the t.racks DSP 4x4 Mini

I say it straight away, I have used more DSPs in my career than I drank coffees and anything under hundreds of euros would have been a laugh in those days. But wanted something on a budget for the project studio, ran across this thing and I'm honestly surprised.

It's not perfect. The eg is soft and not particularly precise. The delays only come in steps of fractions of a millisecond and the software UI looks like, well, a typical German app from the 90s.

But none of that matters for this price! It was good enough to match up against measurements using SMAART and the result is pretty pleasant. The sound is on par with much more expensive units and it's versatile enough to deal with a typical stereo + sub woofer situation. Not sure I would recommend it for an surround sound work since the delay is simply not precise enough for properly tuning multiple sources to cinema level but for the home studio it's simply ground breaking.

Only one gripe I have is the software. It's really 90s blocky cheap windows stuff. These days things such as being able to increment values via mouse scroll, proper save dialogs or even being able to sync two channels together is almost standard. As both a programmer and audio engineer I think that it's pure laziness and lack of vision making software this old school these days. Fix that and this unit could become world famous and not just some obscure German home brand!

I've got to say I'm really impressed by this unit. Great value for money. I have used it in a 2 way DIY loudspeaker, and I've also used it to fine tune 2 pairs of loudspeakers in a recording studio.

I'll break down my thoughts...

The bad:
No on/off switch
Power light is too bright (blue)
Input headroom is not forgiving
Thomann's freebie included EU/UK adaptor doesn't actually fit with this PSU shape

The good:
nice form factor - useful holes to screw in place
Low noise (balanced in & out)
Software is easy and powerful
Excellent filters & EQ
Save and load your work
4 ins AND outs
A variety of useful processing
Works as a sine,white,pink noise generator

It seems to me that this unit is offering performance that you won't find anywhere else at this price point. This is a fantastic digital crossover, I'm getting better results than I was with a pricey passive crossover.

I am currently using this as a tool in my studio to minimise speaker/room inaccuracies. It's 4 channel meaning you can send it both your stereo main and mini feed, EQ each pair of speakers separately to remove any issues and even apply a limiter if you'd like, then you can mix without having to make allowances for your speakers/room.

I have been so curious about Sonarworks, however, my TDM Pro Tools HD system is way too old to support such software. This device is a really nice workaround for anyone using an old rig or an analogue mixing console. Although I would love to see an updated model with more headroom, an on/off switch and a more subtle light!

Thanks Thomann for this great device. The delivery for this item did take ages, but it was so worth the wait.

This is the best value dps you can get for the money!
I tried it in my home studio and live,it surely does wonders!
i also use it to route it in my bass amp as sent and return so i could get that extra features on my amp more eq and more compression!

Sound quallity is very good no extra hiss or ground problem and since it has all the ballanced connection it makes life easier,

But it could be better not hardware vise but software + alowing us to mod it also,,what do i mean by it,, adding on, bypass buttons in software for every path in chain eq,compression,etc and changing order of it,,also what would be nice to add midi support of software simple bypass option or change speakers like for example if you have 4 speaker on output, you could make feuture to mute one pair and play another,,, now for hardwar wise it could be great to control that software with a midi over arduino thats connected to usb on this dsp,,i thing these are crutial thing that needs to be done to be used in studio setting,,,
so conclusion time,,
is it worth it? YES

is it necessity? YES every big studio had some eq on the end of their signal path for monitoring.

is there better options? No i dont think there is any,,

Just buy it :)

Having treated my studio with corner bass trapping, wall mounted early reflection absorbers etc. I finally decided to upgrade to a larger set of speakers. To my chagrin, the bass in the room felt worse than ever.

I bought this out of desperation and I have to say, every studio should have one of these. Allowed me to linearise the bass response of my room by about 5dB with no drawbacks. The room measurements post EQ are clearly much better. It took maybe 4 hours to get a room calibration I was fully happy with, but I can't imagine mixing without it.

If you're a live guy, I'd still recommend it. You just need a laptop with Room EQ Wizard and to blast pink noise for a few minutes while you measure. You can gate, you can limit with an extremely fast attack and ratio, the headroom is pretty good and you can do the crossovers internally as well as band limit if you're trying to be gentler on your power amps.

The only downside (apart from the limit of the Parametric Filters)is the blue light is super bright. I just mounted it under my desk. You get six filters, it should be enough or something else is deeply wrong.