Huh?
A non sequitur. You were once again fussing the streamer and DAC should be in one box.
Of course PS Audio will leverage its Octave software with multiple applications, a totally different topic.
It is not obvious, having spent years developing Octave Player, to add it to existing digital devices, like SGCD, Strata Integrated and Sprout? Surely it was not designed for the Octave Server alone?
They will all then be streamer/DAC integrated.
You probably think I would like PS Audio to do a high-end streamer DAC. It would make sense, but I suspect because Ted Smith is not fully part of PS Audio and has his hands full with other projects, it might be wishful thinking.
Quite a lot of products have spare processing capacity and adding Octave Player might be possible by a software upgrade, which costs nothing. Otherwise, add it to the DSD with the expansion slot.
Steven, I did not generalize, I pointed out that John Darko had the same experience in his systems as I had with my brand new NAD C 658, that CD sounds a little bit better than the already very good streamed sound. And than John published 9 more reasons to buy CDs I agree with.
Obviously you chose for very good reasons to exclusively stream and play vinyl, and give your CD player to a forum member. I can understand that, my home office looks like a mess with many jewel cases floating through the room, my wife hates to occupy the valuable real estate with CD racks and I yet have to figure out where to put all that plastic.
Off course personal to everybody, but for me, this is the only downside of CDs and it does not win against all other positive arguments for CDs mentioned above.
So off course it is OK if people only stream, but It is simply not true that CDs are for the Japanese market only and streaming always sounds better, or has to sound better. I am happy with what I hear from my system.
By the way, many high end players utilize the Austrian (EUROPE) brand CD and SACD drives.
StreamUnlimited high end CD and SACD mechanisme
This company designs the mechanical drives and streaming PCB that high end brands utilize.
Many brands outside Japan still do produce players with mechanisms from miscellaneous manufacturers.
T+A German manufactured CD+SACD, Ayon, Austrian CD players, Pro-Ject Austrian CD players, Gold Note, Italian, Hegel Norwegian, Primare Swedish, REGA English, McIntosh USA, Mark Levinson USA, PS Audio USA, all CD+SACD. SIM Audio Moon Canada CD drives etc.
TEAC must have pulled back it’s decision to stop supplying CD mechanisms, many brands still utilize TEAC mechanisms.
My concern is your endless repetition of certain criticisms, and how they are expressed, becomes baiting and trolling. I am asking you nicely to stop this behavior. See my post #39 above.
Speculating as to what PS Audio may or do with the Octave software is not a problem. We know they have multiple applications in mind, which makes perfect sense.
If you truly do not understand, which seems unlikely, send me a PM with your query.
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Elk,
It is truly in the interest of your customers like stellar Gain Cell DAC owners what Steven said. What is wrong with that?
Do you need to comment on forum users like above in public?
In my humble opinion your message is quite humiliating. I am not sure how this qualifies you different from what you accuse Steven.
Steven did not offend anybody personally.
As a reminder. It was PS Audio’s decision to announce Octave Audio more than a year ago, following absolute silence.
Fertile ground for speculations and reasonable questions about how Octave will be implemented. The continued silence simply causes the audience to repeat their opinion.
When I still owned the Stellar Gain Cell DAC I was dearly looking forward to a Stellar Octave Streamer as the first Stellar I2S source.
The forum got vague reaction, like:
“Wouldn’t that be great we will consider it”
to
“not on our priority list”
and there are endless launch delays.
My SGCD became defect after only 1.5 years of operation in normal or even very good circumstances.
This combination of facts caused me to switch to the NAD C 658 and BluOS, a well proven streaming infra structure.
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I’s that s’o?
Me think’s that by putting yours’s criticism of @stevensegal ’s’s’s criticisms’s in the publics forum is doing the very thing youre asking him not to do. And it bring’s the conversation here to a screeching halt. Id recommend you boy’s take the battle of criticism’s to the land of private message’s. Thank’s 
Thanks for the thoughts.
I have tried multiple approaches. Others have as well. My hope this time the direct approach works. We will see . . .
Absolutely nothing. This is not the problem. 
By the way, “your customers” is inapplicable to me. I do not even have a PS Audio t-shirt. (Do they even have t-shirts?)
Well done!
Carry on with the transport v. streamer debate! (Darko mentioned a good number of other things as well worth discussing.)
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He hit a soft spot on the Ikea Gnedby.
When I switched to streaming I bought a CD player as back-up. It was a TASCAM CD-200, which has a bullet-proof TEAC 5020 CD drive and digital outputs so I could use it as a transport. I think I used it twice in 10 or more years, most of which it was boxed, before I gave it away.
