TOPIC:

To use Dirac 2.x the SHD needs an uninterrupted connection while editing target curves. I need a 5 meters USB cable for that. My 5 meters printer cable connection is terribly unstable and therefore is unusable.
I bought a Deltaco active USB cable. But this cable also doesn't make a stable connection and is therefore unusable.
Strangely when I use a 1,5m Audioquest USB cable combined with a very cheap 1,5m extension cable the connection is absolutely stable. However 3 meters is to short for my purpose.

Anyone better experiences with 5 meters USB cable?

I found Dirac 2.x very unreliable with 5m USB cables that worked perfectly with Dirac 1 for a year. I tend to think there's nothing wrong with the USB cables and its just another bug in Dirac 2 which is on the whole, very unreliable compared to DLCT. Unfortunately that's just what happens when you completely rewrite an application. 2.3.0 at least seems a bit better than 2.2.3 so I guess they are slowly moving in the right direction. I avoided the problem by buying a laptop to use shorter cables

Then again, a new SHD plugin update was posted a few days ago which apparently fixes USB bridge bugs. Sadly it won't run because of certificate errors for me.

You are right. Dirac 1.x didn't give me any problems with the 5 meters USB cable. Dirac 2.x seem to need an uninterrupted connection. Once broken you cant even save your work. Reconnecting doesn't work either.

I did a test with the UAC2 control panel open. This showed a continuously connecting and disconnecting SHD. It flickered on and of every second.

For me this makes Dirac2 very un user friendly.

I did communicate these problems with with Dirac Helpdesk. They responded the workings of Dirac 2.x won't change. For connection problems they advised me to contact MiniDSP helpdesk. Witch I did. Probably will receive a reaction comming week.

I did manage to do a calibration with Dirac 2.3 on one of my two SHDs last week although Dirac 2 gives an error on startup which means it can only use the first preset. I'll try to calibrate the other room/SHD next week and see what happens there and then contact support.

To be fair to MiniDSP, the technical changes between Dirac1 and Dirac 2 were immense and required huge changes in the plugin and supporting programs which work behind the scenes. I'm hoping the latest update, when fixed, may help quite a bit.

One reason I haven't progressed as quickly as I hoped is that fortunately the DLCT calibrations still sound great and I much prefer listening to music to banging my head on software updates. I figure it'll all get sorted out eventually.

The active USB cable I bought did not solve the connection problem. Then I realised I had an 15 year old powered USB hub laying around. Using the standard 5 meters USB printer cable and the powered USB hub it works!
It's more of a hassle using 5m cable, hub, power cable connected to a wall outlet and 1m USB cable from the hub to my laptop. But I'm happy it works.

The active USB cable I bought did not solve the connection problem. Then I realised I had an 15 year old powered USB hub laying around. Using the standard 5 meters USB printer cable and the powered USB hub it works!
It's more of a hassle using 5m cable, hub, power cable connected to a wall outlet and 1m USB cable from the hub to my laptop. But I'm happy it works!

I did manage to do the other room cal on my 2nd SHD and althought it was fraught and took much longer than it should because of USB unreliability even with a 3m cable it did work. It took much SHD rebooting before I got to the end. Something in the communication seems to get the SHD in a state where they no longer communicate. Dirac 2 generally seems to lose commubication in level setup, once I start doing measurements it seems much more reliable, almost as if the measurement position loop has better exception recovery.

Before using that 3m cable I was using two 5m cables with a powered hub in the middle between two floors of the house. Very messy but no less reliable than a single 3m cable.

Since then MiniDSP have posted SHD updates which supposedly help USB reliability so I look forward to testing them

At least my oldest SHD does let Dirac 2 see all 4 filter slots. Support are currently examining a flash dump from my newest SHD to try to figure out why it only sees a single filter slot. If they can figure that out I can do many more room calibration tests.

One thing, don't use the volume knob while connected. Only use the volume sliders in Dirac software.

I'm not sure I've ever used the volume knob, always the remote controls I think.

I think that's causing the problem. The Dirac manual says you need to control the volume in the Dirac software when setting up measurements. After I did that I never had problems anymore.

I don't change volume when in Dirac, so that's not my cause of the problem

Excellent, support sent me a new exe which has solved Dirac 2 only seeing one filter slot so now I can do 3 more calibrations with different lengths of usb cables and check reliability.

Just did a room calibration with a 5m USB cable with Dirac 2 with all latest software. No problems at all, went as smoothly as DLCT for the first time ever for me. Only took 20 minutes compared to the 2 hours of rebooting and retrying last time.