TOPIC:

I have a buddy who I'm building a set of speakers for for Christmas. So I' halfway through the build and was considering upgrading the 2x4HD i bought for him to a DDRC-24 which I see requires some licensing hoops to jump through. My buddy isn't the most tech savvy, but the Dirac Live software is user friendly enough that I think he can muddle his way through it when he moves or sets the system up in a different location.

My question is, is the I assume the licensing activation something that is locked to the unit, then the ability to use Dirac Live software will always work with that unit? Can I just give him a USB stick with the software install, license file and hardware and he can just "next->next->next" and be good to go? Or will this in some way be locked to me, my laptop or anything else? I'd hate to gift something that become an expensive paper weight if I get hit by a tuck or something else unfortunate.

Also, in with that question, can I turn over my rights to download the base 2x4HD plugin to a third party?

Is it possible to "downgrade" a former 2x4HD after a firmware update to a DDRC-24?

It is - but why would you? I've used mine as 2X4HD and then converted to DDRC-24 and the DDRC-24 gives me far superior results for far less effort than I ever managed with the 2X4HD.

DON'T DO IT! See my recent post about the seeming impossibility to "upgrade" a 2x4hd to the ddrc-24. That operation is not for the faint of heart and certainly not for someone who is not tech-savvy.

snovosel wrote:

DON'T DO IT! See my recent post about the seeming impossibility to "upgrade" a 2x4hd to the ddrc-24. That operation is not for the faint of heart and certainly not for someone who is not tech-savvy.

@snovosel

Sorry to hear that you have some issues doing the update.. Not sure you case is general this being said as the 2x4HD to DDRC_24 has been done by countless customers without any problems.. Feel free to contact us if you have any issues. we'd be happy to help.

Thank you to everyone who hijacked my question to post their own. No really, I don't mean it at all. But thanks all the go make your own thread.

Also I'd like to thank MiniDPS for answering the hijackers questions, but no my own.

Thank you both, and thank you all.

Thank you snovsoel. I didn't really need my question answered.
Thank you devteam for ignoring my questions.

Pro.

Pro.

I'm having a lot of troubles too. After two weeks trying the "upgrade" to work, I can't get the Dirac running properly, since it doesn't recognize the 2X4HD upgraded to DDRC-24: "device not found", even while the device is running in my computer (mac mini, Mojave) and playing music in my system.
Worse, my previous beautiful EQ's done with REW for the 2x4HD cannot be loaded in the upgraded DDRC-24, so my "upgraded" device is run as a simple DAC right now (and a very basic one on that), unless I do new REW Eq's. But even if so, the "upgraded" DDRC-24 doesn't have EQ for the input channels, as my device had previously to the "upgrade"; only for the four outputs.

I'm about to give up. The mails sent to minidsp with a detailed description of the problem, including the download I've done and the symptoms "no device found" informed by the software received the answer: "*download the software* (the same I was reporting that was malfunctioning) *and read the manual* (the same I described that I've downloaded, even the page numbers in my mail)". More mails also to Dirac, questions in users groups, etc. Truly a nightmare, and I'm now worse than how I started.

And so, yet another weekend I'll have to wait expecting an answer on how to solve this problem, if it ever will be possible at all. Btw, minidsp brought this "personalized attention" to the next level: even the serial numbers can't be provided automatically... Several friends that were eager to see the device working just gave up on buying it, after they knew about my experience.

So, Tony-J, thanks for your reply, but that's why I'm thinking on this downgrade...

I have exactly the same problem.

I cannot connect to the unit in the DDRC-24 plugin after upgrading firmware, uninstalling old plugin and installing new plugin - all found in the user download section under Dirac 2.0.

"cannot connect to dsp - please plug in th eboard"

devteam wrote:

snovosel wrote:

DON'T DO IT! See my recent post about the seeming impossibility to "upgrade" a 2x4hd to the ddrc-24. That operation is not for the faint of heart and certainly not for someone who is not tech-savvy.

