TOPIC: nanoAVR now shipping!

Dear All,

Just so you know that we've been shipping nanoAVR for the past week now. An exciting new move and we look forward to seeing all your neat setup posted in this section and showcase!

Devteam

Hello everyone!
I'm from Spain so forgive me for my bad english.

I,ve heard about this nanoAVR in another spanish forum called ForoDVD and I was so tempted for this product, because of its "simplicity". Obviously its a very sophisticated technology but I was searching for something like that, without the need of another amplifier on the outside for each speaker.
I have a 7.1 installation and I've never done anything similar to acoustic equalization, and I am learning now.
I have to say that I had to pay another 86€ for aduanes (it was like a shoot in xxxxx), and I had some problems during installation, but I want to write this to help another people:

I have an imac with 10.9.2, and i bought nanoavr and a umik-1.
I connected nanoavr to ethernet (it works like dhcp client), and mac plugin discovers it only when you turn it on (if it was already on, mac plugin doesnt find it). Nanoavr software doesnt let you to give him an static local ip, so I teached my home router to preserve a local ip to nanoavr's mac address. Now, everytime I open nanoavrs app, I fill its ip address, and it connects at first.

Another issue: into REW, I didnt find the way to configure it to recognize that nanoavr has 10 filters for each speaker (it only does five). Not configured as "nanoAVR", neither as "nanoAVR 96Hz".

Another "issue": nanoAVR came with firmware 1.01, but there is an update to 1.03. There isn't a way to update it on mac, and neither by ethernet. I upgraded it by usb in a windows pc.

And the last issue for nanoAVR: it seems not to accept an 1080p 24Hz input by hdmi from my Sony bluray (black screen and no sound). I disabled 24p exit and it works now.

About UMIK:

- It comes with a large usb cable, but it didnt work for me. Instead I used another similar cable and it worked well.
- imac recognized it but REW didnt. Its neccesary to download two free apps called LineIn and FlowerBed for virtualizing a sound device in wich do a bypass of the umik. REW recognizes that virtual sound device and in that way umik works with mac. This system its a bit far away for being user-friendly.

Now I'm trying to do my first steps into this EQ world and I am a complete clueless. My first attempts were horrible and I have realized how many I have to learn yet.

I am very happy with nanoAVR and Umik-1. They are very well products and I am pretty sure that they will do a very good job someday in my room. I expect to be helpful to you with this post, and my personal THANK YOU to miniDSP for this amazing product. I expect to see improvements in time in their software/firmwares about this product, and maybe a few "step-by-step tutorials for dumbs" like me for learning from zero without looking everywere for info.

Thank you from Spain.

@ Petatester,

Thanks for all the feedback. We always look for improving the miniDSP experience so we take your comments very well!
Here are some comments to help:
- We'll investigate the Mac issue you had with DHCP.
- REW with 10 filters @ 96k.Remember that this is a 3rd party app, free of charge, and we do have more than 15 plug-ins. It's quite impossible for John (writer of REW) to keep upgrading REW to keep up with all our plugins unfortunately. Best that you just create 2 x 5EQ files and copy paste them as text. We can ask John to make that section of REW more flexible (i.e. select the # of bands and Frequency).
- Firmware upgrade under Mac: Unfortunately we don't have a solution for this at this time. It's very hard to do that very low level (bootloader) upgrade. We plan to do it one day though...
- 1024 / 24Hz: Very good insight! Let us investigate.
- Step by Step tutorial. Lots of info here. Please have a closer look.
www.minidsp.com/applications/home-theater-tuning
www.minidsp.com/applications

Finally, thanks for your kinds comments and very glad to hear of you're having fun! Keep us updated maybe in the showcase section with your setup and how you're getting along for your measurements.

DevTeam

Thank you for your reply!

I didnt understand you about "we always look for improving the miniDSP experience...".After reading that and "devteam" title.... ¿Are you from nanoavr dev team? . If that's true, I only want to say that I am very proud of chosing nanoavr. All the issues I wrote weren't critics. They were only "installation points I noticed"

I have a few graphics, but I didnt know how to read them so far. For now I did two EQ tries, and I forgot the first time to disable my Pioneer VSX-2020K's MCACC EQ. The result was a complete maddness. I didnt hear any movie so bad... Of course, I am pretty sure it was my fault or faults during EQ.

First try:


The second try was better. With AVR's EQ disabled the graphics were different, but sound resulted without bass, a little poor.
That try was past sunday and I didnt try it again.

Second try:


As you will see, that kind of graphics seem impossible to plain to me....

@ petatester

hhehehe.. no worries at all. All your comments were very good feedback as we said before. We love to hear back from our customers!

For your setup, I wonder if you should just focus on the Front L&R and Sub first. After all, these are the most likely to reproduce the music/punch the most. Easiest is for you to follow up that good app note here: www.minidsp.com/applications/home-theate...ning/bass-management

Keep us updated

devteam,

I've had the same issue with OSX (10.9.2) and every time I open the plugin I must type the IP address again. I'm not sure this is DHCP problem though as that is simply the protocol for the nanoAVR to get an IP address from the router and has nothing to do with the software running on the computer. I've done the same workaround as petatester and just set the router to assign the same IP to the nanoAVR and use that first.

