I used a DDRC-88A in my system for a year. It worked well, but I decided to simplify my system some, so sold it off. I also did not like that I was adding a lot of delay, since my LCR's are active, so the audio traveled through the 88A and then to a pair of 10x10HD's. I also would have needed a second 88A to take care of my Atmos speakers and that would have added more complexity. I will say the 88A does do what it claims and if I did music listening in my HT, I probably would have kept it in my system. Like you, I do not like Phoenix connectors and I also have a bunch of them. I have 24 Phoenix connections in my system. When I also had the 88A, I had 46 Phoenix connections. I removed the 88A and one six channel amp (replaced with three 2-channel Crown amps) that used Phoenix.
I also was an early adopter...however after a while I realized it wasnt a 1000.00$ worth of better sound....yes it sounded better...but I found better use for the 1k or in your case 2k! I wish I had that kind of money to use for RC...but Audyssey imho is 95% that of Dirac...and its included in the processor so even better!
my only gripe with dirac...is it takes a good hour to run it correctly
minimum 25 mintues to run all the speakers in 9 spots ....then tweak the curve...then uploadthen 20 minutes to run rew to make sure all is good...this does not include setup (making sure mic levels are correct etc)I have had it since well before the minidsp was out (with the xmc-1) so I am very familiar with it,....just takes way to long to run ..audyssey is 25 minutes total ...and not that much of the worse than dirac....ymmv
and for some reason....when done and MV was at 0.0 I never got 75db for my testones....so always had to bump up the trimsPIA