Our Thanksgiving guests will be happy to know they don’t have to learn my newest and greatest improvement to the system 
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James,
That would probably be the best solution. Just download it to a drive. We know how that goes for some users!
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James or @tedsmith (apologies Ted if this in fact is not related to your end of things): I was wondering if an update like this is distinct from one where Ted has made sonic changes (the Changes Formerly Known as Mountaintops - where’s that Prince emoji)?
i.e. is this something we can store ten of on the DAC and boot into whichever flavor we choose in case ours worked better before we did it? Or is this more like an OS, “once you’ve done it, you’re committed” sort of thing?
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Ha, I was about to correct that the title of the best Prince tune imo is “”Mountains,” not “Mountaintops” but I got it now.
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Love that rekkid.
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You can have up to about 10 FPGA images on the thumb drive and use the menus to pick one. It takes a minute or so to change the boot flash for the FPGA to the new FPGA code.
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So the DAC itself will not store ten? You just leave a drive in the FW USB slot with up to ten on it, and access from there?
And still not clear if this is the same as the sort of Update we’re about to see.
When I heard Paul and Co. talking it sounded like you’d have a dynamic menu that you could choose from. But for my work I’ve been selecting update FPGA in the menu and then choosing one image from the USB stick. I don’t know if that’s what they were talking about or not, but it takes a while to write the FPGA’s boot flash. It takes less time to bit-bang an image into the FPGA, maybe 10 seconds - but I don’t know if that will be a feature and if so how much more time it will take to read it from flash accessible to the control processor. (There’s a lot of flash available all over the place.)
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I don’t quite see how the usb drive comes into view when the updates are regarded to be in place OTA.
Ok, by means of USB is also possible, but it’s not too weird to expect an internal storage being available for those 10 software versions. Is it?
I don’t know the PS Audio UI plans or the OTA plans. There is memory available for some FPGA images.
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Yes, then you’ll have a two fold increase in SQ improvement. The difference between the Bridge and AirLens I suspect is much more increase in SQ than the MKI and MKII DACs. It may be worth your trouble to think about the AirLens too.
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All of today I’ve been trying to sort out this issue that I have been having with the MKII. I keep getting an overall drop in resolution and detail after audio plays anywhere from 3min to 30-40min. Music is still listenable, but not nearly as enjoyable, and certainly not the constant great sound I was getting from the MKII prior. I first noticed it the other day, but thought it was my Mac because after restarting the computer full resolution would instantly return. Today I tried two other mini’s that I own and experienced the same problem. If I restart the Mac, or even the MKII, the problem momentarily corrects itself, but then soon returns. I’ve been listening over USB to AIFF CD rips via Audirvana. I have never experienced the muted audio like others have reported, so I don’t know if this is related to the ongoing unresolved problem or not. I kind of hope that it is, because whatever it is it’s very annoying, and something I have never experienced before. So hopefully it can be fixed. I want to be able to just simply enjoy the music and not have to constantly be analyzing it for problems.
It is very likely related to the spontaneous persistent mute. Obviously, some have no problem; some haven’t heard a peep; and multiple amounts of time in between. You likely are almost, but not quite immune.
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Thanks for the reply Ted. That’s kind of what I was hoping, that it’s somehow related to the problem others are having. So in the meantime I will patiently wait for the cure.
Fascinating. I’ve been trying to guess what the bug could be but this one throws a whole new wrinkle into the mix.
With heating and sporadic (some but seemingly well fewer than half?) infection, I was guessing maybe a hardware or perhaps manufacturing issue based on initial reports. With this new report now thinking field programmable code.
Will be interesting to hear what the solution involved when it arrives if we’re made privy
Interesting to hear that you actually think there will be a big SQ improvement by replacing the internal bridge inside the MKI with an external streamer like the Airlens. Have you tested this yourself?
No, the AirLens is not yet available, but from what some of the others posted, the Bridge is not as good as an dedicated external server or streamer and the Bridge is a electrically noisy unit to be put inside a DAC.
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I think @Paul has high hopes that the AirLens will be quite a step up on the Bridge II…
and early reports from the alpha version certainly sound quite positive.
Thanks for the update James. Hopefully we will hear more today. Have the tech Gods figured out if it’s a software or (part failing) hardware issue?
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Enough already!