@snovosel

Sorry to hear that you have some issues doing the update.. Not sure you case is general this being said as the 2x4HD to DDRC_24 has been done by countless customers without any problems.. Feel free to contact us if you have any issues. we'd be happy to help.

Hello "Devteam", I presume you mean well and that you are in fact "happy to help" but there must either be a cultural or language disconnect that is causing a failure to communicate in a way that reaches an outcome we as customers seek.

You say, (paraphrasing) "sorry you're having issues", "countless others don't", but "contact us if you're having issues". Who those "others" are only you know, yet I find your attitude interesting and it would be laughable if it wasn't at the expense of those of us who, whether one or one hundred, for whatever reason, cannot seem to get your products to function as advertised.

Your statement is not perceived by Western audiences as helpful but instead as patronizing and evasive. I alert you to this, without malice, in the hope that it will lead to increased understanding of our mutual interests. You say you want to "help". Well then, HELP!, please.

Wondering out loud, were Mathias Johansson, CEO at Dirac, to be made aware of these (and other) interactions with MiniDSP devteam members, would he and his team be willing to risk damaging the goodwill he's built on account of one tiny sliver of exposure or licensing revenue his company derives from yours? Just wondering.

So, back to the situation at hand, what step-by-step actions should be taken to diagnose and remedy the connectivity "issues" that've been brought to your attention? Providing that information is how you "help" us.

You are currently posting in the community support which is generally for non technical type issues, enquiries etc. etc.

If your issue cannot be resolved by fellow minidsp users then you need to escalate to the minidsp support team.
Select Support and then Contact us - faq

Or try the following link
support.minidsp.com/support/home

And yet, if one views prior responses by the DevTeam elsewhere on this Forum, one sees that it/they have in fact provided community members technical support which created the expectation that it/they'd be capable of handling a "does not connect" issue. My reaction and comment had less to do with a lack of DevTeam-specific support and more to do with the nature and wording of their response.

Nonetheless, your point has been made and I concede it.

In fact, this lack of support of this very basic problem is amazing. I had to dig in this very same forum to find the issue. Luckily, it was a mail from the very Dirac that redirected me to the correct place within this forum.
The issue is with the tcp ports used by Dirac AND minidsp DDRC-24; which is a very particular behavior of the software, and one should expect from minidsp support team to be the first thing to ask users to check, instead of suggesting them to "download the software and read the manual". Specially when my own mail already said that I DID downloaded the software, and I was describing the misbehavior within that software!

I finally solved the problem running the DDRC-24/Dirac from two different Macintoshes, and only AFTER I asked the service provider to open the ipV4 TCP ports in question (5000, 8080, 11113, 11115, 11117) that the software uses. AFAIK, those ports are normally closed in most ISP routers, so it is a bit surprising that Minidsp team says that "countless users" are not having problems. This is not a political poll where the votes having 50%+1 wins the election, Minidsp... If some users have problems, and given the nature of the problem it should be a lot of them, you MUST provide a proper answer. You seem to think that if 49.99% of users are having this problem.. well, they are loosing. This is textbook bad support!

So, even after opening the ports in my ISP router, I still had problems. Finally I got it: port 8080 was used by another software in my Mac mini (a former server), and not in my MacBook Air laptop. And so, Dirac DOES FIND DDRC-24 HARDWARE in that laptop and not in the Mac mini. And that, only once the ports are opened in the router.

Given the very particular nature of the problem, derived by a very focalized issue of the design of the software they are supporting, It is AMAZING that this answer is not provided by minidsp a minute before the issue is posted by users. In fact, I'm still waiting for minidsp support mail with further questions, posted las Friday, and still not answered.

