OK,I had some free time and went ahead and opened up the DS. First time doing that… and all I can say is…“have a lot of patience”.
I did line up and tighten down the offending corner pillar,the screws were a bit loose,the top one more than the bottom one. The others were ok. As you can see from the new photo I did get rid of the slight mismatch on the top horizontal plane but the vertical gap closed just barely enough to notice,although a wee bit closer tolerance. Works for me.
My 2 cents in the mismatch matter is, from what I could see, looking at the construction of the pillars…they are attached to a flange which in turn the flange holds the corners together though the screws to the upper/lower panels. The flange has a curvature to them, top and bottom, that contours to the pillars partial circumference, and, by my untrained eye, it seems that the flange needs to be trimmed a bit more so as to fit nicely into the pillar area. Think… hand in glove.
To me, it looks as if that is a contributing factor + the loose screws to some of the mismatch problems at hand. If the pillar and the flange were of a perfect tolerance match…making a more refined fit…one fitting perfectly,one into the other… it could clear up the mismatch problems.
That is disappointing. One of my devices had the misaligned corners. It wasn’t too big a deal to rejig it into place. I took the lid off the put in an Audiophile grade fuse at the same time.
My unit is from February 2019 and I have the gap as well. Disappointing that they can ask $6k for one of these but can’t put in the effort to do a once over after it is assembled. Attention to detail is not one of PS Audio’s strong suites as we all know. I guess it is the price of admission to have one of the best sounding DACs in its price range.
Had the same corner gap issue with my DSD (DMP corners have stayed tight).
The corner pieces are castings held in place by 4 set screws on the interior. You need a small screwdriver and a bit of manual dexterity to get to all of them. I used a bit of LocTite on the screws to keep them in place and things have been fine since.
I would refuse such a unit even if it would cost 500$ only. I’d try to repair it myself, no problem, but finally I wouldn’t accept it as it is.
Things like this happen, seems to be an assembly and qc problem at the same time.
I can follow Paul’s public reaction (although I reckoned with more incomprehension and emphasis on an intolerable exception), but I’d hope for a more consequent internal discussion on it.
I’d be disappointed if things like this would be seen as „can happen“ without major further measures. Don’t think it is like that.
Ultimately it us as consumers who are the enablers. Things aren’t going to change if we keep throwing money at PS Audio. Paul himself said he was “on it to see if we can’t do better in the future”. Obviously nothing came of his efforts as that was in July 2018, my unit wasn’t old stock either as it was shipped from PS Audio to my dealer in February 2019. I know this because the dealer was going to attempt to re-route the shipment directly to me when I purchased but it was too late.
The gaps in my unit don’t bother me enough to do anything about it, however it is a shame that anything should be bothersome on a new $6000 unit.
I can’t speak of own experience here as my unit is flawless as for sure many others…means so far there’d be no reason for me not to buy PSA again…I just say I wouldn’t accept such a unit. I would so far also have no doubt that my potential problems would be solved by customer service as far as I personally experienced in the past…I just also wouldn’t accept what seems to happen to some others.
That’s right. The guy who assembled it didn’t notice. The guy who QC checked it didn’t notice. The guy who packed it didn’t notice. Yet the customer notices it as soon as its unpacked. And it’s not an isolated incidence. They didn’t seem to have these basic QC issues when the stuff was built in China.
Not true. The PPP was made in Taiwan (okay, not China but that’s where PSA gear of that era was manufactured) and had a very high fault rate. I’d be willing to bet the USA manufactured gear has a lower fault rate. Too high for sure, but lower then during the made in Taiwan era.
Ummm…you’re putting your next tourist visa to China at risk with that comment!
Yeah, for sure PPP had a high failure rate. The crux of my point about QC was, Chinese hands and eyes seemed to be better at assembling stuff square and proper, with all the screws in place where they should be, and done up tight. As for the reliability of the stuff built in China/Taiwan, it was still designed in Boulder, and design has a bearing on reliability.
Fair enough. I used to live in China (for 3 years), I would have been packed off to a re-education camp pronto if I said the same thing, and then permanently exported!
haha I was thinking the same thing! Maybe the assembly techs are enjoying a bit too much of the green legalization in Boulder “looks good to me, ship it!”
FWIW, my DSD was perfect out of the box. It was after several years of use and 3 household moves that the front corner gap opened up. I assumed that mild thermal cycling and transit bumps were the culprit as the set screws were loose when I went in to tighten things up.
From what I recall from past posts and maybe some “ask Paul” videos, the corners are castings that come from China, because they couldn’t locate a domestic vendor that could meet the tolerances required.
So the assembly requires marrying up castings with the plate side and front panels via a threaded steel binding post inside the chassis. Seems like a complicated way to make a box, but I’m sure there’s a story behind it.
Were the set screws in only one corner loose, or were the other corners also loose? One of my corners only had 2 screws fitted, but the alignment and gap tolerance was OK.
“looks good to me, ship it!”