I am open to any dirac "endpoint" but have been directed to the SHD Studio.
It looks like that is limited to 96kHz.
my guess is that I could connect my pc (or hifirose rs130 in the future) to the usb input on the shd studio. The output would probably need to use the spdif or aes-ebu to the topping dx9.
It looks like it also supports tidal connect so I might be able to connect the shd studio directly to my network via the ethernet port.
the rel 31 sub is currently connect via the amp speaker outputs per rel's recommendation. It looks like I could change the sub connections to connect to one of the outputs of the shd studio if I wanted to play with those settings.
so I have narrowed my questions to the following (thanks to everyone's help):
1. mahler123 mentioned that the minidsp that he has applies DSP up to 24/192. Which minidsp product is able to do that? the shd studio looks like it is limited to 96kHz:
Digital Signal Processor 32-bit Floating point Analog Devices SHARC ADSP21489 / 450MHz Internal sample rate: 96kHz
2. the dx9 dac's spec show that the spdif and aes-ebu have the same limits: up to 24/192
is there a recommended choice between the 2?
3. does dirac further limit the DSP to 48kHz regardless of the shd studio specs? ex. are the specs for the shd studio of 96kHz referring to their own processing vs dirac?
4. are there any other dirac endpoints that might get better results than the minidsp shd studio?
thanks again for everyone's help!