Trinnov ST2 Hifi or Amethyst Preamp. Expensive but they work really well.
Digital room correction
When will there be a simple, affordable 1 box solution where digital room correction can be dropped into any 2 channel system? A number of years ago, I owned a McIntosh MEN220 which was a really cool solution, it worked reasonably well and for the time it was introduced, it checked most of the boxes off. The digital technology inside that piece of gear was state of the art 10 years ago (24/96) but when is there going to be an update or an alternative solution?
I don’t really keep up with this stuff so please forgive me if there has been something introduced. I see a good part of this type of technology now in most decent subwoofers. It would be really cool if you could drop something into a tape loop on a preamp if it exists. Thanks in advance.
I don’t really keep up with this stuff so please forgive me if there has been something introduced. I see a good part of this type of technology now in most decent subwoofers. It would be really cool if you could drop something into a tape loop on a preamp if it exists. Thanks in advance.
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Regarding the SHD, Hans Beekhuyzen has a review on YouTube. You may be able to find more reviews around. I know that Kal Rubinson has reviewed some of the other miniDSP products for Stereophile. miniDSP is known for lower-cost solutions to room correction. The SHD line looks like a step up from older miniDSP products, and I suspect it would work very well between a G1 and your DAC. The SHD Studio has Dirac room correction, considered one of the best available algorithms, with a lot of flexibility. By using the all-digital version, you are leaving the conversions to the gear you own already. Deer Creek Audio is a stocking US dealer. If you're in Europe, you can buy more easily from miniDSP directly. Mike P.S. I own the SHD (full version with DAC), which we use in our TV system. I have not had a chance to try it in the main "audiophile" system. |
Thank you for all of the replies. is The Minidsp SHD Studio a high quality piece? Does anyone have this? Does anyone use other products from Minidsp and is their service/support/build quality quite good? I would feed it from my Auralic Aries G1 and into my Lampizator DAC. Is this company up to the task in a high quality system? I could certainly bypass it by feeding from the G1 directly to my Lampizator dac as I do now via usb. I like the idea of staying in the digital domain but I just am not familiar with the company. |
For an all-digital system, the miniDSP SHD Studio should suit your needs. It is digital in, digital out, and can be dropped into a system while leaving the rest of it intact. For a system with analog sources, it’s more complicated, because there have to be ADC and DAC stages somewhere, so dropping a box into "any system" may not be the optimal way of doing this. It reduces the number of conversions to use DSP that is built into a DAC-preamp, like the DSPeaker X4, Anthem STR, or miniDSP SHD (not the Studio version), to name just a few. You mentioned sample rate. I recently got the Anthem STR Preamp as my third or fourth preamp with DSP. The DSP sounds cleaner than previous models to me. I don't know how much of that is due to using 192 kHz as the DSP frequency, and how much is due to other improvements over past models. A long-distance friend with the X4, which I believe does DSP at 96 kHz, says that it, also, sounds better than older units to him. |
BTW - I should have added that the MAC Men220 is a implementation of Lyngdorfs RoomPerfect. This feature seems to be not being available anymore from Lyngdorf as a single room correction only unit. MAC still sells the MEN220. Here is a good review of the Linn SELEKT DSM that I think explains really well the capabilities of the SPACE OPTIMPIZATION feature available on the Linn. https://www.soundstageaustralia.com/index.php/reviews/282-linn-selekt-dsm-katalyst-network-music-player I learned something new today from this thread, the SELEKT DSM has the following:
https://www.linn.co.uk/sources/network-music-players/selekt#selekt-dsm |
The most popular 2-channel gear seem to be the new preamps with a DAC | preamp | Room Correction all built into 1 unit. The companies with these popular units do not seem to have a room correction only unit. Lyndgrof used to have one but I no longer see it on the web site. Some Room Correction gear (preamps) I have looked at include: Anthem STR, DEXQ, Linn SELEKT DSM, and Lyngdrof 3400 (integrated). I was also looking for a unit that was separate from a preamp or integrated but have not come across one that seems popular. |