Hello!
I am very new audioholics and hifi (and very quickly trying to learn as much as I can and also the lingo). I had a question about where I should put it in my system and what are the obvious 'weak links' in my system (as I was just a noob who would plug and play and did not know anything about hifi, DACs, REW, miniDSP, multi sub, etc)
As I have been doing lots of research I think there are some ways I could substantially improve my system but I really would like your feedback and what would be the next steps for improvement.
My system is in our main living room and used only for playing Spotify / music is as follows:
Echo dot (using headphone output) --> Receiver --> Stereo output to speakers (yet going to 4 speakers to have more immersive and even sound throughout the room) and then sub output to a single sub.
My thoughts for initial improvement would be
Computer (instead of echo dot as then I can use the digital output via USB) --> miniDSP (serving as a DAC and also doing all the other amazing stuff it can do with REW) and the 4 analog outputs would be --> 2 to subs (as I do have another good sub kicking around I would love to add) and 2 stereo outputs to the receiver (now to act only as an amplifier) to the 4 speakers.
So:
1) Does this seem like a reasonable improvement or what else would you focus on (obviously doing room treatments and speaker placement, etc)?
2) Would there be a benefit by upgrading the receiver (its a generic 5.1 home theater receiver) to just a dedicated amplifier?
3) Does that seem like the best place to setup the miniDSP?
4) Do I even need a miniDSP for this? As could I just have my computer run REW and then run a computer program to output the altered digital outputs.
5) Does REW and room correction work if you have a 2.2 system yet you want to use 4 speakers (so 2 off of the L, and 2 off of the R)? Do you just point the mic straight up and then run both speakers connected to the L (or R) when doing correction for that output, or anything else that you would need to do?
6) If I wanted to put the miniDSP after the Receiver is there any way to do that and have it help out the 4 speakers and 2 subs?
Thank for any suggestions or further education!
John
To answer your questions in order:
1: It doesn't sound like a very good idea to do what you want to do. Four speakers for a stereo system would wreck any kind of soundstage or stereo imaging. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but a miniDSP would be pretty much wasted given your knowledge level. A miniDSP is a great tool to solve certain problems. You don't even know what problems you might be having. You need to know how your system is behaving first via acoustic measurements.
2: If you are just using the receiver for a stereo system, there probably isn't any benefit to getting a new model, unless your present receiver is so old that it doesn't have any kind of bass management. Even that may not be a problem if you don't intend to get a subwoofer.
3: Skip the miniDSP for now.
4: I don't think you know what you are trying to accomplish with a miniDSP. It is not automated room correction. There are ways to use it in conjunction with REW to automatically develop EQ curves that can fix certain problems, but you don't even know what problems you have to begin with.
5: Don't use REW for a 4 speaker stereo system. Don't even go for a 4 speaker stereo system.
6: The only thing you should do with a miniDSP in the signal chain after the receiver is to use it to equalize the subwoofer signal.
I don't mean to sound condescending here at all. I would advise you to not worry about miniDSP or anything like that at the moment. If I were you, I would just try to get the fundamentals correct, and then go from there. Make sure your speakers are decent. Make sure they are set up correctly. Make sure speaker placement is good with respect to your listening position.
If you don't mind answering a few questions: what is your room layout like, i.e., speaker placement and listening position and also room dimensions? What model speakers and receiver do you have? What is your intended usage: movies/TV, music, video games, or a mix of those? If you are listening to music, what kind of music?
Answering those questions will help us give you better advice.