the Oppo 105 analogue outputs and then onto my power amps so that a Sky box running into the Oppo can benefit from the Dirac solution as well as Blu-ray material. 

 

Have fun and keep us posted.

 

Richard.

Posted on: 10 August 2015 by tonym

Hi Richard,

 

I currently run Sky HD & Amazon Fire TV through my Oppo 103D so I can utilise the Darbee video processing. This will work very nicely with the DSP Nano, set on the Oppo's HDMI output then into my Anthem AV Receiver.

Posted on: 15 August 2015 by tonym

The Nano DSP turned up yesterday, so pretty quick delivery. It's a very neat unit indeed. So this morning I spent a happy couple of hours setting it up. First I had to set the Oppo to output PCM rather than bitstream, then I had to check the distance settings and sound levels for each of the 8 channels.

 

I had a bit of fun trying to register the Dirac software (RTFM) but then it was a question of pugging the unit in between Oppo & sound processor, connecting up my Macbook Pro to the unit with a USB cable, connecting up the MiniDSP microphone, downloading the mic's individual configuration file and running the program. This has excellent step-by-step instructions but takes a while as it generates a series of frequency sweeps for eight or so different microphone locations. That done, when I attempted to load the filter the program generated into the unit I was informed there were too many channels - I'd not set the number of speakers (RTFM). So I had to run it all again...

 

Here's a screenshot of the frequency sweep, showing the ideal correction to be applied :-

 

 

So what does it sound like? Well, better than I imagined it could - it's transformed the surround sound to make it much more coherent. Very impressive!

 

I've room to add another three filters (you can alter the curves to suit your tastes) but for now I'm content to enjoy it as it is.

 

Posted on: 15 August 2015 by Brian Dodson

Tonym

 

Is yours the Nano-AVRHD?

 

Seems like some of their products operate purely in the digital domain and some in the analog domain.  The pure digital devices are a clever way to add additional DSP for pretty cheap.

Posted on: 15 August 2015 by tonym

Hi Brian, it's the Nano AVR-DL. I use the Dirac system in my stereo system & it's working even better with multiple speakers.

Posted on: 15 August 2015 by rackkit

Hi Tony. Could that unit be slotted into a system that uses the AV2?

 

Cheers,

 

Rack.

Posted on: 16 August 2015 by tonym

Hi Rack, not that one, it's only HDMI in & out so all in the digital domain. Have a look on the MiniDSP website, they've got lots of alternatives.

 

I had a good listen last night & decided it's not quite right - sound's a bit odd and rather dull. So I read the manual...Damn, gonig to have to run the calibration again. I loaded the wrong microphone configuration file, didn't have the mic. in the right positions, and didn't tweak the frequency responses for each speaker before applying the correction. Still, all good fun.