PS Audio stated that CD and streaming should sound the same, but often don’t, so set out to fix it. I remember this, as it is from the product manual of the PSA DAC that I bought. The “fix” was the Digital Lens, which is a reclocker that was designed to reduce jitter whilst maintaining the native sample rate. I quote:
“The system’s philosophical beginnings centered on a somewhat radical concept: that we could create a high-end digital audio system that transcended the performance issues of storage, media type and data delivery. We reasoned that all digital audio data should provide the same level of performance regardless of whether it was stored on optical discs, hard drives, solid state memory or even, for that matter, over the internet. After all, “bits-is-bits”. But we knew that “bits- aren’t- bits” because they sounded differently; CD’s sounded different than the same recording ripped to a hard drive, or streamed over the internet. We knew that from a theoretical standpoint this shouldn’t be and set out to design a system that transcended these limitations.”
I was also feeding the DAC from a PS Audio Powerplant and a networked server/streamer, so it sounded good and I had no reason to revert to the CD player.
There are all manner of devices to improve streaming sound quality, but I agree with what PS Audio said, it doesn’t matter where the data comes from.
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You are right it doesn’t matter where the data comes from. That is what I said in the first post, I keep all options, I am happy to use all sources depending on the mood. They sound good enough. I do not envisage to spend thousands of Euros to close the gap in SQ between Streaming (locally stored ripped files) and CD as the streaming already sounds really good.
I am just sometimes in the mood for spinning CDs like I am sometimes in the mood to drink water, sometimes tea and sometimes a Whisky or Brandy.
Or a pint of Guinness 
Cheers!
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Seeing albums that haven’t been seen. Hearing things you maybe haven’t heard (most shops play music). Not just important steps, but instrumental in the music discovery process - imho. It’s on par with going to a live performance for something the listener might be completely ignorant about. Just critical stuff that removes the comfort and familiarity which opens up the (often big and heavy) door to discovery.
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Absolutely, I never liked country music very much, than we moved to Texas on the doorstep of beautiful hill country.
The place had the oldest dance hall of the country with life music playing every night. Entrance for free, with little increased price on the beer paying for the artists.
They had Willy Nelson playing there but the other artists I never had heard off played amazing music. These artists bring their own little collection of CDs that are sold there, they don’t have streaming contracts neither are their impressive cover arts and song lists available online in the metadatabases.
Now, not living there anymore, unfortunately, I play country music at home enjoy it and dream back to the dance hall with all those, enthousiast artists, people having fun, dancing, young and old, the smell of the ancient wood and beer and fantastic collection of neon light beer logos making the atmosphere even more amazing.
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Same goes for Jazz, visited in Pennsylvania with my wife, nice bed and breakfast in historic building and a guy playing contrabass and sang all evening during dinner. So good music in a fantastic atmosphere. Now I play all kinds of Jazz.
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Based on this thread, I hooked up my Oppo BDP-93 into my system. I’m using Transparent balanced interconnects and a BJC coax digital cable to my DirectStrean DAC. I wanted to compare streaming ripped CDs from my NAS to CDs in the Oppo both via coax to the Dac and analog out into my amp. I also wanted to compare DSD via analog (Oppo won’t send DSD out digital) to files from my NAS via the Bridge.
Ripped CDs via NAS and Bridge II vs CD in Oppo via coax:
This is a dead heat. I hear minor differences, but there is no clear winner. I did my best to volume match the sources. I’m pleased because this validates my choice to play ripped CDs rather than using the Oppo.
DSD disc over analog interconnects vs high res PCM from NAS to DAC via Bridge II:
this was very close as well. I would give a slight edge to the DSD disc playing on the Oppo, but not by much. I only have about 20 DSD discs, and I don’t think the difference is enough to acquire more. Maybe this is a bigger difference using the PST via I2S, but for $6500 plus heavy spending on new discs, I’m happy with what I’m getting by playing from my NAS into my DAC.
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Also CD in Oppo, analog out vs digital via coax to DS DSA: this is also very close. I’d give a the edge to using the DS to convert to analog. But I’m surprised the difference isn’t bigger. I’m using the same make of interconnects from the Oppo and from the DS so this is a very fair comparison.
Since the sound of the ripped CDs from my NAS played through the Bridge II is as good as the sound coming out of the Oppo through both of these methods, I’m happy to continue to use Roon to play from my NAS. It’s SO convenient! And it gives me the same experience with Qobuz.
I agree even if CD sounds a bit better in my system I like the convenience of browsing my library. It enables me to listen to many more music pieces than picking out a single CD.
However I do not want to miss my turntable and CD player as the experience of using them is of a different kind.
I buy most of my vinyl through bandcamp, seems to be the best return for the artists themselves. Wherever possible I try to buy on a bandcamp friday also.
Band camp is certainly an excellent initiative.
I will try it. I am raised in a family owning small businesses of which there are way too few these days. We still have a local record shop in our little town, by buying there I hope to keep that alive as well is giving the artists a better profit than streaming.
I have decided to support little businesses like my audio gear dealer, the little record shop in our town.
Going shopping these days, if not prohibited by the pandemic, has become the most boring thing with all those big chain stores, the same stores in every town with the same boring stuff. Horrible.