I had that experience years ago, when a local high end audio dealer compared the top of the line Accuphase digital DAC and transport to a $3,500 turntable set up. I wished I hadn’t heard how much better the modest analog rig sounded to the mega priced state of the art digital components. It was a sad moment which I tried to erase from my memory.
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I have a middle of the road $8500 Turntable setup. (TT, Tonearm and cartridge.) It slays.
And it is made of thoroughly modern materials. Imagine.
I believe it is wet blanket proof except for the most determined stubborn stumps.
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Vinyl is better hands down. If you have a newer $40,000 turntable, $10,000 preamp, $7,000 arm and $4,000 cartridge. Or a good vintage deck for much less. Than you need 180gm true analog recordings. You need a washing and drying machine can cost $10,000. You need force gauge. azimuth gauge ETC. Then you need setup calibration discs ETC. You need a good clamp and record retainer can cost $3,000. Your front end alone is 60-70 Grand. I do have it but rarely use it anymore. I have about 100,000 LP,s/45’s in a separate 15,000 square foot building on my property. I have about 35,000 redbook CD’s. Maybe 5 SACD’s.
Redbook is vastly superior to compressed streaming IMO. I take about 300-700 CD’s to my listening room at a time. I usually do not go back to the outbuilding in a year or so. Some CD’s are much better than others. Not to mention special labels, gold masters ETC. Digital can sound great. Vinyl is indeed better but it a PITA and can cost a fortune for absolute best sound.
The DS Senior is a great DAC. I prefer 3.05 firmware. I feel it is now on the heals of my Select DAC II(loaded, mono bases). The TSS should handily outdo the Select DAC for a mere 30 Grand or so I imagine.
Plug all into P20. I use 2 of them on dedicated runs with direct tap to utility and there own breaker box.
So you be the judge. If you have endless money. time and patience go vinyl. If not DS Senior you should be missing out on very little IMO.
I do not mean to be a jerk with outrageous prices but I feel that is the reality of the situation. You can build a system with the DS Senior for $25,000 and it will be great in it’s own right. Of course if you build a $500,000 system it will be much better as well. All said and done the DS Senior is no slouch. The TSS may then be the best DAC in the world.
As a side note, as I mentioned Vinyl can be done much cheaper with vintage equipment. Which is often better until you hit big money systems. Just make sure it is in good repair or service it. The nice thing about audio equipment is that used is often worth very little money. Unless it is something legendary.
Simply owning the DS senior is a good start but I would not pair it with $500 speakers/amp. That would be a complete waste IMO.
Unfortunately everything is streaming now. The demise of the CD. Although there are millions to be had used, cheap in most instances. There is good and bad too. For instance the Led Zeppelin box set was much better than the Beatles one IMO.
Any way you cut it, you will need top equipment to fully resolve CD’s or vinyl IMO. If you have cheap equipment then you cannot complain. The DS Senior deserves the best and the TSS perhaps even better. You do not buy a $7,000 DAC(with bridge) to build a cheap system around it. That would be a complete waste.
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Amen, brother, Amen!
Well, at least speakers are unlikely to break down…I am interested in finding out more about the cabinet design and construction.
oh, I just remembered, it will have a built-in sub-woofer amplifier and external electronics, so I’d better keep a spare cold wet blanket.
Why do you sit on the fence… Why not say what you really think… 
I don’t know anywhere near enough about this speaker to come to any conclusion about anything. It’s just that, from the glimpse of the photo I’ve seen, it looks very late 90’s. And manufacturers who build speakers as the only thing they devote their whole existence for, have moved on a long way since then. I’m just surprised to see what little I’ve seen if the intent with this speaker is to build an all-conquering world class speaker. I’ll be interested to read the early user opinions. It might just be that, I don’t know. The marketing of it thus far has been historically consistent with what we’ve seen with previous PS products (“extraordinary new speaker from PS”, “benchmark in uncompromised performance”, “one of the best sounding loudspeakers ever built”).
