 My first experiences with this brand was with the MiniDSP SHD Studio, a digital preamp and streamer that also does direct room correction. The SHD power on review here is about the same but with a powerful amp added, costing only 1499 USD X sales tax. Let's start with showing where it fits into your stereo. Since the power amplifier is integrated you can connect the speakers directly to it. As a source you can connect your computer directly over USB, Toslink or Spidiff, USB usually being the best option. A muted player on your computer lets you select music while an infrared remote control lets you control the SHD power. More handy might be to have the computer elsewhere in the house, like in the study and connect it to the SHD power over the network. That way the acoustical and electrical noise of the computer won't bother you. The built-in streamer of the SHD power lets you play music from a hard disk you shared on a computer. Music is chosen using a smartphone or tablet. You can connect your flat screen by using a Toslink optical cable to enjoy better sound quality over your stereo. If you have a DVD player or Blu-ray player you can connect its digital output to the SHD power or connect the digital output of a CD player or, for instance, a game console. And if you own one or two active subwoofers they can be connected to the dedicated outputs too. The black sturdy metal housing measures 215 x 225 x 70 mm. On the front we see a large rotary encoder that normally functions as a volume control, but after pressing becomes a selector for the four direct presets and after pressing twice for the inputs. Inputs that are not in use can be switched off in the input selector. Pressing three times lets you switch direct on or off. The basic functions can also be controlled from the infrared remote control. And it can learn infrared remote codes from other remote controls if you like. The large display shows the volume settings whereby 0 dB is full open. Also the active input is shown as is the direct live preset selected, whether mute is engaged and if the direct live room correction is active. On the rear we find the IEC mains connector with views holder and on-off switch. The loudspeaker binding post that accepts forks, bare wires and banana plugs. The network socket. The USB type A socket for storage media. A recessed reset button. The USB type B socket for connecting to a computer for audio and control. The spitive and tostling digital input. The AES-EBU digital input. Two analog subwoofer outputs and two AES-EBU digital outputs. These output the preamp signal for the four direct live channels. Internal routing defines what signal is on what output. Inside the SHD power we find two physical levels. At the lower level we find the IEC mains inlet, the switch mode power supply and on a separate circuit board the class DMs. This board also holds a Burr Brown PCM1795 DAC chip so the amp board receives a digital signal from the preamp and processing board. This board is on the left that I folded open. The four generation analog device's shark 32 bit floating point processor runs at 450 MHz and takes care of all the processing. The streaming is handled by the quad core ARM processor that runs at 1.2 GHz. I also discovered a serious CS43130 DAC chip that is used to feed the two stop-roover outputs. An AKM-AK4101AVO digital output transmitter drives the AES-EBU output. Why are they here? Well MiniDSP also uses the same board for the SHD studio, essentially the same device without power amps. Right out of the box the SHD power works as a network player and amplifier. But you can do so much more with it. To do so you need to create an account to download the so called SHD plugin from the MiniDSP site. Versions for both Windows and macOS are available but my experiences with the macOS versions were not positive so I used the Windows version. When started up it looks like this. In the right pane you see that the first direct channel feeds output 1 and the second output 2. Output 1 is the left channel and output 2 the right channel. Per output a number of settings can be done, for instance a parametric equalizer with 10 bands. Let's set a frequency of 50 Hz and attenuate while keeping the Q-factor at 0.7. When we then activate it we see the result in the graph. This way you can set 10 different bands. You could use this for room correction but the also included direct system is far more advanced. More interesting for those that own active subwoofers is the crossover function. To use this you have to link the two channels to output 3 or if you use two subwoofers to output 3 and 4. I show you the one subwoofer way. First we set the crossover for the left and right channels like you see here. I use an imaginary setting at 60 Hz and a bezel curve. Now the left and the right channels roll off from 60 Hz. The next step is to bend limit the sub out to 60 Hz so we select output 3 and set the low parts filter to 60 Hz and let's take 24 dB per octave roll off. Again these settings are no real world settings, just examples. If you like you can make four different groups of settings. For the really adventurous the crossover function can also be used to actively crossover a two way loudspeaker system. You do need an extra power amp then. To set up the direct live room correction you have to download direct live from live.direct.com and install it. Then you start it from within the SHD plugin. You then see the Mini DSP SHD is found. Just click on it and then follow the