@nespo
I thought you’d appreciate the burn in!! 
Now that Blue Sky has settled in nicely I have been experimenting with “Grounding and Lifting” . . . “Lifting” has previously meant too much high frequency energy for me, but now with Blue Sky less so, I’ve been listening with all inputs and outputs grounded with the exception of I2S “1” (the PST SACD transport) and liking what I hear.
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Thanks for sharing. I was hoping to begin experimenting with that again on the input ground of my USB pure silver Inakustik Referenz cable. Currently grounded all inputs as are outputs. But with Blue Sky I am hearing absolutely no noise with all grounds, so that I did not feel compelled enough to lift grounds on the DS. Lifting the input ground previously with Massive and the pure silver Referenz USB drove me crazy with echoing, maybe others would call decay? To me it was noise overly distracting. It was extreme in my highly damped room set up for Bacch-dSP images.
During early burn in I am not sure I needed more high frequency energy. Hopefully the software has run in when I return from my Scottsdale then Grand Rapids business trip Friday, and if rolled off highs show up its worth an experiment.
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Does anyone have an opinion as to which update made the biggest difference? My MKll came with Mt Massive so I don’t know how it sounded before.
I thought Massive made a needed noise change but Blue Sky literally blew the bottom out of noise floor. I literally don’t know what noise and digital streaming used to be. I have total blackness with the two dozen sources i listen too initially. I have made numerous iterations on reducing digital noise from expensive AC, DC, signal cables, LPS to fuses to RF Absorber everywhere in digital stream. The DS always delivered better performance. This FPGA load of Blue Sky Blows anything beforehand away. But I suspect I might start hearing differences with each layer of tweak removal. Cumulative Tweaks with Blue Sky is astounding and the best.
But if I were to bet @tedsmith will surprise me again with his penchant for number crunching improvements. Ludwig van Beethoven did his best work by visualizing paper notes as they would sound live in his head after losing his hearing. Ted does something similar with numbers and deducing what changes mathematically will reproduce better sound of those recorded notes to make them more live.
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Vance, that’s about as well written as anything I’ve read, not only about Blue Sky, but also about however @tedsmith uses whatever magic he has beyond his own considerable software engineering skills to produce something so impressively wonderful. And let’s not forget @Paul who somehow manages to “pick the winner” from the many samples he normally gets for an upcoming release.
I installed Blue Sky the first morning it was available, which was Thursday here. I had a small audio meet planned for Sunday, so I wasn’t sure Blue Sky would have enough time to be fully cooked, and was ready to drop back to Massive on Sunday morning if I felt I needed to. Needless to say that was not needed, as by Sunday morning my digital chain sounded glorious (almost as good as my analog chain! ). When the guests arrived - all seasoned audiophiles - and the music started I looked at each of their faces and saw no attempt to hide being almost awestruck with what they heard. There was literally a moment of “mouths agape”. Of course the rest of my system had something to do with it 
, but Blue Sky swept them off their feet. They proclaimed my system among the best they’ve heard in their decades in Florida being members in various audio clubs and having listened to systems well beyond the cost of mine.
Today my lifetime audio buddy came over. He’s heard every little change to my system for 40 some years, but this was his first listen with Blue Sky. His comments were short - “Pure beauty” “Incredible clarity without loss of musicality” “The space and depth is incredible” “The best I’ve ever heard your system sound”.
Thanks Ted. Thanks Paul.
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Tony you have the RS130 right? If so I see that its a good match for the MKII. What streamer did you come from before the RS130?
I’ve performed every mountain top upgrade for the DS Mk1 and now the DS Mk2.
BlueSky is the most obvious change I have heard in all that time. Previous changes from one version to the next could, IMO, be considered a small step. Massive to BlueSky is a giant leap 
Thank you Ted! Your work is so much appreciated.
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Brian, yes the RS130 sounds very nice with the MkII - however, HiFi Rose and the MkII do not play well together when it comes to DSF. First, there is no gapless playback of DSF files into the MkII, and second (worse) there is a pop (louder with Blue Sky than with Massive) when going from DSF back to PCM ( @tedsmith I hadn’t yet reported this to you). I frankly don’t have confidence in the Rose SW team in getting issues on their side resolved.
With the DS MkII I started with my old Logitech Touch, then went to a Sonore UltraRendu Plus, then to a Holo Red, then to the RS130. Bottom line? The Rose is the best sounding by far, but the Holo Red was functionally flawless. If the Holo Red sounded like the RS130 and had a SFP port, I’d be using that. But for pure sonics the Rose is hard to beat. I’ve had friends bring over a Lumin U2 and an Aurender N150 (might have been a N200). At least in my system I liked what I heard better from my RS130, although neither of these other two wonderful streamers had anything to be ashamed of.