I wait in anticipation for what comes out of the “cobbled together” process (which I think was a recent comment out of the PS skunk works about the AN3 prototype build). But if anybody thinks they can build a world class speaker at their first attempt, I think that would be a first if it turned out to be true.
““But if anybody thinks they can build a world class speaker at their first attempt, I think that would be a first if it turned out to be true.””
‘ab esse ad posse valet consequentia’
Speakers are all about how they sound, personal tastes, and a lot less about the fancy construction. The art isn’t in the construction though that is certainly an element to it.
The art is in the voicing.
For example, Magico speakers have a lot of high tech to them but in my opinion aren’t all that musical and certainly haven’t good bass in the systems I have tried to make them work. The things they do well they do
really well. They get out of their own way with respect to cabinetry and you can hear that right away. But then they just leave me cold. They are not voiced to match my musical tastes. They sound cold and lifeless. I am not picking specifically
on Magico speakers. The YG too have wonderful cabinetry but they just don’t float my boat musically and in the same way the Magicos do.
Again, matters of opinion.
I guess my message is to focus less on technology and more on the actual connection they make between you and the music through the designer’s voicing.
One of the main reasons I wanted to offer speakers is because there are so few, at any price, I would personally recommend to our customers. You can imagine the number of times we are asked to recommend speakers to our customers to match their
electronics. I can’t recommend a pair of Infinity IRSV for obvious reasons. And every other brand of speaker I know of have too many gotchas to make them no brainers to recommend.
In defense of Magico, I did hear one setup in Japan that was really magical and showed me what the speaker is capable of. A gentlemen had spend a few years honing the system to a fine focus and went with an all MIT/Spectral setup and designed
the room around the system. They were truly extraordinary but not something practical for getting people that very same experience in their homes.
I know there are a number of people that have the very same tastes and urges for music and its experience as we do. The best way to connect them and our equipment with the perfect transducers is to build them ourselves.
That way, we can guarantee the experience.
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I have very similar impressions to yours from the last High end fair and wrote it somewhere here. Lifeless and uninvolving at least with solid state electronics (Solution) which is sold as a perfect match (but just the same distribution I guess as with B&W and McIntosh). I could imagine I like it better with tubes or very coloring/richness enhancing measures like MIT cabling. Didn’t understand the hype at all about them but I’m sure there are many happy with them.
Those selected focuses on individual measures like schist, carbon or metal cabinets, ceramic drivers etc. often seem to me like helpless attempts to replace the skill to create emotional sound. Those components often have individual strengths but miss to provide the essential.
My reference system has the Wilson Wamm with 4 Thor’s Hammer. I would not say it is bad at all! The room is a live end/dead end. Speakers are often(but not always with “off” brands) you get what you pay for. Pretty much like anything else. Save for PSA!
I bought my Directstream SR and DMP before Christmas. The gear is well run in (I think). As it suits me, I’m playing vinyl, CD/SACD and digital. I revel in the difference between the formats. Of course, after a long day of commuting, digital is my go to but every weekend, just for fun, I swap sources. To be honest, I couldn’t care which of the sources is ‘better’. On my system, they all sound excellent a tad different from each other but excellent.
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biggarthomas, I completely agree. Different but both very good with the right equipment.
In regards to speakers. Some of the most satisfying and musical ones I’ve heard, are open baffle. Best way to eliminate cabinet resonance is to eliminate the cabinet. That being said there are some speakers with drivers mounted in cabinets that I’ve heard that sound as open and uncolored, but they’re super expensive. Takes a lot of effort and expense to build a cabinet that completely disappears.
The nice thing is, besides all the ambience, soundstaging, rhythmic etc. quality, the DS sr. (especially with good hires recordings) has a level of top end quality that leaves absolutely nothing to miss without direct comparison. This is very different to all players/DAC‘s I heard before. I think you can easily be satisfied long term with this sound. All who will buy the new PSA speakers and listen to an AMT tweeter first time will start hearing many more differences in the treble region and get probably more sensible to this characteristic as to the also important mid and bass quality.