Review of my DMP unit.
This post represents my personal beta tester review of the DMP and I will primarily comment on its musical sound reproduction quality and its operational reliability.
Some background:
I have been an audiophile for 46 years, and I used a speaker-based (and LP-based - owning both a LinnSondek LP12 and VPI TNT turntable at the same time) audio system for the first 31 years, and a headphone-based audio system for the last 15 years. I only listen to classical music and opera, and I place a major emphasis on the reproduced sound quality of “musical accuracy”, which I arbitrarily define as an audio system’s reproduced sound that most closely approximates the sound of “real life” classical musical instruments and “real life” opera voices. I am very biased, and I personally believe that a good quality headphone-based audio system is much more capable of rendering certain “musically accurate” sounds - compared to any speaker-based system. I believe that speaker-based audio systems are too hampered by the following inherent problems-: i) they have to move too much air to produce a sufficiently loud sound in a large-sized room, and the large size of their diaphragms limits their transient speed of motion, thereby impairing their transient sound reproduction response quality; ii) the speakers usually have a combination of bass, midrange and treble units, which have to be integrated into a cohesive sound and iii) indirect sound from wall/furniture reflections interact with the direct sound thereby smearing the final “ear-heard” sound to a variable degree. Although I prefer a headphone-based audio system, I think that headphones cannot produce the body/weight of a “real life” orchestra’s sound, and I am constantly aware that it is like listening to a very miniaturized version of an orchestra when I am listening to orchestral music via headphones. During the 1980-1990s, I used to live near New York City, and I attended approximately 20 - 30 “live” orchestral/opera performances every year at either the Met. Opera House, Avery Fischer Hall or Carnegie Hall, and the memory of those “live” orchestral/opera sounds are still vividly present in my memory and I have never heard any audio system (whether headphone-based or speaker-based) that can come close to equalling that “live” sound in terms of “musical accuracy”.
My present headphone-based audio system is as follows-: PWT/DMP => Anedio D2 DAC => Violectric V281 headphone amplifier (which has 4 separate amps that drive my headphones in a push-pull manner as I only listen to the V281 headphone amp in balanced mode using a XLR connector) => HiFiMan HE 1000 headphone or Sennheiser HD800 headphone. Because my DMP is connected to my Anedio D2 DAC via a coax cable, I cannot obtain DSD audio signals from the playback of a SACD, and therefore my musical sound reproduction comments are only relevant to the playback of redbook CDs.
Musical sound reproduction:
Prior to purchasing a PWT 2 years ago, I previously used either a Sony XA5400ES CD-player or a Marantz 8001 CD-player. I purchased the PWT on a whim in November 2014 without ever auditioning the CD-transport. It resulted in significantly better sound, and I was so happy with its sound quality that I subsequently purchased another PWT as a spare unit because I wrongly thought in late 2014 that PS Audio would probably discontinue the production of any CD-transport device in the not-too-distant future.
In this review I will only be comparing the sound of the DMP to the PWT (and not to the Sony/Marantz CD-players) when playing redbook CDs. My audio system is entirely CD-based and I do not have a musical streaming device and I do not listen to high resolution audio files stored on a musical server.
I think that the DMP offers a significant, but small, improvement over the PWT in terms of classical music/opera sound reproduction. My personally perceived improvements regarding the sound quality of the DMP (relative to the PWT) are very concordant with the opinions expressed by some other beta testers. Here are three examples of comments made by three other beta testers.
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ILSEM wrote in post #299-: “Overall there’s more transparency than what I’m used to, with no hint of added brightness (a concern I had in Round 1). Bass notes are a bit more taut, but most noticeable are enhanced hearing of things being struck and plucked with strings and percussion (more snap my notes say). Also there’s a more shimmering sound to cymbals, tambourines, and triangles. Vocal harmonies are less homogenized/more separated.”
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Rob wrote in post #307-: “What I quote above from ILSEM pretty much nails it. The leading edges of notes come with a measure and subtlety of detail that the PWT does not deliver. Back on Nov. 1, Alan W commented here that he has spent much of his life playing pianos and recordings of that instrument sound much more realistic to his ears on the DMP, both tonally and with “more of a sense of each individual piano key being struck”. I can’t agree more. Furthermore, in the case of other instruments that produce their notes from strikes on some kind of string or surface, one hears so much more about the speed and/or force of the collision, also about the nature of the materials that are doing the actual colliding”.
