Remember money isn’t really a problem for many of them. They think nothing of paying hundreds of dollars for a good tape or single sided 12" 200g albums ( Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin (200 Gram, Vinyl) - Discogs) (Well I really don’t know what their tapes cost )
Many of the tapes they get are only step or two away from the original masters… (Well so are some of their vinyl.)
They know which of their many digital recordings of any particular album sounds the best…
They just know which device will play any given source the best.
Yes, much of this is my world…absolutely not the kind of unlimited money, but all of this vinyl was quite normal price when we elder vinyl folks bought it. Now it’s a few hundred$ ok. But you can still buy this kind of quality for normal price now, even if a lot from the past doesn’t get rereleased. Also the tape matter is not my world. I had an exchange with Adrian Wu at his current copper article and I don’t doubt the superiority of those tapes, the combination of the extremely limited repertoire, the inconvenience and the price of minimum 500$ per “in print” tape is just not for me.
But I use a table roughly on the level of your friends’, the same cartridge and a comparable kind of isolation as well as the kind of vinyl source material. That’s why I take opinions of such people serious, who mostly also intensively listen to both, digital and vinyl on a high level. They are mostly very open minded in this regard. They have the experience but usually talk little, others have little experience and talk a lot.
There’s anyway a limited amount of overlapping music available in both formats and therefore for music nuts the very need to run both to be able to play interesting music available.
A different question Ted and I know you’re probably too humble to to talk about this, but I try anyway. (I hope humble is the right word, it has many meanings of which I only mean the positive one)
First the following assumptions (to check by you if correct):
Your market released DAC designs so far (maybe even the upcoming TSS to some extent) were on a lower SQ level than those multi dozen or even hundreds of thousand dollar designs in such big setups
If yes, the reason they are on a lower level is the limited budget for parts of the HW design, not a lower sophistication of the basic major design idea.
You probably have experience with privately HW-pimped versions of your designs, which would be on a price level above what you could release for PSA.
Now my questions:
Did you compare your DAC’s with much more expensive ones?
Did you hear some you found superior in a majority of aspects compared to your official ones so far (no need to tell names)?
If yes, did you compare them to non market released versions of your designs that were on a similar level or above?
If you didn’t produce such prototypes so far, do you think you could easily fit one of your designs with expensive HW that would put them at that level or above?
The reason behind my questions:
I assume if you’re able to make such good designs on a budget, it would be easy for you to make high budget designs on a higher level than others. I’m curious if you already tried this with non market releases prototypes of your designs.
I never liked the sound of the >$20k DACs of a decade or so ago. For me, the EMM DAC6e, Playback Designs MPS-5 and even the DS have better PRaT. There’s no question the DS isn’t in the same league as far as detail recovery. I suspect the TSS does have comparable detail retrieval. At a certain price point the differences are mostly personal preference (or one up-manship ) When the TSS is out, things will be more obvious (for better or worse ) There are things it does that are remarkably better than the DS.
I fully agree, that’s why I question those so much who found digital so perfect and superior since long. For me the big Accuphase of that time or the Wadia, also DCS I heard or several others of that time had very noticeable limitations in musicality, especially as you say Prat and natural top end, the DS has not to that degree (even if the DS can’t always compete in information retrieval of a few kinds and dynamics/impact). But the rest is more important and even now, many “superior” and much more expensive DAC’s suck on the long run.
As far as you describe, I guess the TSS will have its quality of performance up to an extremely expensive level, as it is built and improved upon an important set of basic qualities.
Great to hear about the TSS potentially doing great things, but it is out of my budget.
@tedsmith and @Paul, what about the ds mk2?
Are there things it might do that are remarkably better than the DS ?
Is it worth the probably considerable additional cost ?
My local dealer is eager to let me try a bunch of dacs: Meitner ma3, Accuphase dc-37, Mola Mola tambaqui, Macintosh c53, Esoteric d05x, and chord Dave, etc. Audio research dac9 v3 and mbl n31 are options as well.
You can read the Modding the DirectStream DAC - #161 by yuriy thread to get an idea of some of the added performance of the DS Mk II. It will probably have the XS4400 and will certainly have a better power supply. The newer FPGA will allow better processing and more innovation in the upsampling and the sigma delta modulator.
You might also want to read the Wishes Upcoming PSA DirectStream MKII thread.
Thanks to Ted and Paul DS owners have the chance to improve the DS to somewhere more or less near the DS II but for sure below. Those who want the very best at the time and participate in future firmware upgrades need to buy the Mk II, and we know what new firmwares mean. As easy as this.
I’d say you do the DS mods and for the moment you are more or less close to the Mk II, but later have to pass on firmware improvements.
Or you pay several thousands on top to upgrade to the Mk II with not only but the main benefit of future firmware upgrades, which can be noteworthy as we know.
Or you wait for the TSS, live with the original or modded DS and later pay many thousands on top to have another worldly performance from the TSS.
Or you change brands and pass on future firmware upgrades and Ted’s brainpower generally.
I don’t know. I’m expecting to have to cut some costs, but we’ll see. Before anyone askes there’s still some room for keeping the same quality by spending some more design time.
)
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) When the TSS is out, things will be more obvious (for better or worse 
there’s still some room for keeping the same quality by spending some more design time.
push you around! 
