After concluding that I need to liberate the Behringer 2496 DEQ from the master bedroom system so I can use it for EQ fine tuning in the living room, I finally initiated an bedroom audio upgrade project that had been planned over a year ago (which had been in the procrastination stage, after buying the miniDSP OpenDRC 2x2 last year...I had the miniDSP box prominently displayed in the bedroom for the last few months so I'd remember to do this project and thereby get the box out of the way). But sadly it only got started, now I am waiting on a another new piece of equipment that will take at least a month to acquire (and I worry about whether I'll get it even then, giving supply issues; a couple years ago I could have it next day).
I began by taking a picture of the shelf, cluttered with boxes of gauze, telfa pads, and the box of my new blood pressure monitor. I needed two of these boxes up to September last year for a couple of skin surgeries. And they served the convenient purpose of blocking the light from the display of the DEQ 2496 to allow me to have a dark bedroom for sleeping. Even the light(s) of the miniDSP's are too bright, but more easily covered.
I then began the task of setting up the new miniDSP plug in. I first checked out that the "save" feature, it only saves the "slot" you are working in (and likewise, the "load" function only loads the slot you are working on into the miniDSP, until you switch slots anyway). That's convenient for me now anyway. So I saved the existing slot 4, but now I realize it was basically pointless as it simply has everything bypassed. That's my non-crossover program for the panels in the living room. It should never be used for the woofer or mids, so I can use the slot 4 there for different tests. This way I never had to save or load anything, since I hadn't figured out (until today) how that worked. I just had the slots permanently assigned 1,2,3 as tweeter, midrange, and bass, with 4 as bypass or special test--which I changed ad hoc.*
So then I unbypassed the lowpass filter, and set it to the same 71 Hz that apparently subwoofer DEQ is set to. Apparently I set different frequencies for low and high pass because the settings don't match the actual "acoustic" crossover, which is what counts. (I'm aiming for an acoustic crossover of 60 Hz.)
It's easy to bypass the FIR (it was done already) and unbypass sides of the crossovers. But it's irksome that you can't bypass ALL of the PEQ's at once, they have to be bypassed one by one (but the default is they all have amplitude 0 so don't count anyway). Anyway, some time ago I took the effort to bypass every single PEQ in the plug in. I didn't check, except note the curve shown is flat.
It turns out I run the DEQ from the optical and the existing miniDSP from the coax output of the Sonos ZP80 which drives it all. I wasn't daisy chaining them (I think I might have done that once, but changed to this for some reason) So the new miniDSP will simply use the coax that the DEQ had been using. I don't have to get some splitter or some such.
And I struggled to find one, but apparently there isn't any "mono summing" feature. I struggled to find one, and also seemed to fail in some of the other plug-ins I have. But it's no problem, my subs take two inputs and they can do the summing, I'll just have to have another 15 foot audio coax cable. I think I can find some such, maybe of lesser quality for now.
But then I realized the rub. I've been using the analog audio output of the Behringer for the subs because I only have one DAC for the outputs. I bought two DACs, but I've been using the other DAC for another purpose.** So I'll need to buy a third DAC.
They're the inexpensive Topping E30. That should not be a problem, right???
Well Apos shows them out of stock. I ordered one on Amazon, for delivery in the last week of June.
I wouldn't be totally surprised if that doesn't fall through too (but I hope it doesn't, I'd like to have 3 identical E30's for the bedroom).
Meanwhile I could rig up a Denon 5000 as DAC, and adjust the gain structure so it's noise would not be a problem.
But it's a big heavy monster and a pain to do such things just for temporary. I'm going to wait until I get the E30, or I'm forced into some other solution by being denied another E30. Then I could get another kind of DAC, such as a Schitt, and use that for my other purpose, then use two E30s for the two way speaker system (subs and monitors).
*Slots 2 and 3 are used by sub and panel crossovers in the living room. Slot 1 isn't used in the living room anymore...because I use a 96kHz capable plug in for that (but less useful otherwise). So the current 1 slot one in the OpenDRC 2x2 plug in was being used for the upper bedroom crossover, for the Revel M20 monitor speakers. And now slot 4 for the sub in the bedroom.
**I needed to connect the TV audio to the bedroom Sonos ZP80, which can then switch it to the bedroom stereo or the stereo in any other room. But if I connect the analog TV audio to the Sonos box, the hum will be terrible from a ground loop. So instead I take the optical coax from the TV. But Sonos doesn't permit digital audio input, only analog audio input. So I use the second of my E30's to convert the TV sound from optical digital to analog for Sonos, which then distributes the digital to the two EQ processors via coax and optical. By using a E30, I'm not only killing the ground loop, I'm using a much higher quality DAC than you could probably hope any TV to have. And the 2004 era Sonos Analog to Digitial conversion is very nice and good, strangely it's always been easier to make even more perfect ADCs than DACs. TV sound is the #1 use of the bedroom stereo and has been since my living room stereo took off big time, in 2008, when I got my first electostatic speakers, the Acoustat 1+1's, and the Krell FPB 300 to drive them, (I did that because of a dental near death experience I had survived in January 2008, after which I decided to "eat dessert first," or actually long delayed by this point, by getting a really cool stereo like I had dreamed about to play with, what I had imagined when I bought this home 30 years ago...it was my #1 priority for home layout...it had to be good for having electrostats in the living room, and good stereo in every other major room too, which I now see may be less important than I figured, but always nice to have good TV sound too.) Since then I don't bother to do serious listening in the bedroom, despite having a fine system which is derived only by improvement from my historic "best" system going back to childhood. For background listening, I just play the living room system and hear it well enough anywhere in the house to be ok for background (which you don't want to be too immersive). TV sound is not unimportant, and it needs good bass. The bedroom TV is a 55" Samsung 850. It may not be as good as the latest greatest, but I wasn't even dreaming about such nice TV's as a kid.
No comments:
Post a Comment