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Dennis D wrote in post #379-: “Now enters the DMP. With only a few hours playtime the DMP has already shown itself to be a far superior extractor and conveyor of data than the PWT, BridgeII, or Auralic Aries. The best analogy I can come up with to describe what I’m hearing is viewing a landscape through a window. Aberrations to the image caused by passing the light through even the best glass result in a loss of detail and softening of edges. Removing the glass restores the fine detail and edges are sharper. With the DMP the aural window has been opened. Micro details and texture is more evident. The attack of percussion instruments has sharper impact and the decay is more naturally sustained, not truncated. Everything just sounds more right. The soundfield is populated with ambient details that weren’t evident with the other sources. These aren’t dramatic differences, but taken in total make it easier to suspend reality and get pulled into the music.”
The first quality of the DMP that impressed me was its ability to produce a faster transient response that gave struck instruments (eg. vibraphone, snare drums, triangles, cymbals, castanets) and plucked instruments (eg. harp, mandolin, violin, acoustic guitar) a greater level of “snap” clarity with less loss of detail and less softening of edges. It was as if the musical sound picture was scrubbed slightly cleaner thereby eliminating a level of sonic haze, and the overall reproduced sound is therefore more clear, and less hazy. My two headphones are capable of excellent soundstage imaging - both from side-to-side and back-to-front - and the perceived soundstage (located in an imaginary soundspace situated in front of my head) is cavernous in size when my headphones are used in balanced mode. I do not perceive any differences between the PWT and DMP when it comes to the size of the soundstage, the perceived size of the instruments within the sounstage and the stability of the positional locus of each individual instrument within that soundstage. However, I do hear slightly more “air” and a sense of a “blacker” background within that soundstage and I postulate that it is due to the greater “snap” clarity of each instrument’s sound so that there is less of a congested/smeared halo of sound surrounding each instrument (or opera voice). This quality is particularly apparent when listening to an opera chorus or when listening to a Gilbert& Sullivan opera when multiple operetta singers are singing in unison - equivalent to ILSEM’s claim that “Their vocal harmonies are less homogenized/more separated”. When it comes to the bass quality of my audio system, I desire a sharp, incisive bass attack with no overhang, bloating or woofiness/boominess. Both the PWT and DMP can produce this quality when it comes to the kettledrum and bass drum, but the DMP seems to have tighter (more taut) control over the lower registers of the cello and double bass string instruments, which I find very satisfying. Finally, I have found that there is slightly less sound congestion and less sound smearing during loud orchestral passages when 50-75 classical musical instruments are playing simultaneously at full tilt during an orchestral climax - although the reproduced sound using the DMP is still extremely congested/smeared compared to the “real life” sound of a classical orchestra playing in an orchestral venue.
In summary, I think that the DMP sounds marginally better than the PWT in a number of areas, but the magnitude of that difference is less than the magnitude of the difference between my PWT and my Sony XA54000ES and Marantz 8001 CD-players. I perceive of the sound difference between the DMP and the PWT with respect to redbook CD playback as being a refinement, rather than a radical improvement, but I am still amazed that PS Audio’s sound engineers could extract even more clarity from standard redbook CDs with their DMP’s new design changes, which I would never have anticipated, and they definitely deserve plaudits for this remarkable achievement.
Operational reliability:
I will first start off by expressing my opinions on the operational reliability of my PWT before I discuss the DMP’s operational reliability.
I can unequivocally state that the PWT is the most operationally unreliable audio product that I have ever owned in my 46 years of experience as an audiophile. To put this claim into proper perspective, first consider the operational reliability of my Sony XA5400ES CD-player and Marantz 8001 CD-Player. Using a scale of 1-to-10 for operational reliability (where 1 is the maximum degree of operational unreliability and 10 is the maximum degree of operational reliability), I would give the Sony XA5400ES CD-player and Marantz 8001 CD-Player a rating of 9 - because they only malfunctioned approximately once-per-year. By contrast, I would give my PWT a rating of 1 - 3, because it has malfunctioned hundreds of time during my 2-year time period of ownership.
