I think he actually said just the opposite.
Just a guess, but I’ll hazard that this all stems from the success or failure of performing hand-solder-rework on all of the units pre-beta. That’s my guess. I don’t think we’ve been told (and they certainly aren’t obligated to tell us) what the genesis of the failures were, but there are many clues and that’s my educated guess having come up through labs like the one pictured (the bench).
Regarding your wish to be a beta tester, I don’t know whether to say, “be careful what you wish for,” or “it looks like your prayers have been answered!” ; )
Only you can decide which applies, haha
No special deals for beta testers. The price on the website, along with the trade-in offers apply the same as anyone else looking to purchase a MKII. And they are paid for up front.
To the pushback guy on the free labor comment: regardless of motivation or willingness that’s what it is, and the IBM alleged counter example that in reality was simply a textbook case of internal testing only reinforced my point (I guarantee that IBM would not outsource their pre-launch product testing to their customers (the public), well for many reasons but not the least of which is that IBM is the biggest patenting company in history (with more patent attorneys than any other company as well, haha), if you know what I mean).
Not an indictment on PSA’s process just an observation
Seems plain weird that the importer would be bringing in beta units for retail.
Something is missing here!
That’s a huge claim man 
Likely a semantics distinction.
If I’m right about the rework theory, after initially performing the batch job they probably didn’t adequately test to assure readiness and shipped.
The ones that were bad come back eventually. Now they know the issue and make sure to test before shipping. At some point they decide close enough, let’s release. This is all just a guess of course but doesn’t seem so unusual to me. The important thing is that they isolated the cause of failure and how to test for it or they wouldn’t have gone to release
Did I miss this? When did Paul say this?
I do not believe that is the issue and for a fact Paul said there would be no reworking of the board in the first 500 units that are produced so It isn’t going to matter whether a unit was designated Beta or full release. They are going to be the same. By the time they have produced and shipped 500 units they may have re engineered the board to eliminate the electronic switches. Until that time they all will require removing them by hand. Ted even said either way it will not affect the performance of the DAC.
“reworking the board” typically means a board relayout (new boards from the board house), not that changes to existing populated boards couldn’t be made (else why on the bench with rolls of solder visible and fluke meters). They order a minimum number of boards and don’t want to throw them out would be guess.
But as I said just a guess
No. Reworks are small changes to an existing board and it’s quite common for there to be reworks in production units. The things is that relaying out the board is expensive, not guaranteed to be perfect the first time, etc. Having a little manual work done on each board until the boards need to be relayed out for other reasons makes sense and is standard practice.
Thanks. I stand corrected and apologies for confusion
That is exactly the point I was making!
Not quite, boards take time to make and only the first, say, 20 to 40 boards had been built with the attenuator parts on them and then had to have them removed. The rest of the first 500 boards have been and will be populated and soldered without the attenuator parts. (If I missread what you intended to convey, just take this as a clarification.)
Our system never sounded so good with the addition of the MKII.
There might be another way to look at it for those that want to wait… how long will PS Audio give a full $3,500 for trade in using a MKI?
Just my thoughts,
Steve
Ted,
I appreciate that clarification. I am glad to hear that the issue was caught before all of the boards were floated. People should not believe that the Beta units are different than the units released for public sale.
I was not on the forums and became a beta tester for the MK2. I was on the phone with them showing interested in the upcoming beta program over a year ago. I’m a technical/R&D guy by trade so I’m sure that they wanted my input. Overall PSA has great products without the crazy prices, what’s not to like.
Glad you are now on the forums too! It is nice to share our thoughts.
I’m learning a lot from the veterans on these forums, thanks.
Nice, and welcome