I got a new DirectStream (not an update) last Friday. I’ve been breaking it in since then but have noticed some issues with the display. The most significant issue is there are light colored scanning bars continuously moving from bottom to top. It’s more frequent than one per second, but couldn’t really count them accurately. I was surprised to see a new firmware released today (thought it was a week or more off) so I downloaded it and installed. No impact on the scanning bars. (I’ll wait to listen to it until I get some more break-in hours with a break-in CD, the first listen two days ago was disappointing). The second issue is when the unit shipped the display was at high brightness, it wasn’t until I figured how to reduce brightness that I noticed the scanning bars. I also noticed that the input screen had burned an image in the display. I set the display to “Dim” for a couple of days but the burn-in persists. This is not a big deal since it isn’t noticeable most if the time. The third issue, and it may not be the display, is on some CDs the bit rate toggles between 16 and 20. I thought commercial CDs were limited to 16 bits, but why would it toggle? The data should be one bit rate, correct? Any help will be greatly appreciated!
pmotz said I got a new DirectStream (not an update) last Friday. I've been breaking it in since then but have noticed some issues with the display. The most significant issue is there are light colored scanning bars continuously moving from bottom to top. It's more frequent than one per second, but couldn't really count them accurately. I was surprised to see a new firmware released today (thought it was a week or more off) so I downloaded it and installed. No impact on the scanning bars. (I'll wait to listen to it until I get some more break-in hours with a break-in CD, the first listen two days ago was disappointing). The second issue is when the unit shipped the display was at high brightness, it wasn't until I figured how to reduce brightness that I noticed the scanning bars. I also noticed that the input screen had burned an image in the display. I set the display to "Dim" for a couple of days but the burn-in persists. This is not a big deal since it isn't noticeable most if the time. The third issue, and it may not be the display, is on some CDs the bit rate toggles between 16 and 20. I thought commercial CDs were limited to 16 bits, but why would it toggle? The data should be one bit rate, correct? Any help will be greatly appreciated!Call PS Audio support about the screen - I'm pretty sure it's a faulty screen/screen controller.
The bit read out is based on the number of bits that weren’t all zeros in the last little moment of time. I’d suspect that you have a volume control that isn’t quite at full scale or some form of DSP configured in your player that only pulls the volume down just a little bit. Using the bit perfect test or at least checking some of the places mentioned in the write up about the bit perfect test may help you find which volume control is at fault… How to run a bit perfect test with DirectStream
Thanks for the reply Ted. I have contacted PS Audio via e-mail about the display problem but have not gotten a reply yet. As for the Bit Perfect test, based on your write up the Bit Perfect test is primarily for computer audio, such as sending a file through the Bridge. In my case I was playing a CD through my CD player, an Arcam DV137, when the bit rate was flip flopping. There isn’t a volume control on the CD player, so that shouldn’t be the reason for it happening. I did download the FLAC file and copied it to a DVD but my player wouldn’t play the file. It did recognize that something was there, it referred to it as a CLIP, never heard of that. Interesting thing is, since I downloaded the new firmware the flip flopping bit rate has not reoccurred. Haven’t tried more than a handful of CDs though, so I’m going to withhold judgement. My Bridge is still in my PWD (I assume the Bit Perfect test doesn’t work for the PWD), but will try it when I transfer the Bridge to the DS.
Oh my, after posting I noticed that the server inserted links every time I wrote Bit Perfect! That’s interesting…
Update on this … Talked to Alex on Friday and he said ship it back to replace display, but waiting on the RMA and shipping information before doing so. Packed it up Friday afternoon so only had a brief listen to the latest firmware. Strangely I wasn’t overwhelmed like many folks are. I heard a very small improvement, but not what I was hoping for. Which, for me at least, begs the question, could an issue with the display in any away effect the sound?