TOPIC:

Hello,

I've been poking around with the idea of picking up a MiniDSP SHD Studio device but have some questions hopefully someone can answer.

1. If someone were to purchase a second license for Dirac Live and use a different computer to perform all Room measurements and corrections could they then Export those completed filters/files from the second Computer and Import them into the MiniDSP SHD Studio device for processing and usage going forward?

For anyone wondering why someone would do such a thing its because it appears we are forced to use the $5 UMIK MIC (No Offense) with the MiniDSP SHD Studio (and probably others also) which is a real shame. I'm sure there is some good reason (probably marketing related) for this but as a potential customer I can tell you its a real letdown. I've got a high dollar Earthworks M30 Mic and ZDT MIC PreAmp that I would much rather rely on for the in room measurement accuracy of my speaker/room combo. It seems silly to trust the data gathered by a $5 MIC when measuring a 5 figure pair of speakers. Anyway, just wanted to express my frustration with this forced usage of UMIK1 on an otherwise very stellar appearing device such as the SHD Studio.

2. How intelligent is the built-in "mixer/router" of the Studio device? Can it, for example, route a signal from the AES/EBU Input out the USB Port and that signal then be recorded via some other piece of software? If that is possible, at what stage does can the recording take place? By this I mean, can it happen either BEFORE or AFTER Dirac corrections are applied?

3. Is it possible to feed the post processed signal leaving the SPDIF OR AES/EBU Output port of the Studio back into something like REW so Before/After DSP/Room Correction overlays could be viewed within REW to see your corrections?

Thanks for any further details that can be offered

3: just measure with REW as normal (with SHD in signal path), and use 2 presets: 1 with the corrections, and 1 with no corrections. the 2 measurements and overlay

In answer to your questions:
- Unfortunately the PC version of Dirac Live project won't be compatible with miniDSP Dirac platforms (not cross compatible for projects).
- Not sure where the animosity toward the UMIK-1 (not 5USD btw.. comes from but that's our choice to insure known results accross the whole board and prevent the worse (i.e. had lots of customer using dumb mics, skype headsets, SM58, cheap mics) rather than having to deal with driver/latency issues with a 3rd party interface.. It's a choice we unfortunately can't modify. With the UMIK-1 being approved by Dirac and used on a lot of platform and not exactly a new measurement mic for all our Dirac customers for the past 5years raving of results, we don't agree with the statement that it's a the culprit and potential for your system to go down..
- The SHD Studio is a 2 ch playback, 4 x ch recording interface. i.e. OUT1-4 are fed back to USB audio.
- We've never tried but I guess that you could try with USB audio as explained above?

DevTeam