Cheers,
Chris

Ok. I have a lot of GQ-work to do.
I have to try to load two eq files from REW into nanoAVR on each speaker (I wonder how....second file wouldn't disable first one?)
I have to try to focus on those speakers only.
I have a lot of info to read...

Easiest to load 2 set of EQs (5 x bands @ 96k) is to use a text editor like Notepad and do it in 2 steps.
REW 1~5 for first step / Copy EQ file from REW to the miniDSP
For bands 6~10, just sweep again the REW to see how it's able to figure out the remaining bands.

Another easier option is not to use the REW export feature. Just manually set the number of bands to 10 and then manually copy the settings of Frequency/Gain/Q.

Have Fun!

DevTeam

devteam wrote:
Hi! I've been searching around but I didnt find the way to set it that way.

For now I have been playing with nanoavr manually (focusing in front scene), copying results from REW and it has been funny . I can say that results are similar between my Pioneer receiver's auto-MCACC and the ones I reached with nanoavr (after comparing them, I switch off Pioneers EQ). Of course I am sure that I can goal much more with nanoavr, but it will take me long.

Equalization is resulting to me a hard way, but it returns satisfaction. I started this because I tought it was easy. For those who think like me, dont worry. Step by step you will find the way.

A pair of questions:
mic meassures are always to be taken with high volume?

Is there any way to load rew's mic meassures into nanoavr interface, to view them behind PEQ graphics? It would be helpful.

Hello again!
I am entering step by step in this world:



This reads are with no eq in Pioneer AVR and Pure Sound mode


And those are readings after auto-eq with REW:



And those are the same readings but with Pioneer AVR in THX mode and old MCACC EQ active:


As you can see, I still have better results with Pioneer's EQ active, but nanoAVR's work is appreciable. In last escenario, with Pioneers EQ active, if I change to an empty memory, It sounds much worst.
Finally I found that setting REW for a "generic" equalizer, it lets me to have 10 filters, so I set them manually after into nanoAVR's soft. Am I doing something wrong with this?

When you talk about nanoAVR's plugin, are you talking about nanoAVR's program based on Adobe Air, or am I missing something?

Something to fix: I dont know if it is something particular about my unit or a general issue, but sometimes, when connecting to nanoAVR with your software, pops up a window saying that a new nanoAVR has been found and forces you to re-load its memories o reset it to factory defaults. It's not a problem for me, because I have backups, but its weird. It was running well before that...
I used to switch off all my hardware's power every day before going to bed. Will it lose its memory with that?

Thank you for your replys and I will continue working on this until being able to switch off Pioneer's EQ.

Hi petatester, one suggestion when posting measurement graphs is to use the Capture (camera) button, then you can save and post just the plot.

In your graphs, the center channel seems to be much higher than the rest. I have my center set at the same level but with a bit of a boost at 4 kHz to give some presence to dialogue. However as a starting point, I could suggest first focus on the front left and right. Get them to sound OK (maybe try stereo content e.g. CD). Then do the center and match level, then the surrounds.

Thank you for your suggestions, John. I dont know even nothing about this world of measurements, so I apreciate every info.
I will try what you said too.
I didnt realize that there was that camera option into REW... . I use imageshack for so long... that I am used to it (and I supposed that forum will apreciate not to store all the images, am I wrong?). I do the captures with MacOS capture function.

Hello again!
I have been busy this month measuring a lot of times with my mac and my Umik-1, and I had a lot of troubles with my system volume, because it was too loud (REW needed it).
Yesterday I found it was a new update to beta 21 of REW, and it fixes it!!! I can now measure it at normal volume. And REW now recognizes Umik directly without SoundFlower and Input software! Hurra!!! And I can say it measures much better than before!

This is my last graphic (REW answers it cannot be improved after filtering it, and thats the best I reached for now). There are L and R speakers close one to other, central speaker higher again, and subwoofer. Surround speakers arent there.



I start feeling comfortable with this nanoAVR It sounds very well!
Now I only need a fix to 24Hz issue I told you (and maybe a firmware upgrade procedure for MacosX if possible )

petatester wrote:
Just a short note to say that there is an updated firmware now available for the 24Hz fix thanks to the help of one community member able to send us his logs.
Have a trial at it. It's available under the Userdownloads section. FW rev 1.12

Thank you very very much for remembering me!
A few days ago I downloaded and installed the new nanoAVR plugin with bass management and upgraded the plugin to 1.5, wich is into that plugin´s firmware folder. By the way I am very pleased with the new plugin. Thank you!

I didnt realize that FW 1.12 was available... Can I install 1.12 when 1.5 is installed, or am I confused?
I have just tried to setup my bluray to 24Hz and I can see that I have still the inital problem (no audio and black screen) so the installed firmware doesnt got that fix.