Here is a list of the types of operational malfunctions that I experienced with my PWT.
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On multiple occasions the PWT would not play an inserted disc. It didn’t respond to the play command at the start when I tried to play track number 1. Then, it would sometimes respond if I selected the 2nd track on the remote and it would play that track or sometimes it didn’t respond at all. Sometimes, I couldn’t even remove the unplayable CD because the eject button didn’t then work. I discovered that if I turned off the power switch at the back and then turned it on again after ~15 seconds (thereby re-booting the PWT) that the eject button would again work and I could remove the CD from the PWT’s CD-drawer. However, on 4 occasions, that rebooting technique didn’t work and I had to manually pry the CD-drawer open using the paperclip technique.
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On multiple occasions, the player would start to play a CD but then suddenly/randomly come to a dead-stop while playing a certain track. It would then either start playing again if I selected another track or it would not respond at all to the remote control and I then had to remove the “stuck” CD.
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On multiple occasions, the PWT would suddenly stop playing, but then suddenly (spontaneously) start playing again after a time period of <1 second, and then it would stop again for < 1 second and then spontaneously start again producing a continuous/hiccupping start-stop series of distorted sounds each lasting < 1 second for each sound-on cycle. I could only end the hiccupping-sound (drop-out) phenomenon by clicking the stop button or the eject button.
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On a few occasions, when I was listening to a classical music CD (eg. Mozart piano concerto), and I was listening to the final (3rd) movement I noted that the PWT’s progress time bar indicated that the final track was going to end in a few seconds even though I knew that there was at least 30-60 seconds of unplayed music remaining in that 3rd movement. The final track therefore ended prematurely and the CD stopped playing even though the musical piece was incompletely played. The PWT then recycled back to track 1 and I didn’t ever get to hear the end of the classical music CD.
I sent my malfunctioning PWT back to PS Audio for repair on three separate occasions and each time they replaced the CD-drive (+/- controlling circuitry), but those problems still persisted after the first two CD-drive replacements. On the 3rd repair visit a few months ago, after replacing the CD-drive, they also changed the CD-drive’s firmware to make the CD-drive spin much faster, which has temporarily solved those multiple problems, but now I have a noisy (loud swishing) CD-drive that is clearly audible from a distance of 12 feet.
I could imagine that some readers would assert that I unforunately had a rare “lemon” PWT and they would assert that even a reputable company occasionally produces a lemon-product. However, I regard that assertion as being invalid based on the " reported evidence" from other PWT-owners. Consider this post by Dirk (post #269) where he stated-: “Elk suggested skipping over the DMP posts on the bugs, etc – and he has a point – but it doesn’t leave much else to read………. Reporting all the bad stuff is important…… My intention was to buy the DMP, ASAP, but after reading all the above posts I will hang fire for a good few months before I place an order on a new DMP… My PWT is under 2 years old and currently on its 3rd mechanism….! It actually arrived with a faulty mechanism. I have a few CDs where the PWT reads the TOC and displays all art work but when I hit play there is no sound ? ( I have tried all the updates, etc ) On other occasions the PWT abruptly stops playing and the only way to retrieve the CD is switch OFF then ON to reboot the PWT… All my discs are in perfect condition with no scratches, etc… I do hope the loading mechanism is of a much higher standard on the DMP because the mechanism in the PWT simply isn’t up to same standard as the rest of the PWT…… “It looks and feels cheap – which it is”. The PWT is excellent (musically) when compared to other CD players I’ve owned – but it is the most temperamental / unreliable hi-fi product I have owned……” Note that Dirk also had his PWT’s CD-drive replaced 3x and that he also asserted that the PWT is the “most temperamental/unreliable hi-fi product I have owned”. Finally, here is a 3rd report of PWT-unreliability by Michael in post #65 where he responded to my post about my unreliable PWT as follows-: “Jeff, Hope this is not true. My experience with the PWT mirrors yours – waiting on mine right now to come back with a new drive due to random dead stops. Good thing I’m beta testing the DMP otherwise I’d still be without a music source for my DSD. Also lots of issues with SD card and firmware on the PWT. And I had thought it was only me! Fortunately Dave P and crew were very helpful. If DMP shows same idiosyncratic traits I’ll tear my hair out.”