Here is the problem in my Mac mini:
calvino:~ xxxxxxxxx$ sudo lsof -i -n -P |grep TCP
launchd 1 root 7u IPv4 0x385587a73e6d61a7 0t0 TCP *:22 (LISTEN)
launchd 1 root 9u IPv6 0x385587a73e6d1ca7 0t0 TCP *:3031 (LISTEN)
...
httpd 137 root 4u IPv6 0x385587a73e6d2de7 0t0 TCP *:8080 (LISTEN)
httpd 137 root 5u IPv4 0x385587a73e771827 0t0 TCP *:* (CLOSED)
httpd 137 root 6u IPv4 0x385587a73e773e27 0t0 TCP 127.0.0.1:81 (LISTEN)
kdc 150 root 5u IPv6 0x385587a73e6cffe7 0t0 TCP *:88 (LISTEN)
...

As you can see, port 8080 was used by process "httpd", thus Dirac/minidsp can't use it, and so, can't find the DDRC-24

And here the same in my MacBook Air, where minidsp does work, because the 8080 port was free. The ports taken by minidsp/Dirac are in bold:

MacBook-Air-de-Pablo:~ xxxxxxxxxxxx$ sudo lsof -i -n -P |grep TCP
Password:
apsd 78 root 15u IPv4 0xadcf00aba6383da3 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50445->17.57.144.36:5223 (ESTABLISHED)
apsd 78 root 16u IPv4 0xadcf00aba6383da3 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50445->17.57.144.36:5223 (ESTABLISHED)
rapportd 234 xxxxxxxxxxxx 3u IPv4 0xadcf00abae5d3da3 0t0 TCP *:50429 (LISTEN)
rapportd 234 xxxxxxxxxxxx 4u IPv6 0xadcf00ab9b2fadcb 0t0 TCP *:50429 (LISTEN)
rapportd 234 xxxxxxxxxxxx 12u IPv4 0xadcf00abae17dda3 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50429->192.168.100.63:53393 (ESTABLISHED)
rapportd 234 xxxxxxxxxxxx 14u IPv4 0xadcf00abae17d41b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50453->192.168.100.4:49168 (ESTABLISHED)
rapportd 234 xxxxxxxxxxxx 15u IPv4 0xadcf00aba638341b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50429->192.168.100.12:57168 (ESTABLISHED)
identitys 244 xxxxxxxxxxxx 35u IPv6 0xadcf00ab9b2fb94b 0t0 TCP [fe80:b::ad4:8df7:444d:82b0]:1024->[fe80:b::926d:a53:5321:9c2e]:1024 (ESTABLISHED)
identitys 244 xxxxxxxxxxxx 36u IPv6 0xadcf00ab9b2fb94b 0t0 TCP [fe80:b::ad4:8df7:444d:82b0]:1024->[fe80:b::926d:a53:5321:9c2e]:1024 (ESTABLISHED)
identitys 244 xxxxxxxxxxxx 37u IPv6 0xadcf00ab9b2fa80b 0t0 TCP [fe80:b::ad4:8df7:444d:82b0]:1025->[fe80:b::926d:a53:5321:9c2e]:3891 (ESTABLISHED)
identitys 244 xxxxxxxxxxxx 38u IPv6 0xadcf00ab9b2fa80b 0t0 TCP [fe80:b::ad4:8df7:444d:82b0]:1025->[fe80:b::926d:a53:5321:9c2e]:3891 (ESTABLISHED)
cloudd 256 xxxxxxxxxxxx 404u IPv6 0xadcf00abb902480b 0t0 TCP [2800:300:6261:39a0::5]:50545->[2620:149:a41:501::6]:443 (ESTABLISHED)
cloudd 256 xxxxxxxxxxxx 408u IPv6 0xadcf00aba6f3a80b 0t0 TCP [2800:300:6261:39a0::5]:50624->[2620:149:a41:501::6]:443 (ESTABLISHED)
Mail 88370 xxxxxxxxxxxx 29u IPv4 0xadcf00aba838872b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50443->64.233.186.108:993 (ESTABLISHED)
Mail 88370 xxxxxxxxxxxx 33u IPv4 0xadcf00aba5a7472b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50452->17.36.205.69:993 (ESTABLISHED)
