Wow. Pretty amazing not a nay sayer in the bunch!! :).
So Ted. You made some mention in posts way back when about ‘improvements to DSD’. Do you feel any format got a larger bump up than others? I.e. Red book / 96/24/ DSD etc.
There were pervasive changes in Huron - but most should help everything similarly. Some of the input changes may help one input or another a little more in various people’s systems and for the few who heard a difference between the two I2S HDMI connectors I might have fixed that.
[Edit: tho the changes were pervasive, most source modules are the same. The top level signal flow was adjusted and (as mentioned before) the last stage of the 10 x DSD rate upsampler was nuked. But I also made everything get done about 1/2 the time (to double the upsampling ratio) so there were small tweaks here and there to more evenly distribute the work…]
stevem2 said I didn't even remember that feature existed but it did the trick.It didn't exist until Huron... I think Paul did mention it in his announcement at the beginning of this thread, but he didn't mention the attenuator lock.
These are practical features which some will find extremely useful. Nicely done.
There will also be a new feature for the DS Jr user’s: the ability to pick the default top level screen. This should allow people to see the volume by default like they used to, but they can also see the sample rate/bit width or (if they are using the Bridge) the bridge screen can stay at the top… The PS Audio folk have been busy and not just with MQA.
Someone up higher in this thread asked about Paul’s comment about a GUI rewrite to make the DS’s UI more like the DMP’s UI - he did say that once, but with the MQA stuff and the work on other products I’m sure that PS Audio was too busy to do a rewrite at the moment. That’s never a small project.
I’ve been listening to Huron for about an hour with several tracks I’m most familiar with. Really enjoying my listening but I had to pause and share my impressions and thanks.
An immediately noticeable improvement across all of the important audiophile criteria: more instrument separation, broader, more delineated layered soundstage, more dynamics and yes more bass!
Hats off to Ted for another brilliant software revision, and many thanks to Paul for providing us with a progressively better product.
Hi Ted,
What’s are the technical advantages with going from up-sampling to 10xDSD vs Huron’s now up-sampling to 20xDSD?
The sonic advantages (most important to me) are crystal clear for me to hear, but I’m just interested in the technical reason you wanted to do this too, only out of general interest.
Cheers
Ditto for me as well - didn’t think the bass on my B&W 805D2 could sound any tighter but definitely notice a difference. Melody Gardot never sounded better and that is only listening to her CD on my Oppo Player.
Just finished listening to some of my favorite tracks with Huron. Money for Nothing by Dire Straits never sounded better. The kick drum on Shape of my heart from the album Ten Summoner’s Tales by Sting suddenly came to life. The timbre of Tabla on some of the Indian music is unreal. Very impressive indeed!! Thank you Ted & Paul.
Mi2016 saidI think you are hearing the advantages - 3dB lower noise floor (each doubling of the sample rate lowers the quantization noise by 3dB - all other things being equal)What’s are the technical advantages with going from up-sampling to 10xDSD vs Huron’s now up-sampling to 20xDSD?
The sonic advantages (most important to me) are crystal clear for me to hear, but I’m just interested in the technical reason you wanted to do this too, only out of general interest.
By raising the sample rate the noise from the DSD noise shaping also goes up in frequency (all other things being equal) which means in this case that it climbs out from the noise floor at a higher frequency - but since the DS’s hardware analog low pass filter didn’t change more of that quantizing noise is filtered out so we end up with less ultrasonic quantizing noise. The effect of this is that there less new noise masking any ultrasonic content in the recording. Also, perhaps for some systems, less energy (at any frequency) can mean less load on any preamp / amp, etc. down the chain (which may or may not be audible.)
A less obvious advantage is that the work is more evenly spread in time in the FPGA so any FPGA self generated noise (ground bounce, etc.) is whiter.
The limit is always that upping the sample rate lowers noise floor, but it also raises jitter. I kept the clocks the same so I didn’t affect the jitter (at least the jitter generated by the clocks) I just used fewer clock ticks to get things done - i.e. internally I have a 60 x DSD rate (169.344MHz) clock and that gave me 6 clocks to calculate each new stereo pair of samples at 10 x DSD rate. Now I have 3 clocks to do the same thing. In the sigma delta modulator I had 30 clocks to do what I need to do in Torreys, in Huron I needed to do the same work in 15 clocks (I cheated and duplicated some hardware 
)
All of this is to say that I won’t be doubling the clock again in the DS
An interesting side effect of Huron update is that the Curious USB cable now works between my Aurender and the DS. With Torreys, I could not get my Aurender to communicate withe DS DAC using the Curious USB cable.
ring909 saidThat's Curious :)An interesting side effect of Huron update is that the Curious USB cable now works between my Aurender and the DS. With Torreys, I could not get my Aurender to communicate withe DS DAC using the Curious USB cable.
Actually I have no idea why that would be: to my knowledge nothing changed in the USB handling between Torreys and Huron. It could be that it stops working again in a while for you.
Brilliant, thanks Ted.Ted Smith saidwe end up with less ultrasonic quantizing noise.
Ted Smith saidThat’s Curious
Actually I have idea why that would be: to my knowledge nothing changed in the USB handling between Torreys and Huron. It could be that it stops working again in a while for you.
Ted, would I be able to get more info what you may be thinking on why it did not work on Torreys and may only work temporarily on Huron as I have a limited timeframe to return the cable if it does not work. It is a USB 2.0 compliant cable and I believe PS Audio has tried this cable as I believe Paul mentioned it in one of his blogs.
I don’t know any particular details about Curious cables, but in general if a certified USB cable works reliably in a system and another USB is sometimes unreliable in that same system that that 2nd cable will be more sensitive to systems changes and may become unreliable again. If indeed the Curious USB cable is a certified USB cable, I don’t know why it wouldn’t be reliable - is there a chance that there’s a bad connection somewhere in it and just moving it around is changing things? Some people get away with a non standard cable to the DS just fine, others find that their cable works with some PC OS’s and not others or some hubs and not others, etc.
My friend who owns a Playback Designs DAC is playing this update down, saying “it’s not a NEW DAC, it’s just an update”
I’m telling him it’s not even the same DAC listed on the PS Audio website - the specs and product description need to be updated for this Huron release.
If that isn’t proof that this is a new DAC (apart from the dramatically improved sonic performance) I don’t know what is 
DS won’t take download. Reformatted SD card to no avail. Power off DS then power-on with SD inserted. DS behaves as if SD is not slotted. Any suggestions?
Have you tried the things in the “How to update with an SD card”: http://www.psaudio.com/ps_how/how-to-update-with-an-sd-card/
If you haven’t got it working by tomorrow you can contact PS Audio support and/or someone might have specific suggestions in the meantime.
Yes I tried that method and still won’t download. I’ve tried two SD cards, one being the original. I will try a couple more times. If still having problems, I will call-in during business hrs. If I get it working, I will post that as well.
I’ve been burned most often by not using the OS’s eject function before removing my card. If you EVER removed the card without the eject you may have “crossed files”, etc. and you probably want to reformat the card (as FAT), put the files back on it, use the eject and try again. If the blue light never starts blinking the DS probably can’t even see the LOADER.CFG file at the root of the SD card.