Does the DMP have the same degree of operational unreliability as the PWT? It is too soon to tell because we only have a few weeks of reports from beta-testers, but the early “bug” reports are not promising. Consider some examples of the types of operational unreliability “bugs” reported by beta testers.
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One of worst faults from my perspective is the problem of random “dead stops” where the CD-transport simply stops playing the CD (= gets “stuck”) and where it doesn’t respond further to any remote control commands - because it radically intereferes with the music-playing experience. This is an operational fault that should never happen - and it never happened even once with any of my Sony and Marantz CD-players during the past 15 years - yet a number of beta testers have experienced this same problem with their DMP. Here is an example of that type of problem as described by Woodburger in post #167-: “Yesterday, the dmp stopped playing with :01 left on the last track (#9) of the CD. This happened three times. Finally, I rebooted (rear switch) and wanted it to run overnight to build some more hours. This morning I found it stopped on track 6 of 9, with :36 seconds to go on that track. Dmp won’t respond to any remote commands and touchscreen is also unresponsive.”
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Some beta testers have experienced a gross failure of their new DMP units. Here is an example from Solomon where he wrote in post #242-: "DMP arrived today. I left a disc playing and when I returned the screen was blinking slowly and not playing. Several reboots failed. Some of them asked me to touch the 4 corners of the screen in order, but screen still blinked. Finally I got a stable reboot with music playing, but the image on the screen is upside down. Touch screen doesn’t work, just remote. This is firmware 1.47. — Here is yet another example of a total failure of operability by ClassicalDude when he wrote in post #283-: “Sounded great when it worked, but unfortunately, as posted in various other forums (per Paul’s suggestion), beta products are just that. Unit stopped working completely after about a week. Inserting a hybrid disc caused the whole thing to stop working, meaning the initialization screen just hung and never got to operation. It’s not the firmware. Updated or not, just stopped working ---- Now I have the chore of boxing this up, lost a disc, since I can’t retrieve it. Will never do a Beta with PS Audio again. Not worth it.”
3) I reported the following operational problem in post #260 -: "I turned the “on” switch on the remote to turn the DMP on, and the screen showed the “insert disk” screen display. Then I clicked on the open/eject button of the remote, but the CD-drawer wouldn’t open despite many repeated attempts. Rebooting solved this problem, but this is yet another example of an elementary player operational fault that should not be happening. Sourav then responded to my post by stating that he had twice experienced this same problem.
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Many beta testers reported a specific “lockup” problem of both their DMP and DS-DAC when they were conjoined by an I2S connection, and where both of the two units required rebooting after the “lockup”. It seemed to still be a problem after the issue of firmware version 1.57, and I don’t know if the problem has since been resolved following the release of the latest firmware (version 1.68). One beta tester has already stated that he still experiences the lockup problem after updating to firmware version 1.68.
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A number of beta testers stated that they could no longer obtain a DSD signal from the DSD layer of their SACDs after they updated to firmware 1.47 or firmware 1.57, and one of the beta testers stated that he could only obtain a DSD signal when he went back to the original firmware. I don’t know if this specific issue has been resolved.
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pmotz in post #275 complained of dropouts when playing a SACD. Here is his post-: “The second bug I discovered when I was playing SACDs. I played one last night, Jazz at the Pawnshop (sounded wonderful!) and it played without a hitch, burp, or whatever. Then this morning I selected a few PentaTone SACDs, the first was Bach “The Art of the Fugue”. When I placed it in the drawer and tapped the “Insert Disc” icon on the screen the drawer closed and began playing. I didn’t press “Play”, it did it on it’s own. Hmmm, Ok, so I start reading the paper and the music plays and it seems somewhat repetitive. I look at the screen from my seat and it shows the first track. Did it not change the display or …? Well, it turns out the disc started in repeat mode. I had listened to the first track three times, ahem, must pay better attention! So I play with the “Repeat” icon on the screen (hadn’t found it on the remote at that point) and get it to play The whole disc. Sounded great, but then … it happened. The sound would cut out for a second or two, repeatedly, but not in any pattern. I tried a couple of other PentaTone SACDs, first was Berlioz “Symphonie Fantastique”. This played fine and sounded good. Next was was Chopin and Loewe Piano Concertos. This disc also had dropouts, lots of dropouts! No pattern to them and when I replayed the disc they weren’t in the same places. Then I pulled out a Mercury Living Presence SACD, Suppe Overtures. This too played with lots of dropouts. It also had some irregular pops at the beginning of play, but they stopped after about 30 seconds. Now I’m getting depressed. 