Mail 88370 xxxxxxxxxxxx 77u IPv4 0xadcf00aba5a7472b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50452->17.36.205.69:993 (ESTABLISHED)
Mail 88370 xxxxxxxxxxxx 79u IPv4 0xadcf00abab9a1da3 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50468->17.36.205.69:993 (ESTABLISHED)
Mail 88370 xxxxxxxxxxxx 82u IPv4 0xadcf00aba638472b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50538->64.233.186.108:993 (ESTABLISHED)
Mail 88370 xxxxxxxxxxxx 83u IPv4 0xadcf00aba838872b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50443->64.233.186.108:993 (ESTABLISHED)
Mail 88370 xxxxxxxxxxxx 84u IPv4 0xadcf00aba638472b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50538->64.233.186.108:993 (ESTABLISHED)
Mail 88370 xxxxxxxxxxxx 85u IPv4 0xadcf00abab9a1da3 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50468->17.36.205.69:993 (ESTABLISHED)
AirPort 96182 xxxxxxxxxxxx 35u IPv6 0xadcf00abb902704b 0t0 TCP [fe80:5::18e3:2318:f745:91f8]:50496->[fe80:5::9272:40ff:fe05:6527]:5009 (ESTABLISHED)
AirPort 96182 xxxxxxxxxxxx 36u IPv6 0xadcf00abb902424b 0t0 TCP [fe80:5::18e3:2318:f745:91f8]:50502->[fe80:5::f2d1:a9ff:fe0c:10ba]:5009 (ESTABLISHED)
AirPort 96182 xxxxxxxxxxxx 43u IPv6 0xadcf00abb9025f0b 0t0 TCP [fe80:5::18e3:2318:f745:91f8]:50499->[fe80:5::9272:40ff:fe05:6527]:5009 (ESTABLISHED)
AirPort 96182 xxxxxxxxxxxx 44u IPv4 0xadcf00aba838741b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50506->192.168.100.15:5009 (ESTABLISHED)
WhatsApp 96797 xxxxxxxxxxxx 90u IPv4 0xadcf00abae5fda93 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50448->157.240.204.60:443 (ESTABLISHED)
minidsp_d 98608 xxxxxxxxxxxx 3u IPv6 0xadcf00aba6f3a24b 0t0 TCP *:5000 (LISTEN)
minidsp_d 98608 xxxxxxxxxxxx 10u IPv4 0xadcf00aba8386a93 0t0 TCP *:8080 (LISTEN)
minidsp_d 98608 xxxxxxxxxxxx 16u IPv6 0xadcf00aba6f39c8b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:5000->192.168.100.13:50637 (ESTABLISHED)
DiracLive 98611 xxxxxxxxxxxx 35u IPv6 0xadcf00aba6f3b38b 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50637->192.168.100.13:5000 (ESTABLISHED)
DiracLive 98611 xxxxxxxxxxxx 36u IPv6 0xadcf00aba6f3bf0b 0t0 TCP *:50642 (LISTEN)
DiracLive 98611 xxxxxxxxxxxx 41u IPv6 0xadcf00aba6f3c4cb 0t0 TCP 127.0.0.1:50643->127.0.0.1:50642 (ESTABLISHED)
DiracLive 98611 xxxxxxxxxxxx 42u IPv6 0xadcf00aba6f3ca8b 0t0 TCP 127.0.0.1:50642->127.0.0.1:50643 (ESTABLISHED)
DiracLive 98611 xxxxxxxxxxxx 47u IPv4 0xadcf00abae5d50b3 0t0 TCP 192.168.100.13:50644->192.168.100.13:8080 (CLOSE_WAIT)
MacBook-Air-de-Pablo:~ xxxxxxxxxxxx $

BTW, I someone can advise me about how to avoid that 8080 port usage by the process "httpd", I would be very grateful, since is that computer, and not the Air the one connected to my system.
Hope this helps to the "countless other users" having this problem.

