PS Audio PerfectWave DAC Upgrade

does anyone have a theory as to why there are so many pwds, for sale, given the availability of upgrades ??

Edorr, no reason to be skeptical or to blindly believe my assertions. You can buy an SD card reader at Radio Shack or Best Buy for under $10 and then try each firmware version yourself.

But I am not the only one who notices substantial differences in sound quality among different versions of the firmware. PS Audio's own community forum has a thread on the subject. The vast majority of owners who contributed to that thread preferred 2.0.2 pretty strongly to version 2.1.0. Similarly, Head-Fi has a massive thread about the Perfect Wave DAC, and toward the end, a number of people stated that they preferred the sound of the original MK1 DAC to the MK2 upgrade, finding the latter to be too bright and fatiguing for headphone listening. These folks were told to try 2.0.2 in place of 2.1.0. They then reported back that they were very happy with the upgrade once they had installed 2.0.2.

Mrtennis, I have no idea why so many Perfect Wave DACs have come up for sale here in the last year or two. The most benign explanation is that the Perfect Wave DAC had a very high market share after it was first introduced, so it naturally represents a large share of used sales now. The other possibility is that a fair number of owners are not happy with sound quality or with the complexity of setting up the Bridge + NAS + eLyric, and want something simpler or cheaper. Unfortunately, Audiogon provides a regular reminder that digital equipment is a lousy investment.

So what firmware is loaded in the original MK I version of this dac?Is it the 2.0.2 you preferred ,or something else.Also how can you identify what firmware your dac has?Considering pulling the plug on both PS units (dac& trans.).Seems like the Mk I would be be to my liking,but then there's the firmware you prefer that might suit my tastes better.
Thanks,
Den

Mcondon, as you may know from reading through the PSA forums, the only difference between FW 2.0.2 and 2.0.3 was essentially enabling a flag so that pre-emphasized CDs could be properly decoded. If one tries to play a pre-emphasized CD with 2.0.2 it will not decode properly. Other than that they *supposed* to be identical. :-)

I personally have not noticed any significant differences between these two - unlike either of these and 2.1.0. Having said that, the whole issue of sonic differences between FW versions with the PWD is too tough to call. I would not contradict anyone who felt they heard a difference between 2.0.2 and 2.0.3. Paul McGowan and the PSA development team have been dissecting the sound difference problem for a while. I've tried all of them and actually prefer 2.2.0 (which is what is being shipped with the Mk.II upgrade right now), but my system has a detailed yet warm characteristic that may be a better balance for this version than 2.0.2 or .3.

The downside of the 2.0.2/2.0.3 verssions is they do not work completely correctly in NativeX mode. So there's a tradeoff there. IMO NativeX provides greater sonic benefit (in my system) than whatever those versions can add to the sound I'm already getting.

Tonyptony, according to PS Audio, version 2.0.2 only has a problem with de-emphasis flag decoding for the S/PDIF input, not for any other digital input. So, yeah, you would have a problem if your transport is a CD player connected by coaxial cable to the Perfect Wave DAC. In that case, you can switch to version 2.0.3, which fixes the de-emphasis flag decoding for the S/PDIF input. With all other digital inputs (HDMI, AES/EBU, USB, optical), NativeX works fine in version 2.0.2.

A while back, the topic of one of Paul McGowan's daily e-mails was the mystery surrounding the differences in sound quality between different versions of PS Audio's firmware and software. He wrote, "Fact is we’ve been struggling with trying to figure out why small changes in the code that runs our products have an impact on the sound quality – why folks love one version of software and dislike another. There are many great mysteries concerning sound quality and they only become obvious once you figure them out." (Unfortunately, they have not figured out the mystery yet.) He goes on to write that differences in sound quality "might seem obvious to you but not to our designers since the changes we were making had 'nothing' to do with the data stream or the audio itself. Sometimes a change in the front panel display code would cause a major upset in sound quality." So, even Paul McGowan is admitting that a change to 2.0.2 to fix de-emphasis flag decoding for the S/PDIF input may cause 2.0.3 to sound different than 2.0.2.

In any case, PS Audio does seem to want to resolve this mystery. My only concern is that Paul McGowan has said that he likes version 2.1.0 (now 2.2.0, I guess) better than other versions. Mrtennis elsewhere has said that PS Audio's product revisions tend to make them sound more analytical. So it is by no means certain that their programmers are aiming to replicate the sound quality of 2.0.2 as they continue to revise and refine firmware. As long as they make a number of firmware versions available, as is the case now, I am not overly concerned. I do feel sympathy for people who are buying brand new MK2 DACs, find the sound to be a bit ruthless, and cannot switch to version 2.0.2 because that firmware does not work with the new front panel display of their new MK2 DAC.