Opinions on PS Audio Direct Stream DAC (Mk 1)


PS Audio is clearing out factory refurbished Direct Stream DACs, the original version from 2014 or 2015, for about $1800. I'm wondering if I could get opinions on this DAC. It's old technology as far as digital goes, but it got nice reviews when it was new. It can do DSD64 and DSD128. It upsamples everything internally to DSD.

I'm interested in musicality and musical involvement, especially dynamics (macro and micro), accuracy of instrumental timbre and extracting the beauty out of the recording, low noise floor and high resolution.

magon

Showing 1 response by ghdprentice

Op,

 

I have found that with the exception of the very grossest measures like wpc (that is also doubling into lower impedance) measurements are largely meaningless. I mean seriously. I do not look at them. Waste of time.
 

Early on in my pursuit of the high end I was fooled repeatedly by looking at them. Honestly, in main stream high end the best correlation with sound quality is price and weight (taking into account the intended sound quality type… like detailed with lots of slam, musical / natural… etc).