Hi all, thought I'd weigh in to update my experience with the DevTeam support so far, and also to provide some technical information that might be useful to other PC-users who experience the dreaded "Cannot connect to the DSP" error.

First, I am finding that the Support-Ticket DevTeam are in-fact helpful. They are walking me through a series of diagnostics step-by-step .

What caused some consternation early on is the disconnect between an expectation of support by the DevTeam who monitors this Community Forum versus what one gets via creating a support ticket which funnels one to presumably a more focused support DevTeam.

As I noted above, the DevTeam that monitors tech questions on this Forum has previously provided sophisticated, in-depth technical assistance to requestors. They probably meant well but they shouldn't have done that. In fact, they probably shouldn't respond to any tech question here other than to refer inquirers to create a support ticket.

I am in the US; East coast to be specific. The DevTeams are located in Hong Kong. Thus, they are +13 hours ahead of me time-wise. Their office hours are M-F 9am-5:30pm local Hong Kong time. So, that means that if I need tech support, I can only expect them to respond to me when it's 8pm Eastern time. My request is unlikely to be the only one they are working on, so naturally I'm in a queue. Because they only work via email, there is a time-delay from when they read what I've sent to sending their response to my follow up of that response. Back and forth it goes. But that back and forth can consume an hour or two because I'm not sitting at the PC waiting for emails to come in, and so suddenly I've found that it's 10pm and now I have to get ready for bed. So, in short, I have about a 2-hour window per day.

Because the DevTeam support is 13 hours ahead of me, if I need support for a weekend project, I know now that I'd better get that support ticket in Thursday evening my time in order to have any chance of getting a response before my weekend begins.

It's not the ideal situation IMHO (especially given the near-instant support experiences from so many other companies) but it's turned out to be workable. I simply had to recalibrate my support expectations. This is my first brush with MiniDSP as a company/support entity and so I'm learning as I go along.

With regard to the "Cannot connect to DSP" issue, the DevTeam and I have gone down the checklist making certain that every possible adverse software-hardware scenario has been dealt with.

We finally came to an interesting consideration that I could not have predicted:

"Browse to: C:\Program Files (x86)\miniDSP\DDRC-24\add

Click on MiniDSP_net4.exe

It will open a little dialog box. Can you now connect under the plugin?

If it works, close "MiniDSP_net4.exe", rename "MiniDSP.exe" to say "MiniDSP_net35.exe" and rename "MiniDSP_net4.exe" to "MiniDSP.exe" and run the plugin again."

Well, I browsed to C:\Program Files (x86)\miniDSP\DDRC-24\add and clicked on MiniDSP_net4.exe. However, no dialogue box opened.

Then I browsed to C:\Program Files (x86)\miniDSP\DDRC-24\add and clicked on MiniDSP.exe, and the dialogue box (Bridge box) opened, and then I was able to connect.

While I wait now for the team to review my latest efforts, I went rogue and renamed MiniDSP.exe to MiniDSP_net4.exe (and renamed MiniDSP_net4.exe to MiniDSP_net35.exe) which now permits me to connect to the DSP normally (via the DDRC-24 icon on my startup screen).

So, everything appears to function as it should. But again, I am waiting to hear back from the DevTeam to see if my renaming convention is appropriate or not. I'll update here as necessary.

I did notice that when opening Dirac Live multiple messages appear in little pop-up windows in the upper right-hand corner of the application that read: "Network Unavailable" (appearing four times/four boxes); and "Failed to set gain on Device (network error)"(appearing twice/two boxes); and "Connected to DDRC-24" (appearing once). However, none of those messages impacts in anyway the use of Dirac Live 2.0 or the DDRC-24 plugin. Those messages pop up for a few seconds and then disappear. I'm not even certain to which "Network" dirac live refers but I've asked DevTeam support for clarification.

FWIW

I had problems to connect to my device (device not found) .....I simply made a Hotspot-Tethering with my Smartphone which uses his own access to internet and connected to my laptop. it worked. ..... Made my measurements saved and enjoyed .....