Experience with Dirac room correction, miniDSP devices?

Does anyone have recent experience inserting a Dirac-enabled DSP device like the DDRC-22D (https://www.minidsp.com/products/dirac-series/product-line-summary) in their chain, for some room correction? It sits between streamer and DAC, all in the digital domain. It sounds intriguing. MiniDSP does not have a return policy, no dealer has it here in the USA, so I cant’t try it out easily. Curious if anyone on the forum has this device, what it does for them.

If you don’t get any response in next week or two ping me. My brother just got a minidsp product don’t remember which one. I’m hoping I can get over there in the next week to help him take all the measurements and get it all set.

I lent him my UMIK-1 mic so he got it up and running. When I get over there to help him tweak it should have 50+ hours on it.

I was about to buy a Mini DSP box for my Series 1 901’s because the rebuild of my heavily modified by me EQ was not going well. A lot of money for me to drop with no money back guarantee. I put on my Electronics Technician hat and fixed my analog active EQ earlier this year.

I hope it works out for you. I hate it when people get ripped off.

I use the MiniDSP in my system as the crossover to my low frequency amplifier and cabinets. Nice to be able to adjust xover frequency / slope / phase in realtime while listening.

I have 2 of the DDRC-22D.
I believe that these are being replaced by the SHD series.

One resides in my TV rig and is indispensable, it does an amazing job.
The other I experiment with in the audio rig from time to time and the results are not as appealing to my ears.

Forget about DSD and everything above 24/196, everything else is converted to 24/96 for processing.
It adds no self noise and the standard power supply works as well as a LPS-1 for power.

It is rather easy to use with regards to taking measurements and either manually or automatically making adjustments to the freq response.
I just prefer the sound of my main audio rig without its help.

The DIRAC software that is included is not exactly the same as what you would run on a PC and I believe that DIRAC has recently come out with a new DIRAC software and my understanding is that miniDSP cannot update the DDRC series to the new software.

I incurred an extra $75 import fee from FedEx on the unit I ordered direct from MiniDSP.
If you haven’t already, read up on the DDRC series in the miniDSP forum and over at the HomeTheatreShack forums.

If you are seriously interested, send me a PM and maybe we can work out a try before you buy, I would let my second DDRC go to a good home.

Yesterday I helped my brother fine tune his miniDSP OpenDRC-DI. $325. +$$$ for mic (I lent him mine) Overall I’m impressed with the solution. He has a bit of acoustic treatment. a small room with concrete walls and sitting close to the back wall. The bass really over powered everything else.

After the first measurement with REW and a UMIK-1mic it instantly became a very nice system to listen too.

My brother couldn’t figure out how to get a calibration file to instantly load into the miniDSP so we needed to enter the values manually. I didn’t feel like rereading the instructions so we just manually did it. It was quick to enter them in.

Another thing about the unit. it only has 6 frequencies it will modify per preset. This is fine in his case because he just needed the low frequencies taken care of. -16db at one point. He has one preset for 2 channel and one for movies still 2 channel.

He said if he was going to buy again he would buy a beefier unit so he could have more filter options.

As far as SQ goes. It’s really hard to tell the room had ~+30db at 60-80hz ~+20db 30-50hz listening without it active was just not pleasant. Without it active the more subtle queues got lost. Example a clap from the far back left softly echoing off the right wall was completely lost. With it active you could hear the recording space.

Took the two of us about a hour to get it dialed in. I’ve been using REW taking measurements for awhile so I can zip through the capturing and creating filter process.

For a unit that costs less than some of his cables I would say it really improved the enjoyment of his system.

I would recommend acoustic treatment first. If the room still has issues I would say it’s worth giving it a shot.

Ordered the MiniDSP SHD Studio, its the successor to the 22D. I have a reasonably good system setup but it’s in a den off the living room so I only have a little room treatment due to decor considerations. I hope Dirac will further refine frequency and phase. Will post experiences.

I looked the miniDSP boxes for my Bose 901 Series 1 EQ. Wound up buying an original EQ box which I gutted and re-stuffed with “Audiophile Grade” components and a big Toroidal with super low ESR caps filtered full wave rectifier. I heard that the return policy from Deer Creek is not so hot. Also, it’s inputs and outputs are RCA where I need XLR. A lot of people have been successful with their products from what I read on the various forums.