Anything wrong with PS Audio DirectStream DACs?

Yea... well - the market is flooded with them. I'm sorry Pmotz, the "search for the latest and greatest" might be true (we all do that) but I don't see the (say) lampizator or even benchmark units being sold second-hand at fire-sale (and I bet that there are more benchmark owners than PS directstream owners).

What's out there that might be the next best think (other than the Lampizator, of course - hehe).

Cbozdog,

After reading your last post, I think you've answered your original question. Think about this for a second, because something is missing. You started off by asking why is there so many PS Audio dacs are for sale? Its a reasonable question, but you clearly missed something in your analysis. If you want to properly judge the dac, you need to judge it fairly. You have it ruled out but you've never even listened to one. I suspect that most, if not all, of the people selling their PS Audio dacs did the same thing. Its more likely that the dac in question doesn't match the personal tastes of the of the people that bought them, than the dac just being "not good". So, if you want to rule this dac out as a potential purchase, you really need to hear it for yourself. Otherwise, you're just guessing.

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?

if you have not heard the PSAudio DAC with the latest firm ware then you have not heard it at its best

I just received this unit 2 weeks ago. I have considered selling it but the reason has nothing to do with its attributes as an excellent DAC. My streaming device only has Toslink/optical out. Unknown to me (my own fault for not reading the specs thoroughly), of all the inputs the PS can accept, the Toslink will only decode up to 24/96. This has rendered too much of my library useless. Despite the dealer ignoring my offer to sell it back to him for $600 less than I paid, I contacted PS Audio for help. To their credit, the president, Paul McGowan, and their engineers have been very helpful. In fact, they offered to have me send them the unit, along with my streamer and cabling and they believe they can resolve my issue without cost. I had previously been using my McIntosh C2500 preamps' Burr-Brown DAC, which does decode up to 24/192 and is very good in its own right. Honestly, for 24/96 hi-rez, the difference is minimal. Where there is an uptick with the PS Direct Stream is resolving red book cd's and files. It does add new life to many of these so-so recordings. So, the large number of units for sale could be for any number of reasons like mine. It could just be the law of numbers as there have been a boatload of these purchased due to the reviews. As I said, for hi-rez files, for those already using high quality DACs looking for a quantum leap, differences at these levels come more in baby steps.