James, this advice has proven itself over and over in my personal and professional life:
‘Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good’
There will always be more bug fixes and improvements - ask Barry to leave something for the next FW update… 
Ha, I like that. Pretty darn fitting for this, ain’t it? I’ll put out some feelers and see if we can release something soon. Thanks for the patience Zachi!
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RE: Bi Amping with the S300
Hi Todd,
Yes, they would be. Both amps have a gain of 30.5 dB, so they should be well matched for this application.
Best regards,
Scott Schroeder | Customer Service Representative
Woo!
So the Strata sounds a lot like the BHK Pre-amp & 250 amp that I had, a little less refined which I can live with, but it doesn’t have the grip and control over the bass on the speakers (VonSchweikert/Vortex Acoustics VR-35). Not like I was expecting it to at a fraction of the price, but it does an amazing job, especially at this price point.
Now, I’m assuming the amp section in the Strata is the same or very similar to the one in the S300?
I’m wondering if adding this second amp to run the bass section would improve the bass tightness, or is it just time to shop for easier to drive speakers?
The S300 output stage obviously has more headroom so I think it would do a better job controlling the bass. The output stage in the Strata doesn’t offer the same power, but I’d be damned if it doesn’t sound sweet and full. Driving the tweeter and mids with Strata and the woofers with the S300 will likely be a good outcome.
My only hesitation here is that you’ll be feeding the S300 with a single ended connection. It will be balanced all of the way through in the Strata.
Driving the S300 single ended would cause you hesitation because…?
I realize “embedded” is a little different software mentality but…
Is what you have better than what the customer has? Then you should release it. Why?
2 reasons:
- If you have a successful product the number of customers seeing a bug you have a fix for is increasing. This causes frustration and ill-will within the customer base and the “social media feedback loop” only gets noisier.
- Reference 1: If customer’s don’t see fixes for “known” issues they eventually move-on and you’ll have no reason to release anything because your customer base will be nil.
Don’t ever get into a “2” situation by aiming for perfection.
This is commonly why I’ve seen embedded move from beta, to limited release, to general availability. Those who want perfection, or don’t hit the use case needing update, just wait for GA. The rest of us can go for broke as beta or play in the more stable LR release, which is really your release candidate awaiting additional fixes, category. One system I used would average 2-3 years from LR to GA. We never ran GA and I have no idea who did. I think they only shipped product with GA so they had a “known” out of the box expectation.
I’ve been holding off on posting this because I really do like the product and don’t want to throw negativity around it but I truly expected a “young” product to have a much more aggressive release schedule to squash bugs as they arrived.
Timeline:
I received my Strata in early June.
The Strata arrived with a software release .1 ahead of what’s on the website.
There has been no software releases posted that match or are ahead of mine.
We’re 6 months into ownership and ~7 months in the hands of customers. That feels like an eternity of a software release timeline for anything where it, at least should have been, expected the wider user base would have found issues.
We know the product is good but not perfect. Please give us early Strata owners some love. Thank you.
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@todd-r I could be overthinking this, but because the S300 is a truly balanced amp, if you were to feed it balanced, you’d have a 6dB boost in gain over the single ended. This usually doesn’t present itself as an issue because for most, they’re feeding a sub with the LR out, and the sub usually has its own gain control. The other common use is to feed a separate amp, but I don’t know of anyone that is doing this and also using the amp stage on the Strata. I would absolutely give it a shot regardless though. Could work really well.
@ipeverywhere I couldn’t agree more. I wish there were more updates to address everything. The main reason for not releasing multiple updates, one for each fix, is the update process causes a lot of folks trouble. Certainly some, but not all audiophiles are great with computers. By lumping multiple fixes into one release, we only have one update headache as opposed to multiple. I’ll see what I can do.
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I remember the days where a single bit on the wrong side of the addressable space would fry the non-volatile memory so I get it. Do think about a program for us folks who don’t sleep well and don’t mind tinkering for hours in the dark until it takes. 
EDIT: Heck, I remember when companies shipped E/EPROM kits to upgrade our gear. I’ve got to go kick some kids off my lawn now.
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You, sir, have a VERY good understanding of embedded systems!
(I have been in the embedded business for 20 years now…)
VERY well put together.
I too like the Strata (and PS Audio) a lot - otherwise, mine would have been shipped back for full refund long ago…
For the record, I still believe that my display issue is NOT fixable by FW update, but playing along with the hope that I am wrong! Been waiting for this FW update to fix my issue (or otherwise start an RMA process for a new Strata) since June (so that is 6 months now!!). Frankly, I am losing my patience… 
I was not part of the conversation, but I heard that your display issue could be fixed with both sending it in or code. If you want to send it in and get it right, I think our guys could get it turned around quickly.
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Taking this discussion offline to email instead.
Sorry everyone, did not intend to hijack the thread.
Wait. So the Strata can be used as a DAC for PCM TV audio? That could be a game changer for a lot of folks. 2 channel stereo for movies is about 98% of a 5.1 system. I mean excellent stereo sound is better than mediocre surround sound. And you avoid the HT Bypass. Hhhmmmm.
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