I have to go out so I leave the disc in the player and it is stopped.” He (and others) also complained of low level tick-or-click sounds at the start of playing a SACD. For example, Michael in post #287 complained of “having same issue only with SACD – disc starts playing by itself after loading with start up sound like dropping the needle on a record”.
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Even after the recent 3rd major revision of the firmware (version 1.68) many operational problems remain as delineated by Rob in post #378 where he stated-:
"Loaded the latest firmware last night but waited until today to try it. All navigation issues that I pointed to last time remain, then some:
- Rapidly-sequenced clicks of the remote to backwardly relocate the play point within a given track still quickly lock-up the DMP, requiring a power-off, then a power-on again to restore function.
- The touch-screen is still not responsive to all touches. My test for this now comes down to using the fast-forward or fast-backward arrows at each end of the play-point track bar to scroll as quickly through successive tracks as I can to get to a desired track. In this case the touch-screen misses up to 1 tap out of every 3, at least in rapid succession.
- The play-point cursor of the track bar seems even slower in response to remote or touch-screen repositioning than it was before this last firmware update. Furthermore, when using the touch-screen to do so, the cursor tends to jump around for up to 2-3 seconds after its new placement before it finally becomes stationary; and as stated several times previously it also tends to have a mind of its own, not always stopping where one has just tried to position it. With the remote, however, the cursor exhibits somewhat different behaviors. When clicking the navigation wheel to rapidly get to an earlier passage within a given track, the cursor is slow to react to any pausing of that function and will continue jerking backward for another second or so, even though music starts playing immediately.
- The screen is also quite sluggish in displaying new tracks (or providing an accurate account of the new track number) if one has just fast-forwarded or fast-reversed through several tracks to get there. In fact, several seconds can elapse before the new track is displayed with an accurate track number and/or track-title details.
- And with the new firmware, navigation quickly to a desired track is no longer necessarily silent, since momentary snippets from the beginnings of tracks that one is just trying to navigate past are now sometimes audible."
8) Finally, I had a new operational problem that started three days ago and that operational fault happens randomly - where I cannot choose any other track after the CD starts playing track 1. For example, if I click on track 4 on the remote while the DMP is playing track 1, the display number changes to 4 but the track number 4 doesn't play and the DMP is operationally "stuck". If I eject the CD and then immediately re-load the CD, then my DMP becomes temporarily operable again from a track selection perspective. However, this frustrating new operational problem has re-occurred a number of times, and I don't know if this particular operational problem is going to worsen with the passage of time.
Final decision-making:
Like other beta testers, I am obliged to decide whether to keep the DMP or return it for a full refund.
I have personally decided to return my DMP and I have since contacted Kevin in order to obtain a RMA form.
The reason for returning the DMP relates to my concerns about its present (and predicted future) level of operational unreliabity. I experienced a very tumultuous “love-hate” relationship with respect to my PWT over the past 2 years - loving its sound reproduction quality but hating its lack of operational reliability. I strongly suspect that the DMP is likely going to be as operationally unreliable as my PWT and I do not have the emotional fortitude to withstand another tumultuous “love-hate” relationship with another PS Audio transport device. I imagine that I am going to experience many pangs of regret when I ship my beta unit back to PS Audio, but I have decided that I will only consider purchasing a DMP in the future if I can obtain incontrovertible “evidence” that PS Audio has radically improved the DMP’s operational reliability so that it can at least achieve an operational reliability score of 8-out-of-10.