TOPIC: Can SHD do an 'effects loop"

Hopefully someone can help advise me whether the following setup is possible with the SHD unit.

What I would like to do is take the analog output from my phono stage, use the SHD to convert it to digital, send that digital out of the SHD to my mac (via USB).
Then do some processing in the mac and send it back to the SHD (via USB) and then use the SHD to do its magic (crossover and DIRAC) and then convert it back to analog with volume control for my amps.

So the path would be (stuff in red is in the SHD)

Phono stage >> Analog to Digital in SHD >> Digital out from SHD (USB) >>> mac >> digital out from mac >> Digital in to SHD (USB) >> crossover/Dirac >> digital to analog plus volume control >> amplifiers


As far as I can see, there is only one USB port on the SHD, so it would need to be sending signals both ways for this to work.

Does anyone know if the SHD can do such a thing?

The SHD has no USB output . So no, you won't be able to do what you have proposed.

Are you sure?

Page 29 of the manual says

The SHD Series processor sends its four output channels to the computer over USB. Click on the Input button in Audio MIDI Setup to see them. These can be used to monitor or record the output channels of the processor.

Sir Sanders Zingmore wrote:
Now that you've pointed that out - no . I was guilty of thinking in terms of connecting to a USB DAC rather than a computer there.

Great!
So the next question (or the original question ) is can it send and receive the loop via the same USB?

Alternatively if that's not possible, could I take USB out from the SHD and send digital back in via SPDIF (and still create a loop whereby the volume control/crossover/dirac acts only on the digital in)?

EDIT: another question I've just thought of: will the digital-out to the mac be "processed' (ie will it have Dirac/crossover applied to it)?
I don't want this, as I want to only apply filters after I've sent the signal back in to SHD

I believe USB out is Dirac processed of USB input so no. Technically USB out is Dirac processed of selected input, but if the selected input isn't USB the USB input isn't used.

entripy wrote:
I'm sorry but I'm not really sure I follow what you are saying.
In my case I guess there are effectively two inputs
1) the analog in to the SHD which I want to be converted to digital and send out to my computer (without any Dirac processing) and,
2) the digital that comes back in from my computer (which I do want processed with Dirac and crossover etc)

With analogue input selected USB output is already processed by Dirac and the USB input is ignored.

entripy wrote:
Ok, so it looks as if it won't work for me

Sir Sanders Zingmore wrote:
Indeed. Although the hardware would appear to support your use case I can't see them supporting it in the firmware unless its a very common use case. I personally believe the USB output should not be processed by Dirac but even that would only get half of what you want.

Hello,

I wouldn't want to divert the current subject (but my question is so close to the current topic that I'd rather not create a new one).

So can we have that ?

analog source -> [ shd analog input 1 -> shd digital out 1 ] -> some processor ->[ shd digital in 1 -> shd analog out 1 ] -> amplifier

Best,
Stéphane

I'm curious what DSP may be wanted that the SHD can't do?

I was thinking about that more in terms of future-proofing.

Like if there is an update of dirac live that can't be managed by the minidsp shd it would be still ok to use all other features (preamp + multi-in + pretty nice output dac) and add a dirac live pass with some external processor (maybe coming from minidsp actually) in the middle of the pipeline (but still being able to use the pretty good internal dac as the final output stage).