Surprised you sol your Bricasti DAC. What made you make that change?
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.
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@jfrmusic had an upgrade itch. I was always curious about the ps audio dsd and saw a good deal and couldn’t pass it up. As it unexpectedly turned out I like the DSD DAC a lot so for now I’m just enjoying music. Next step most likely Bricasti M1S2 or M21. We’ll see. |
I had one for 2-3 years and it was meh, ok. The main issue that I had with it is upper treble extension - or lack thereof it. PS gently rolls off the highs for some unknown reason and this ended up being what did the unit in for me. Combo with with one of their P12 regenerators and it's way too much. I was coming from record/turntable listening, so I didn't really know any better. I thought maybe a high end DAC was supposed to make digital sound more like the relaxed highs from an analog rig. But little did I know... Even my Ayre Codex PC DAC sounded better in the end, so I moved it into my main system and sold the PS while awaiting a new QX-5 Twenty from Ayre. I love that thing. |
@audiom3 just curious what version firmware were you running? |
@audphile1 Inwas on the latest version. Sun-something.lnor other. |
- 59 posts total