TOPIC:

Hello to everyone,
I'm Simon and I'm very happy to join this community, i'm new to these products and honestly I don't know which one to choose, I only know that I need room correction, with Dirac or something else.
My equipment:
I have an integrated amplifier and I want to keep using his built in preamplifier section;
I have digital music on my nas;
I have a streamer with Moode (similar to Volumio) temporarily.

What I need:
A very good quality DAC with or without built in streamer;
Integrated Dirac room correction if possible, or just an equalizer to tune up sound after have taken room measures with other equipments.

I didn't find any comparison between these 2 guys, surely they're different but at the same time (afaik) they both could help in room correction (correct me if I'm wrong).
My ideal setup is very simple, I wrote this on a piece of paper but was the quickest way to show you:



Questions:
Is SHD capable of doing everything?
I want to buy SHD instead of any other product, because ease the process of room correction but I don't know if I can bypass his integrated preamp, using it as Dac and streamer and going straight to my integrated amplifier through balanced cables.
Any suggestion or schematics of SHD?
Thanks

Can't help with your comparison other than to share this review of the SHD which positions it amongst the best that audiosciencereview have measured: www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.p...-dac-streamer.18681/

Also, why not connect your analogue source through the SHD too?

thanks for reply, I don't have a particular reason, to connect analog source directly to my amp is just my choice.
I listen mostly to my music on nas, then I care much more on equalizing that part.
Said that, even if the topic suggests a comparison, I just need to know, as I wrote, if the SHD is a very good quality dac and if I can bypass his preamp section.

Of course your choice how you connect analogue source but you'll be missing out on room correction with it connected that way.

Is the SHD a good DAC?... I don't have one to tell you but that review suggests yes, very good.

You can also set the SHD to fixed output and effectively bypass it's preamp.

Thanks a lot, that was all I needed to know.
I do like more the fancy external interface of ADI2DAC fs compared to the SHD, but i'm sure SHD has much more to give.

The ADI2DAC 5 band parametric EQ won't compare well to Dirac for room correction. If your room doesn't have too many problems you may find it adequate I suppose,

I find SHD and RME comparable in sound quality, they both use similar high end AKM convertors so perhaps not that surprising.

Just now came in my mind the reason why I had to take look at ADI2DAC fs before buying anything else.
It is not a matter of life or death but ADI2DAC fs has Loudness functionality, so you don't have to equalize every time your sound.
Does miniDSP have implemented this function? or maybe there's just a workaround to make it works?
I saw this post:
www.minidsp.com/forum/shd-series/15479-f...ble-loudness-control
I really hope something happened since 2019.

entripy wrote:

The ADI2DAC 5 band parametric EQ won't compare well to Dirac for room correction.

Did you mean that SHD is way better? Sorry but I'm a kind of noob

Loudness control can't be implemented properly without knowing what the actual sound pressure level is. Almost no equipment can possibly know this. The ADI2DAC gets around this somewhat by you setting the minimal loudness you typically listen to and it fading the bass/treble boost out by 20dB above your minimal loudness level. So whilst better that the useless loudness controls on cheap hifi its still incredibly crude.

I find Dirac balances things out so well I don't need loudness control. Before I had Dirac the resonant peaks made things sound too lound at low levels and the resonant dips made things sound too quiet at high levels such that there was no loudness where everything sounded ok. With Dirac the lack of resonant peaks and dips means the sound is good over a wide range of loudness. Having a nice even frequency response appears to reduce the need for loudness control to me.

simonemu85 wrote:

entripy wrote:

The ADI2DAC 5 band parametric EQ won't compare well to Dirac for room correction.

Did you mean that SHD is way better? Sorry but I'm a kind of noob

Yes, Dirac is state of the art for room correction. 5 band parametric EQ is technology from the 1950s which may or may not help a little if you spend lots of time setting it up. Dirac pretty much always improves things hugely in about 15 minutes. Its conceptually similar to a very large number of parametric equalisers which are configured automatically and optimally, although its actually much more clever than that.

Of course you may be one of the lucky people who has a room that doesn't need much correction. Such rooms are a bit rare though.

Thank you so much!
It's clear what to do

you might find this post discussing equal loudness interesting: www.minidsp.com/forum/dirac-series-suppo...al-loudness-contours

In fact I did.
I hope to test it and feel the difference very soon