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I think I have the one that can use the Microsoft surface but to be honest I’m looking at setting it once and not really playing with it long term. I have got an external DAC to replace the MSB, I bought a Weiss which apparently has a 10mS delay, a lot better than the 500mS of the MSB.  I haven’t tried Dirac yet, I wanted the room treatment in place first.  I did that on Sunday, I’m finding it a bit too quiet so I’m planning on some diffusion and then I’ll run room correction.  I did some scans with REW and the treatment so far has made an enormous difference.  One wall is nearly all windows so I have curtains along there and it sucks too much from the top end, it’s really noticeable now due to the ceiling treatment.

As for standby power consumption, that’s not an issue.  I turn it all off at the power outlet when not in use.

You guys can open up the mini DSP ,  and replace the  switch mode supply with a linear supply.   It's really not that hard... If you have any experience with this sort of thing.  if you guys want a schematic or something I'd be happy to DM  one.   With my new linear supply connected,  I measure a very small 0.86 mV pk/pk of Ripple+Noise  when operating the unit..   I never measured the switching supply... But I have to imagine it's probably putting out north of 200mv pk/pk at full load.    Most meanwell supplies generally put on anywhere between 50 and 200 millivolts pk/pk.  Now that being said, there is a very small improvement in sound quality when using analog inputs and analog outputs... But when going USB in and digital coax out , there is almost  no difference whatsoever In terms of sound improvement.   The reason being is because there are using  additional switching DC to DC converters further down the line from the main power supply.   To fully clean things up you would almost have to start from the ground up. So unless you want to  do a major overhaul You really,  won't get a lot of improvement.  Looking back on it, I changed out the supply in my unit simply because I had an extra one.  I was building something else and I had an extra power supply that had  four different voltage outputs. So all I had to do is pop in the  regulators and that was that.  If I would have known how miniscule the amount of sound improvement actually was I probably would not have bothered.   Overall they're pretty good units, and pretty complicated pieces of gear in terms of programming. You are  better off using it as a processor going digital in and digital out, Feeding a highend DAC with a better analog stage and save yourself the hassle of changing the power supply on the mini DSP.  As a processor it does a fantastic job and that's its primary function, in my opinion. 
 

rortmanns wrote:

I haven’t tried Dirac yet, I wanted the room treatment in place first.  I did that on Sunday, I’m finding it a bit too quiet so I’m planning on some diffusion and then I’ll run room correction.  I did some scans with REW and the treatment so far has made an enormous difference.  One wall is nearly all windows so I have curtains along there and it sucks too much from the top end, it’s really noticeable now due to the ceiling treatment.

By too quiet do you mean too dead sounding? As in overdamped such that the decay times are too short? I experienced that with too much acoustic absorption and actually right now I'm two-thirds the way through making bass traps that are entirely hardboard covered so that they don't absorb higher frequencies, to provide the decay-time head-room for some early reflection point absorption without hopefully ending up with too dead a sound. Like you I also have curtains down one side wall that have a notable impact on high frequency decay times. Much of the time I like too keep them shut to keep heat in/out but it may be I need to think of opening/closing them being an acoustic tuning factor too.

Re. Dirac Live, I strongly encourage you to try using it only over the low-bass frequency range as well as full-range. 

Yes, I did a scan before treatment and after and there’s a 20-25dB drop in the top end.  I also use the windows to help with temperature insulation.  I always found opening the curtains helped the sound quality because th either side is all hard walls and doors.  I always intended ro build some diffusion but naively thought I might get away without.  My ceiling panels are 100mm with 100mm air gap (12 of 2’ x 4’), my walls have 200mm panels with 200mm air gaps (16 of 2’ x 4’).  My room is 7.3m x 5.4m x 3.1m. I’m going to build some 300mm thick panels at some stage but my bass is actually quite good now and my waterfalls are looking pretty good.  I did everything without calibrating the levels on my laptop, didn’t have a SPL meter but that arrived today so I’m calibrating tomorrow and redoing the measurements.  Then Ill work on the MSO.  I’m disinclined to do too much because these speakers are going and new ones will be here in a couple of weeks.  They may not need subs at all, I’m hoping.  Even with just absorption the room is so much better, it’s just a little too dead.  All my treatment is concentrated in the corners for bass improvements and I have a coupe of panels at the first reflection.  I’m going to remove the first reflection absorption and they may help.  I’m planning on making quadratic diffusers.  I’m also looking for some 2 dimension flat diffusers that look like plywood with slots cut in them to cover some of my absorption to avoid so much too end suppression, I haven’t found a design for them.

