Room Correction without loosing MQA and DSD

I find that my hifi room naturally sounds great with no Electronic Nannies. No live nannies either, as my wife could have an issue with that as our kids have grown and moved out. Tall sloped ceiling, walls and windows far enough away from the speakers to render "first reflection" issues irrelevant, furniture and a large rug...it does sound like a room I suppose, but then so what? Consequently, to get away with no electronic "room correction" other than moving speakers and subs around (I do have a rarely used Schiit Loki for full disclosure), you should simply live in my house. Come on over!

I don't  use roon glad the hear that Dirac has worked well for you. 

@martin-andersen

Would love to have more details about your room and pictures of the charts.

I spent maybe 30 minutes with Roon filters, never attempted convolution, didn't seem to need it.

I am using Roon to unfold then the signal goes to the miniDSP. I have been using MANY hours playing with filters in REW export to Roon. But one set of measurements with Dirac and I smoked every filter I had made.Dirac really works wonders

Roon has probably the best MQA capabilities I know of. They managed to unfold 48kHz to 96kHz, and pass it to the DAC WITH EQ changes for further MQA decoding.

That is, if your DAC has MQA, you can use all of Roon's features and still keep the full high resolution unfolding.

Best,

E

I see where you said it only passes 24/96 sorry I didn't  catch that.

I am a bit confused I have been looking at the miniDSP SHO Studio which doesn't  have a dac, if I connect to my network through ethernet doesn't the Studio just pass the signal to the dac? If the dac can do MQA and DSD you're saying the signal for those aren't sent to the dac through the Studio.

Sorry, just reread, and now understand what I think is a typo.

You want to keep DSD AND Tidal MQA while adding room correction.

OK, you can do this with Roon, but it won’t do the room analysis part for you. You have to collect the data yourself and either adjust Roon’s parametric EQs or use their convolution engine. Both require you to use your own mic and something like Room EQ Wizard or OmniMIc.

Best,

E

I now have the MiniDSP SHD Studio and it was the right decision. Much tighter and more precise bass and better stereo image. The tonality is also better because I am using the Dirac default house curve 

What does ’loosing’ mean? Same as an 'intergrated' amp? Or a speaker with weak 'base?' 

@martin-anderson Read some of the comments by @mitchco and read some of his articles posted on the site. I just bought his book on setting up DSP via convolution files. I hope to get back into reading it once my job stuff is under control. He also has recently started a company that remotely generates the convolution files given some measurements of your room. I am going to try to do this first myself and see where it takes me.

https://www.amazon.com/Accurate-Sound-Reproduction-Using-DSP-ebook/dp/B01FURPS40/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=accurate+sound+reproduction+using+dsp&qid=1577922452&sr=8-1

I bought a lifetime subscription to ROON 6 months before they released the product. It has turned out to be a great purchase. I have to thank the son of PS Audio’s owner. I met him at an audio show and he said do not buy any audio client software until I have a look at ROON. He said that will be the dominant player.

@yyzsantabarbara thanks for the link. VERY interesting article. And I am using roon

I guess that I have to accept it and hope that the SQ improvement from Dirac Live are greater than DSD and MQA.

IMHO, yes.

@kalali I know but if I invest in the miniDSP the I will be unable to use a day that have MQA / DSD.

And I hope that PS Audio soon will make a new Direct Stream Junior.
I was so lucky that I could audit the PS Audio DirectStream with the bridge for one week. And it was the best DAC I have ever heard. But to expensive for me.

Your current Orchid DAC is neither MQA-enabled nor outputs anything higher than 16/44.1. Are you only looking for something with a built in DAC? 

So DSD is out of the picture. And Roon can do the first unfold to 96khz that's the minDSP's max resolution.

I guess that I have to accept it and hope that the SQ improvement from Dirac Live are greater than DSD and MQA.

Thanks for the inputs. And happy new year🌟

You can always add room correction after the DAC, but perhaps reducing the final resolution.  In a bad room well worth the tradeoff.  I mean, what good is DSD if it sounds bad?

Since room issues are usually bass issues, a DSP in the sub channel only can be a good compromise.

AFAIK, there is no way to do DSP/convolutions on DSD without a conversion to multibit. 

The NAD C658 just don't have a very good sounding DAC. I had it for a week and my Orchid DAC is much better

Depends on what kind of product you are willing to purchase. The NAD M10 integrated amp has Dirac built in and is MQA compatible. Same with the NAD C658 preamp/DAC. Lyngdorf's TDAI-3400 was supposedly going to be patched to include MQA capability but I heard that months ago and nothing since. 

I am looking into Convolution files inserted into my ROON server to do DSP. You measure the room and then use some software to fit a few established performance curves. One curve for each file. 

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/bits-and-bytes/a-new-listening-room-part-two-acoustics-speakers-dsp-r863/

Read the comments to this linked article. 

I am not sure about MQA and DSD with Convolution files since I am in the baby steps of my research.

the miniDSP can only do 24bit/96khz when the signal passes though then the MQA signal has been removed/broken 

Not quite following. All you need for MQA is a compatible DAC.