instructions. You can buy the SHD power with or without the Mini DSP You Make One Measurement microphone. I advise you to include it for the extra 50 dollars. You then download the calibration file that is unique to your microphone from the Mini DSP side and link the direct live software to it. I'm not going through the entire measurement procedure since it's rather straightforward. Just follow the on-screen instructions. Instead I load the measurement file from measurements I did earlier. For the real trick is to use a good target curve. You don't want to use a fully flat curve. Direct live has a commonly agreed on target curve as standard. I use this target curve that uses less correction points. I set one at the lower end of the spectrum, 35 Hz in this case and one on the high end of the spectrum, around 12 kHz and give the curve a very gradual slope. Then I add control points at 300 Hz and 1000 Hz. The idea is to keep the band between 300 Hz and 1000 Hz on altered while I might boost 70 Hz or lower 12 kHz to taste. I use four curves, one like this, one with 70 Hz boosted a few dBs, one like the first one with 12 kHz lower the few dBs and one that has the low end boost and the high end lowering together. I normally use the first curve but if music sounds somewhat thin I use setting 2. Some 50's recordings sound better with settings 3 or 4, although I use them sparingly. I would suggest you use the standard curve for a while before experimenting with other settings, since using direct will greatly remove the boominess of the room which might sound a bit thin at first. But you will notice you hear so much more detail. If after a while you still find the sound thin, just lift the lows a bit. In my case 70 Hz works, depending on your stereo it might be 50 or even 80 Hz. You can easily create other curves without new measurements and you can store these on your hard disk so plenty of room to experiment with. Despite the versatility in settings to the back door, the day-to-day user sees a very simple user interface. Just select an input, set the volume and play the source. You can easily select one of the four direct live settings if you want but as said, most of the time the standard curve settings will do nicely. Swimming music from your computer is done using Volumio, running on the SHD power. Just allow it to access your hard disk on your computer or NAS or even simpler and quicker, copy all your music to a USB drive and connect it directly to the SHD power. Volumio can also function as a rune endpoint, play from Tidal, Cobus and Spotify, does airplay, can act as squeezebox, does internet radio through web radio, radio paradise, personal radio and 80s 80s radio and can even function as DnLA or LMA server. It doesn't have analog inputs though. I started listening with direct live switched off. I had some poor experiences with class D amps in the past but over the years they improved quite a lot. The SHD power is one of the better ones in this price range. Of course the low end is impressively in control, even on the large audiophysics Scorpios on my setup 1. But also the mid range sounds clean and open, while the high end being the weakest part. Not that it's bad, it's just not as good as the rest. The stereo imaging is wide and deep and with, for this price range, good precision. But then you switch on direct live. The stereo image opens up wider, more in focus, the lows and mids gain openness and the highs are more peaceful. Dirac has a fantastic quality of greatly reducing room problems while maintaining the audio quality already present. It's no magic, no wonder. It's extremely clever technology using a mix of absolute phase and minimum phase filters. The current Dirac live version 3 seems to have further improved the filter algorithms for with the mini DSP SHD studio I use in my setup 1, I hear sort of but clear refinement in sound quality. Although that might be partly due to the simplified target curve I now use. Anyway, even a better amp than the SHD power will most likely sound less as a result of your room problems. Although as an amp I like the Marans KII Lite in my setup 2 better than the SHD power, with Dirac Live switched on, the SHD power wins by more than a nose length. At 1500 USD excluding sales stakes you buy a compact, very well sounding digital pre-amplifier, network player, room corrector system and 2x 120 W power amplifier. I agreed, if you want the max from it, you do need to go through the Dirac Live measurements using the included microphone. That will take you probably an hour the first time. A second time can be done in half the time but there is no need for a second time normally. After that you can fiddle around with target curves to fine tune the system. Still, the family can use it since its normal use is so simple. Perhaps this sums up it quite well. It's not the best amp in the world and acoustic treatment of the room remains the best solution. But if it fits your budget while the acoustic treatment is blocked by the aesthetics commission, this is an extremely good choice. It compensates for acoustic problems quite well and preserves your marriage. Which brings me to the end of this video. I love to see you back next Friday at 5pm central european time in a new video. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed on new videos around. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If you would like to support my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music and be safe people.