By price level the PS Audio Perfect Wave & Direct Stream combo competes with the Marantz, being much cheaper, in some opinions less good looking and inferior DAC, but also with this:
It comes for the same price as the PS Audio combo (certainly in Europe) and you don’t have to worry about a digital interconnect cable.
But, Esoteric does not offer a server and their streamer is also another EUR 13500. When you add the Octave Player to the equation the PS Audio combo has the lead price wise and looks less “bulky”.
You could off course add another brand server for less than the Octave Player but than those don’t look too good together. Which doesn’t matter in case the server is in a different room or out of sight.
Add to the Esoteric K-03XD a Mutec Ref 10 SE120 Master Clock and you have my Digital front end !!!
FINALLY have reached Digital NIRVANA at 62 yrs. young.
16 Bit / 44.1 cd’s sound like SACD’s
Tom - NJ
Sadly not quite yet. We’re still waiting on some final code tweaks. I was hoping they would have been shipped by this point, but I’d rather the code be as close to right as opposed to the other option. I’m not complaining… yet.
I emailed Scott about the price PS Audio has in mind to charge DMP owners who wish to trade their unit in for the new transport. Maybe Paul or Scott can let us all on this forum know what the pricing details are?
The trade-back amount seems to low considering what the DMP did not bring to the table for us not to happy end users. Dealers in the past would give that much discount before even talking trade in…
Yes, I think that’s generous. But it’s not enough to allow me fiscally to make a change myself. Luckily I’m very happy with my DMP and I’m not going to follow talk of the new transport heavily to protect myself. … from myself.
$2499 eh, hmmm, I’ve seen many for sale for well above this price. Have no idea if they sold, but I don’t consider this generous and certainly not an incentive to “upgrade”. To be honest, this is disappointing …
Indeed–I’ve ignored the main thread and other postings about that for years now. I’d love one. But my father would have to die and I’d have to win rock paper scissors with my wife over inherited money spending to get one, first of which I don’t want to happen and the second of which probably would never happen!
Agreed that $2,499 is not the most attractive offer, but why not cutting PS Audio some slack? With the economy still in the toilet, it would be great for those still have the means to afford hifi gears to graciously and generously support their favor manufacturers, since we still want them to be around after this madness is all over. Just my two-penny worth…
I think that a lot of us did cut PSA some slack by paying for a quirky transport that did not live up to expectation. Now that a new replacement is soon to be…the very least PSA can do is make things right for the DMP purchaser who has put up with a less than stellar product…the trade in value is to low.
PS Audio has been very generous in their trade-in offers in the past, I have done it twice and gotten more on trade than selling it privately. Certainly a good thing for me! I have two issues with the $2499, first is used DMP on this site, AudioGon, and presumably others are selling the $3k- $3.5k range. Significantly above trade-in value. Second issue is all the problems with the DMP and talk of generous trade-in for our “troubles” (inferred it would be much better than the typical trade-in value) appears to be just talk. If I want the latest and greatest I have to shell out $4k, sorry, not gonna happen. As far as supporting PS Audio, I’ve done plenty of that over the past few years. When the right component at the right price comes along, I’ll support them. I’m thinking the SACD Transport is not that component …
One more thing … as mark-d points out the DMP was “quirky”. Is there a guarantee the new SACD Transport will absolutely not be “quirky”? I doubt it. Keep in mind the beta units are being held up for software modifications… Please don’t take this as a smear of PS Audio, it’s not, it is part of my thought process as to whether I want to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
I don’t disagree with what either one of you said - all I’m suggesting is to go the extra mile, if possible, given the larger climate that many small/medium businesses are struggling to survive.
I don’t understand your reasoning about PSA being a struggling company. You may have inside info,I don’t know…As far as going the extra mile I believe I already did by buying and struggling with my quirky DMP…
I (and I presume others) see the DMP as a unique situation, hence my previous posts. After the initial shock, I’ve thought some more and have tempered my shock … somewhat.
The PS Audio site says this about trade-ins: “We have a robust trade-in program that gets you back most of your investment—in many cases, ‘the full retail value’ . As if it were new.“. The reality of the situation is not so clear. There actually is a 30% cap on trade-ins, i.e., if the new item has an MSRP of $6500, the maximum trade-in credit is $1950. So trading in a DMP using the 30% formula gets me nowhere near “full retail value”, so in a sense the $2499 trade-in is more generous, but like I said, the DMP situation is unique. I’ve made my point, so no need to belabor this further (and get myself banned ). Best of luck to the beta testers and I still would like to know just how fantastic this new player sounds!
). Best of luck to the beta testers and I still would like to know just how fantastic this new player sounds!