Thoughts on using the new SHD Power by miniDSP as an all-in-one for connecting passive speakers and subs?
https://www.minidsp.com/products/streaming-hd-series/shd-power
It strikes me as similar to the Marantz HD-Amp1
I woud get a dedicated DSP and Amp instead of an all in one. It may come in handy when you have limited space under your TV or so.
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Yeah, I agree. Just stumbled upon it while searching for a good preamp with good high pass and low pass filter options for mains and subs. Any other good options besides the miniDSP HD?
Three way (treble, mids and sub) or two way (speakers and sub)?
DBX 223xs does the second (splitting main and sub), is balanced only though.
I have the miniDSP SHD (not the Power). I chose it for my listening room because I have powered monitors and it will give me more options when I use passive speakers. I can’t speak for the amplifier section of the SHD Power, but I am very pleased with the SHD.
Just running it directly to my two Adam Audio T5V monitors and an Adam Audio T10S, it’s just exceptionally clean. The bass management was easy to set up and I have left it at 80Hz for now.
I spent some time messing around with REW but I found it to be a very tedious process. After a few weeks, I realized that you don’t actually need to use REW before running Dirac Live (the manual isn’t terribly clear about this).
Running Dirac Live yielded significant results. The T5V monitors can be very forward (which is probably by design). Dirac transformed them to be much smoother and warmer. At first impression, it seemed darker but I couldn’t detect any loss in detail or resolution. It also made made vocals more chesty and brought out the vibration of the body of acoustic guitars.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing how the SHD with Dirac Live performs with some passive speakers so I just ordered kits to build a pair of ICEPower ASC200 monoblocks.
I could see a good use case for a miniDSP SHD Power at a desktop. Having a single unit that can do DAC/DSP/Bass Management/Dirac Live/Amp is very appealing. Trust me, I’ve been thinking about it.
My only gripe with the SHD is that the included USB Wifi adapter is crap. I tried a different adapter and it wasn’t compatible. I finally picked up a travel router which could be configured in bridge (client) mode and that has me streaming Hi-Rez audio flawlessly.