# miniDSP 4x10 HD and UMIK-1 arrived today!



## Rob41 (Feb 19, 2013)

First I've got to give thanks to the folks at devteam/miniDSP for their prompt and courteous replies to all of my e-mail inquiries. It arrived just 5 days after being shipped with no damage to the packaging at all. Both components were very well packed.

Before I give my initial impressions, I should tell you I've never built a passive crossover, nor have I ever used an active crossover of any kind. I've also never used a mic or any kind of measurement software like REW.

I have a pair of Cerwin Vega PD-3 speakers I bought in 1985 that have had all drivers replaced with different drivers. Currently the woofers are powered by a pair of Carver mono-blocks, the mids by a Heathkit AA-1800 and the planar tweeters by a Heathkit AA-1600. They are all fed by the miniDSP 4x10 which is fed from my Heathkit AP-1800 preamp.

Because I ran out of money I couldn't install proper pass throughs with connections for each of my three speaker drivers. I'll have to wait till my tour on the ship is done this summer. I pulled each driver, disconnected the wires for the passive crossover and connected the wires that go to the individual amps. Before everything arrived I had already set up crossover points base on the manufacturers specs for each driver. I know you can't time align without doing it properly with measurements but I already went ahead and entered a 5ms delay to the planar tweeters knowing their physical placement is well ahead of the woofer and horn driver. The set up and connections were very simple to do and there were no hiccups to speak of.

Well it's safe to say I'll never use passive crossovers in my main system ever again. It sounded better than I thought it would after firing it up for the first time. After adjusting the crossover points from 800hz and 5khz to 750hz and 4.5khz I believe it sounds much better than it did with the passive in place. This was just 25 minutes after I hooked it all up! I really wasn't expecting such pleasing results so fast particularly being a noob at this stuff. At the moment I'm using 8th order LW all the way around with the bass cut off at 25hz and the highs cut off at 19khz (my hearing is only able to hear up to about 17.5khz). I realize 8th order LW may not be ideal but I got a lot of experimenting/learning to do.

Tomorrow I'll start to get familiar with the mic and the REW software so I can begin to get serious with my adjustments. I think I need to look into doing sweeps (?) for the individual drivers, make adjustments with the PEQ, crossover points etc. Then perform a "collective" sweep to get readings of the entire package. Yeah, I know there is a lot more to it and I'm looking forward to it.

I grabbed the remote for my CD player and quickly programmed the MiniDSP for mute, volume up and down and configs. I'll program a different spare remote I'm not using for anything tomorrow. It did work perfectly.

Right now I feel like this is the best piece of audio gear I've bought in a very long time and has literally taken my passion into another league.  _ I see the light! _

Thank you devteam/miniDSP and all the good folks here who have helped provide so much helpful information!


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