Can I recommend the RS130 on sonics? Absolutely. Do they seem to have a software team on the scale of genius like the old Slimdevices crew, or even today’s Wiim folks? I’ve yet to be convinced of this. If it’s “d@mn the DSF bugs, full sonics ahead!” then the RS130 is the ticket.
Those pops and such sound familiar. The A6 inhave had zero issues with the MKII. Don’t use USB or I2S? Wonder if that makes a difference in pops. Probably not.
I have the RS130 with sfp as well and am not having those pops when changing formats. I’m using USB, because I2S gave resolution issues with dsd256.
Before buying, I compared the Rose with the U2. The latter was good, but I had to chose best and am still glad I did.
The Rose software team is indeed struggling regularly. Which keeps me being conservative for once, regarding upgrading.
I2S. It does not happen with USB but unlike Job I am not having problems with high res DSD on I2S, and since I don’t have a USB cable that can outdo my Dragon I2S I’m sticking with it. I just play the ISO files and I’m fine.
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I think going from Massive to Blue Sky was a similar upgrade in sound as when I replaced my old Benchmark DAC with the MKll with Massive installed.
I thought moving to Massive was a big positive bump, so is moving from Massive to Blue Sky. . . it may be a tie between those two for me as biggest upgrades.
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I think I misspoke when I said this earlier. There is still no gapless playback, but I just ran multiple attempts transitioning from PCM to DSD, back and forth, back and forth, and heard no popping. So I don’t know what I heard earlier, but it seems it wasn’t driven by the format transition. I’m happy about that as I was beta testing that to death on the road to the Massive release. No regression, from the looks of things.
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I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how big an improvement Blue Sky is…
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@Vmax Not sure I read it correctly, but are you saying that you observed a slight uptick in high frequency with Blue Sky? I also have a system that can sometimes teeter at the brink of my maximum comfortable limit for high frequency energy.
With this update, I also observe an incredible reduction in noise floor with all of the benefits it brings to depth in the soundstage. I do, however, observe a little bit more high frequency energy that is edging very closely to that limit in a way that I would describe exactly as you say. This is a little bit unexpected for me because the way that I have usually perceived decreased noise floor after upgrading a power cable, for example, is as providing a more relaxed presentation. But this is something different yet, because the change in sound constitutes such a dramatic objective improvement that there is no way I could go back to Massive and find it satisfying. A change in power cord at one of my sources has brought it a satisfying amount away from that brink for now, but I have zero margin. I didn’t notice this until a couple of dozen hours in, so I’m not all that confident that this will go away.
Maybe there’s a different explanation for this? Maybe I’m reaching a level of clarity due to noise reduction that is uncovering some more high frequency detail? It certainly doesn’t sound hot like the treble is artificially boosted, so maybe it says a bit more about my system this time around than the other times.
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I didn’t perceive the difference in high frequency energy as anything detrimental. I just heard more realistic highs in the form of better bell rings and more nuances around individual differing high frequencies.
I didn’t have enough time of burning in to see if it alters much over time prior to catching a plane flight . But wasn’t into looking at lifting grounds immediately either. My speakers have 24 silk dome tweeters per side and any shift in high frequency expression be it noise or clarity always seems to stand out. I was a early mk2 beta tester and one of first to notice the high frequency noise issues that Ted resolved in subsequent earlier software updates.
Yes, this is close to what I perceived. It’s difficult to describe, but the increase in highs was not necessarily objectionable in a way that would indicate that it was coming from unwanted noise. In my case, I would still prefer it not to be any greater than it is right now just because I would have to engage with it all the time. With this kind of change, I could listen to it, but I also sometimes want to “not listen,” if you know what I mean, and it was approaching the point where I couldn’t really do that. Interestingly, it’s also silk dome tweeters for me with my YG’s, but not 24!
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There was a point in the burnin of the OS that I found my attention called to the high frequencies but that was diverted as more time went on.
In the past when I “lifted the ground” on my main input (which has a galvanized output) it’s not that I found more high frequency but more as if some midrange character was bleached away. . . which laid bare the upper and lower frequencies, and I’m most sensitive to more higher frequencies. This time with a seasoned Blue Sky that “feeling” of a lessened mid-range just is not really there as it was before, and I’m on my third day listening with the one input “lifted” and enjoying the change.
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