FWIW there are technical reasons that the sound quality of 178 might have been a little worse than 173, and that 179 could be better than both. They involve no function changes, but instead if and how fast some debugging lines might be wiggling. All of this stuff unfortunately matters. It’s also system specific and historically some have always preferred the ones with more noise. 
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That’s what it’s all about!
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I just turned on the system, so it needs an hour to confirm what I heard last night. Until this version, there was something missing in the mid-range, and some minor things that made me look for a cure desperately, and I think vmax would agree on this too. The tweaks help quite a bit, and they should help in future FW updates too. The good thing about tweaks is you can easily move back and compare. With the latest version I am going to alter some of the tweaks I did earlier to compare. I consider this is a fun thing to do.
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How long since you installed 179? In my system the SQ did not sound right for the first two hours. My system seems to sound better last night than now. I am tired so I may need a glass of single malt to put me in the right mood.
Funny
All I can think as I’ve read this thread over the past few weeks is…I must have the worst ears on this board
Couldn’t even perceive things getting better from “burn in”
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Why - do their stereos suck?
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I am going back to my cave, with a double single malt in hand, and not coming out till I reach Nirvana, or need another double.
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Ted is working on Antero for my 8-Track player.
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Tell us more about this holy beveridge…
Well your news is not promising. I loaded 179 this Am. Everything was sublime for four hours. I had to go do projects away from home. I hope not to see same turn back as you. The 179 I got clearer highs a more authoritative bass and best midrange ever. I did not tweak any footers. Just moved my DS fuse and USB and i2S shorting plugs to th MKII. So all my cables and tweaks are exactly from what I liked best with the DS.
It sounds better than 178 for sure! Listening to Arooj Aftab “Vulture Prince”, her voice is as clear as ever, and the finger moving on the guitar strings is so easy to hear. She is standing 6’ behind my speakers on a four feet high stage, and I can see the beautiful voice coming from her mouth. I went with a glass of Compass box Hedonism Blended Grain Scotch, and it hit the spot too.
Everything sounded as good as yesterday, I like this version!
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I can’t seem to get my unit to load. It worked before with 178. I even got a 32gb USB 2.0 flash drive format to ExFAT, but it won’t load.
Did you have 2.3.3 before? If you do, then there is no need to reload 2.3.3 again. Mine took at least 5 minutes before it uploads 179 (after inserting the USB). See Ted’s post above from yesterday.
Did you try power cycling the MKII with the USB drive inserted?
I noticed early on that sometimes with the FPGA updates that the MKII doesn’t recognize the drive until you reboot while inserted.
Power cycling is still needed, I think. It just will not do 2.3.3 loading if you already have it. But wait a bit then 179 uploads would show up. At least that was what happened in my case.
I also used an old 8G USB 2.0. PSA gear likes oldies for FW.
This is correct.
I power cycled many times and just load the 179 bin only and no go
You have to load 179 through the front panel display per instructions using the control wheel and menus. Just USB power cycle flash only loads 2.3.3
Just going off the top of my head, in case it helps, If you have a file named “fpga1_xxx_auto.bin” you can rename it without the “_auto” and put the USB stick in the back (I don’t know if getting rid of the “_auto” is necessary, but it won’t hurt), power the DS Mk II off, wait just a moment, power it back on, wade down the menus to System, press the center button, move over to the FPGA Load menu, scroll down to the fpga1xxx.bin that you want to load, select it with the center button and it should load and prompt you to reboot.
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@waymanchen11 - I just realized I don’t understand your symptoms well enoough.
Are you:
- Not seeing 179 on the MKII’s display when you navigate to the FPGA Load Menu?
- You see 179, but when you select it, nothing happens?