Where there is smoke there is often fire.
We had a very prominent reviewer compare the PS with our similarly priced Aqua Hifi La Scala Dac which is an $8k dac and he was bowled over by how much better the Aqua sounded.
Is is any wonder PS gets such glowing reviews could it be huge advertising? |
Where there is smoke there is often fire.
We had a very prominent reviewer compare the PS with our similarly priced Aqua Hifi La Scala Dac which is an $8k dac and he was bowled over by how much better the Aqua sounded.
Is is any wonder PS gets such glowing reviews could it be huge advertising? |
Lilchris why is the sponsered content?
Lets see T+A largest high end manufacturer in Germany
110 employees
14 full time German Engineers
40 year old company
known for developling all of its own proprietary technolgies
HV technology designed to emulate tubes with solid state devices running at high voltage rails..
Dac 8 DSD uses all in house decoding engine for DSD
Quad PCM decoding Engine
Proprietary filtering technlogies
Designs and builds all of its own parts for its loudspeakers.
T+A electronics are consistantly rated and compared to the worlds best products
T+A products receive mostly best in class or among best in class rave reviews.
Mike Lavorgina compared the Dac 8 DSD to dacs in the $10-30k price range when the DAC is running Quad rate DSD and found the Dac 8 perfroms at a ridiculous level of performance for the price.
Do the reserach Lilchris, T+A gear is pretty amazing.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ T+A dealers
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Ozzy chasing firmware is rather a sad indictment of a design.
A mature design shouldn’t require or necessisate a constant every six month new magic firmware in order to upgrade the sound quality.
Either you have a design figured out or you don’t.
Compare the PS audio company to Chord.
Chord’s Robert Watts came up with his trasients time aligned filtering design many years ago with the QBD 76. All of Chords future dacs all were based on more filter taps, due to improved hardware, his filtering designs and concepts remained the same.
We are much more in favor of hardware based upgrades as you can do much more by changing hardware.
One of our dacs is completely hardware upgradable and an original dac that is five years old can be competely brought up to modern standards for far less than trading it in and starting over.
There is only so much you can fix with firmware and in reality you shouldnt have to.
If you pick a design, its voicing and technlogy you need to have a constant vision of what your product is supposed to be only features based on new sources that weren’t available should be the norm.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ |
Ozzy you totally miss the essence of the conversation.
Real innovation is accomplished by upgrading hardware if you have maximized your design then firmware upgrades in the case of PS is changing the flavor of the sound based on who knows what?
Changing from one firmware, to another and having the sound change is a sad sign of an incomplete design or it is a gimmick to keep people talking about your product.
The only reason for upgrading firmware is to fix incompatibility issues that arise from new changes in other hardware such as a new Roon upgrade that affects your product and then requires a fix.
Did you ever notice that most companies very rarely upgrade their firmware in the case of the established market leaders DCS, EMM Lavs, Esoeteric, etc.
Even Chord who uses a FPGA rarely offers firmware upgrades.
As I final point upgradability in hardware means you will never have an obsolete product, tell that to all the previous Perfect Wave dac owners can you magically turn a Perfecwave Dac into the current Direct Stream Digital don't think you will magically be able to upgrade your firmware into an entirely different platform.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ |
Yes Caniebfrank,
Lets looks at some companies using FPGA as part of their designs.
It seems that almost every model of product that uses FPGA at some point comes out with new hardware to suppliant the older models.
A FPGA means you can easily alter code which usualy affects the filtering process of the dac, it does not compensate or negate the fact that faster processing chips which run the code the FPGA is supplying, advances in analog boards or other improvements don’t come into play.
If you notice we mentioned Esoteric, DCS, Chord, and if you notice most of these companies do not come up with constant Firmware upgrades every six months, most of these companies products are stable and don’t require a complete revisiting of the operational software and processes.
In the case of Chord their models have all used FPGA and they keep on improving the hardware that runs the FPGA stored code which still requires a new hardware platform to implement that firmware.
Look at Aqua Hifi’s dacs which use FPGA to provie the code to the R2R ladder dacs, stable, stable, stable, until they come up with a new platform and the model is able to morph 100% into the new model.
The Lavoice started with the s1, then s2 and then s3 you could have purchased an original model and that can be completely upgraded 100% into the latest version how many companies provide a 100% true upgrade path?
We aren’t saying the PS audio dacs aren’t good, it is just a fallacy to think that an FPGA based design doesn’t go obsolete and won't require a future hardware change to evolve into the next level.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
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Thank you Clearlink.
Aolmrd and Cal, please wake up and stop drinking the Cool AId.
As we mentioned earlier the leaders in producing the worlds best digital front ends almost never upgrade their firmware and if so it is not every six months that a "magic" new sonic flavor of firmware arrives on the scene.
Digital technlogy at this point is a very mature thing.
There is nothing wrong with FPGA’s they are a good tool and are more changeable then a Ram based chip set, and yes we sell dacs which use FPGA’s as well, the Aqua Hifi Lascala MK III and the Forumula XD use FPGA.'s.
The best sounding dac we have ever had the Light Harmonic Davinci a $35k dac, does not use a FPGA or if it does they don’t publicize it.