The treatment has been the cheapest and biggest improvement I have ever made with my system.  I will try Dirac but I needed the laptop calibrated first and I wanted the MSO complete.

rortmanns wrote:

Yes, I did a scan before treatment and after and there’s a 20-25dB drop in the top end.  I also use the windows to help with temperature insulation.  I always found opening the curtains helped the sound quality because th either side is all hard walls and doors.  I always intended ro build some diffusion but naively thought I might get away without.  My ceiling panels are 100mm with 100mm air gap (12 of 2’ x 4’), my walls have 200mm panels with 200mm air gaps (16 of 2’ x 4’).  My room is 7.3m x 5.4m x 3.1m. I’m going to build some 300mm thick panels at some stage but my bass is actually quite good now and my waterfalls are looking pretty good.  I did everything without calibrating the levels on my laptop, didn’t have a SPL meter but that arrived today so I’m calibrating tomorrow and redoing the measurements.  Then Ill work on the MSO.  I’m disinclined to do too much because these speakers are going and new ones will be here in a couple of weeks.  They may not need subs at all, I’m hoping.  Even with just absorption the room is so much better, it’s just a little too dead.  All my treatment is concentrated in the corners for bass improvements and I have a coupe of panels at the first reflection.  I’m going to remove the first reflection absorption and they may help.  I’m planning on making quadratic diffusers.  I’m also looking for some 2 dimension flat diffusers that look like plywood with slots cut in them to cover some of my absorption to avoid so much too end suppression, I haven’t found a design for them.

The treatment has been the cheapest and biggest improvement I have ever made with my system.  I will try Dirac but I needed the laptop calibrated first and I wanted the MSO complete.

This isn't really the right place for a proper discussion on this but a 20-25 dB reduction in high frequency SPL is crazy and not at all anything I've come across before. My own experience (in a smaller room) was of an overly dead sound but with virtually no loss in SPL at all. Maybe 1 dB sort of level. It was all about reduction of reverberation time for me. However, you've added A LOT of absorption. You may want to look into limited frequency range absorbers as I described above, to absorb low frequencies but not high frequencies. Commercially I'm talking about the likes of GIK bass-traps with their 'Flexrange Technology', but this is basically just hardboard covering as I've been making for myself.

As I said, I haven’t calibrated the levels on my laptop yet.  I only got my spl meter delivered yesterday.  I’ll get a better idea of things when I redo measurements.  There isn’t too much absorption, the system sounds very good now, it’s just a little dead and that will be fixed with some diffusion.  It’s never sounded as good as it does now.  The sound stage is just so wide and there’s no boominess at all.  The waterfall plots are very good and even the room modes are vastly improved.

rortmanns wrote:

As I said, I haven’t calibrated the levels on my laptop yet.  I only got my spl meter delivered yesterday.  I’ll get a better idea of things when I redo measurements.  There isn’t too much absorption, the system sounds very good now, it’s just a little dead and that will be fixed with some diffusion.  It’s never sounded as good as it does now.  The sound stage is just so wide and there’s no boominess at all.  The waterfall plots are very good and even the room modes are vastly improved.

It sounding too dead is essentially the definition of having too much absorption, at high frequencies.

That may prove to be the case but I believe that the main issue with high frequencies is the 7m x 3.1m of heavy curtains used too keep out summer heat, the room improves a lot with the curtains open.  I’ve only done half the job so far.  I have a bunch of diffusion to go on the back wall and on the first reflection point.  If I need to adjust the absorption its easy for me to do but I knew going into this that room treatment was a two part process of adsorption and diffusion.  Much harder to build diffusion.  I will move the absorption from the first reflection point and double up the bass traps with those panels.  I’ve only just installed all this so Im still experimenting with it.  

rortmanns wrote:

That may prove to be the case but I believe that the main issue with high frequencies is the 7m x 3.1m of heavy curtains...

I said there was too much absorption and a contribution to this comes from the curtains. Opening the curtains is a way to reduce absorption.

Doubling up panels as you suggest is another why to reduce high frequency absorption as it will reduce the exposed surface area. Re. using diffusers at early reflection points not that they'll operate over a narrower frequency range than absorbers and you need to not be too close too them for them to be effective. Good use of diffusers is a complicated subject I won't pretend to be an expert in though!

I don’t really know anything yet.  I only fitted them on on the ceiling onSunday and positioned them around the room over the past few days.  I knew going in that I needed diffusion, it’s just much harder to build.  I’ve got to source materials for them.  It’s 40 deg C here tomorrow, the curtains aren’t really an acoustic driven element.  I’m only just beginning the journey here.  I’ve done some calculations on diffusers with some of the modelling tools available and with the diffusers I intent to build I need to be at least 6ft from the diffuser which is easily accomplished as the room is 5.4m wide (17 1/2 ft).  I’m nearly 10ft from the back wall.  

Also an observation a friend of mine made was that he didn’t think it was over-damped at all, he thinks it’s just because of what I’m used to hearing.  My other room is much bigger (12.8m x 6.5m) it has a tiled floor.  I’ll take my time assessing and listening in here.  It’s certainly fabulous for home theatre, I watched a movie this afternoon.