I was a beta tester and here is my comparison of the DMP and SACD-P back in November of 2020
"Part of my beta testing of the SACD-P was to evaluate the sound in comparison with my DMP. Iād note that I have had no issues with the SQ of the DMP which I found to be fabulous in my PSA/Legacy Audio set up.
On the first weekend I had the SACD-P, I spent a 6-7-hour period comparing it with the DMP, switching my Audio Quest Mocha HDMI cable to the DSD between the two signal sources.
Initially, I was pleased to find that the SACD-P to be equal to the DMP with excellent SQ on CDs, SACDs and CD-Rs. As time went on (towards the 80-hour mark) I began to notice a marked improvement in sound that IMO appeared to relate to the sound stage which was deeper and broader with ābigger spaceā than the DMP. On what was probably the first mass market CD that PSA used as a reference recording for the DMP, Shelby Lynneās āJust A Little Lovinā, the title track sounds even better than it did on the DMP, with the silence on the instrumental breaks sounding āwider āand ādeeperā.
A big surprise using the SACD-P versus the DMP was that some sonically awful but sentimentally cherished tracks from the 50s and 60s became more listenable. For instance, Freddy Cannonās āTransistor Sisterā an ultra-lo-fi track on Swan from 1961 which was probably recorded on an Edison cylinder and mastered for a mono 45, has sounded atrocious on multiple CD reincarnations. On the SACD-P it was still tinny with no bass but sounded better ā again reflecting a more detailed sound stage. And in a related vein, the 2020 Bear Family remaster of Fats Dominoās Imperial catalog - which was an improvement over the original 1994 BF remasters and was improved on the DMP - showed a quantal improvement in SQ on the SACD-P ā so much so, I sent my DMP trade-in back to PSA the week before last (not anticipating the firmware update recall).
The SACD-P, especially in its absence, is a major upgrade ā SQ and mechanically ā over the DMP.
Thank you to Bob Stadtherr for the engineering, Paul and Scott for the vision, and Kevin and James for the TLC in dealing with the beta testers and the problems. To paraphrase Mark Knopfler, āI want my SACDā.
I thank you for your report !
I thank you for your report ! I was about to try the PST until I heard about the minor problems with the software mentioned this forum. I hope the latest update 2.31 has fixed the problems.
Well Iāve had the PST for a few weeks. I tried to get the correct value fuses in SR Orange or SR Blue and no one had it . I then tried for a Beeās Wax and again out of stock. I gave up and ordered a HiFiTuning Supreme3. It just arrived today and Iām listening to the PST as I write and itās a pleasant contribution. Iām working through a box of Jazz CDās I bought and never got around to. This makes it worthwhile.
Hi,
My apology if this has been asked in another topics.
I burn an album I purchase on downlod into a DVD+R disc, with all tracks are in DSD format. The names of the tracks start with 01_xx, 02_xxx and so on. The PST recognizes the DVD disc as data but it plays the DVD+R disc fine.
The problem I have is the sequence of the tracks it plays; instead of sequencing by names, it seems to play in a random sequence ( not sure if it is the trackās size, time stamp, etc)
How do I make PST plays the DVD disc on name sequence 01_xx, 02_xxx, and so on.
Thank you.
The PST will play the the data discs in the order the files were burned (as opposed to the track number).
My work around for this is to include a whole LP as a single file.
Apologies if I may have missed this, but whatās the best way to burn in the PST? In my case, my system is still mostly boxed up, but the transport is arriving today. That means the output wonāt be hooked up to anything for a while. Will there be any harm in loading up a CD and just putting it on repeat? Or, will it get me anywhere if the outputs are not hooked into anything?
Indeed, this has been asked before.
Here is an early post on this.
So, when I copy (burn) the files to USB key or DVD, I make sure the file is added to the list one by one on my window laptop (if I drag a bunch of them, it is under the mercy of windows to decide which file will be copied first.)
Canāt answer your question about not having the output hooked up, and whether or not thatāll facilitate burning the unit in, but personally I wonāt spin a CD on repeat to burn the unit in. Instead use the thumb drive, and save the wear and tear on the transport mechanism.
Good thinking.
Thanks Gary. A much better idea than mine.
Thank you for the tip. I will give this a try. All of my DVDās were burned by dragging all the files at once and now I found the tracks with the biggest size play the later order. It makes sense since bigger size files took longer to copy.
Thank you.
I thought we had a separate thread to report odd behavior with the PST, but I canāt find it. So Iāll post here.
Iād had the PST sitting all by itself, not hooked up to anything, playing a USB stick worth of WAV files to get burn in started, while I was putting my system back together. While in this state I stopped and restarted the music on the stick a number of times, including unplugging the stick and plugging it back in. The music would always start at track 1.
Once I got my stuff in order I hooked the PST to the DS DAC via HDMI, plugged the same stick back into the PST, waited for it to read, hit the Play button and saw the transport jump to Track 13 (the last track) and start playing. This is repeatable and now occurs all the time with this stick. Didnāt happen once with the PST in stand alone mode. Iām wondering if anyone else has seen behavior like this.
That seems really wacky. I wonder if it has something to do with the unit now detecting an I2S connection? Try unplugging it and see if it still happens.
I have a similar experience regardless if the HDMI cable is connected or notā¦ The PS Audio stick Iām using only plays every other track. Also I have to click the remote numerous times to get a response.
I installed two full CDs on the USB stick. When I look at the files on my computer, the two CDs somehow got laced together. In other words track 1 is from the first CD I copied over, and track two is from the second CD, with the same pattern continuing. So basically I donāt hear any of the tracks from the second CD because it skips over them for some reason.
Edit: Just removed all the music files and only copied one CD over to the USB stick. Same situation, only plays every other track.
I recorded some AIFF mixing with DSD files into a USB stick. The PST would only play AIFF files while skipping all DSD files. So I used one stick for DSD files and another for AIFF files then both played fine.
Iāll give that a try, but I just ran into a different, and more concerning, problem.
The preface to this is that the PST default layer was set to CD, as thatās the way it was when I took it out of the box. I loaded up one of the SACD disks from AK&US Live, noticed that it was playing the CD layer, so I stopped that track. I then went into the menu and selected DSD for both Layer and Default ( I think thatās what those selections are called). When I hit the Play button nothing happened, so I figured I should eject and reload the disk.
So I did that. I hit Play only to find that while the PST and the DS showed DSD data was being processed, I heard from the right channel a severe hissing noise overlaying the music from that channel. Left channel was fine. I tried multiple tracks, a different SACD disk. All the same. I then changed the PST back to CD, put the AK&US disk back in, and started hearing the hissing overlay from both channels! I popped in a plain old CD that I had played earlier with no trouble. Same noise from both channels.
Figuring a start from scratch might correct things, I pulled out the disk, set the menu to Default to DSD, power cycled the PST, made sure the setting was still there, and loaded the same SACD disk. Now everything was fine, and with regular CDs as well. But I donāt like what happened as I donāt think I read anywhere else of the same thing happening. Starting to wonder if I have a bum unit. Itās running the latest FW. Came with it installed.
That was something the beta testers would report but was very rare and once it stopped, didnāt really seem to happen again. I wouldnāt say you have a bum unit. I think the code freaks out sometimes and something weird happens with the timing. If it doesnāt happen again and it plays SACDs properly, youāre unit is working perfectly.
Was a root cause ever found? Did the design team determine that it was not a problem with potential units having some kind of hardware based anomaly that would be triggered by the code?