Look at DCS, Esoeric, Chord, MSB, and you will see that firmware upgrades are a rarity, because these designs are mature designs.
Why because the engineers spent year perfecting their technologies and only came up with a new product when the hardware advanced signfigantly enough to allow for a major improvement.
Oh and if you look at the following post:
PS Audio does plan to put the DS dac to bed in the near future for a new DS dac yet to be announced. Not the newTSS dac..... but a new DS dac 2.
Guess that means that the hardware would also need to be upgraded or else you could through the magic of FPGA’s magically turn your current Direct Stream Digital into this new DS Dac 2 which doesn't seem to be the case now does it?
Hardware is what leads innovation, not software, sorry but it is true.
If you notice the continued breakthroughs in cell phones are all about increased processing power, new sensor technology, increased memory, faster charging, and longer battery life.
It may suck having to purchase a new cell phone every few years but that is the name of the game with ever increasing technlogy comes greater and greater performance along with new features.
Yes you can upgrade through software a Galaxy Note 5 and an older Iphone’s to newer opperating software but eventually you realize that your five year old cell phone just can not offer the same user experience as a brand new one and the cycle continues.
The reason that people fancy the idea of firmware upgrades is that they are affraid to face this fact that all companies products wil eventually be obsolete.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
|
Aolmrd,
Please answer the questions raised, does DCS, Chord, MSB, Esoteric or other major leaders in the field of high end digital have constant "new and supposedly better sounding upgrades" happening every six months or so?
Please refute the point made by one of the other posters:
PS Audio does plan to put the DS dac to bed in the near future for a new DS dac yet to be announced. Not the newTSS dac..... but a new DS dac 2.
Certaintly looks like we are a bit on the correct side about eventually comming to a point where software upgrades can not improve older technlogies or does PS plan on comming out with a DS2 for no reason?
Lastely please refute the points made about new cell phones vs older 3-5 years old cell phones that "can be upgraded to run new software."
If you run an original Ipad on the lastest Ios even if you could the experience with an old processor would probably not be that satisfactory running newer much more processor and memory intensive apps.
Technlogical improvements are responsible for pushing the envelope of all things and are a fact with any device which is performance based.
Certain devices such as refrigerators, don’t change radically, but cell phones, cetain computer devices, high end dacs, and even loudspeakers can be improved sometimes radically based on new and emmerging technlogies.
Please check out the Joseph Audio Graphine Thread, where Joseph Audio is using new Graphine drivers. Focal has radically improved their drivers, so has Radiho. and Wilson and so many others.
Sure you can listen to a pair of Wilson Watt Puppy 5 but you can also listen to a brand new $5k set of speakers that will outperfom them.
It is not a matter of selling something because it is new, we sell something because it is better.
We point out to you that one dac we really like can be upgraded completely from a five year old version to a brand new one for far less than a trade in would allow.
Have a good night Aolmrd, got to watch Game of Thrones on a 2019 Model LG Oled, please watch the same show on a 2010 Pioneer Elite and tell me how much better your picture looks than mine.
Last point if hardware upgrades were minimum do you really think that most manufactuers would bother comming out with new versions? Enginers move into better hardware because that hardware is indeed better.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
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Thank you Emcdade a voice of reason.
We are not against the PS audio Direct Stream, but we have seen this behavior before, where a product didn’t perform correctly or didn’t sound as good as it should, and then was magically fixed via a firmware update.
This begs the question why a firmware fix was required in the first place?
Our point made was that market leaders in digital raraly ever need to create a firmware update because their product was right in the first place this is called a mature design.
Our other point was that many of the PS audio lovers here fail to take into consideration that in all technology and performance based products there will always come a time when the hardware will need to be supplianted in order to evolve a product into its next and far greater self.
Take flat panel TV, first 480i, then 480p, then 720p, then 1080p, then 3D then 4k and of course the Plasma vs LCD wars, and the real breakthroughs which was LG rethinking display technlogy which created OLED and this also forced Samsung into developing Quantum dot and QLED which wil be Samsungs first true counter to OLED’s superior technlogy over both Plasama and conventional LCD technologies.
Technlogical innovation requires ever pushing hardware into new areas there will always be a software component but one needs to understand that sooner or later the next generation of performance will only be possible by newer and more advanced hardware.
Our company sells many types of dacs and streamers for some people it is ultmate sound quality, for others it is convenience of having a great streamer/dac for others it is having completely modular fully upgradable infrastructure.
People shouldn’t be so stuck on thinking that one component will last them a lifetime as who doesn’t love playing with a new toy?
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
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Tell the boat anchor to tbe Perfect Wave guys through the magic of firmware did tbe Perfect Wave magically morph into the Direct Stream?
No different hardware.
Direct Stream to Direct Stream verson 2 seems like also a hardware change will be required as well.
Seems like firmware can only take you so far doesnt it?
Joecasey in many techology platforms an older 3-5 year cell phone can be updated to run the latest Os however usually the experience isnt fantastic as people want a faster cpu more memory and greater battery life hence the desire to explore the updates that only really occur with new and more advanced hardware |
