Octave Questions

Will it also connect to non-Roon servers on the network, such as minimserver or the like running on a computer, NAS or dedicated device?

Hmmm …

Several reasonably priced products, including the ones PSA recently purchased, use RJ45 for data output with the standard isolation transformer on the socket. So long as you are sending to a device with an RJ45 input, it is galvanically isolated and can send up to native DSD512 (if that rocks your boat).

Server/streamers are about the whole package, hardware and software, interested to see the final spec.

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Music to my ears!

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I’m with you on this one jazznut. I’m about to start building a house I’ve been planning for 10 years :roll_eyes:. Budget won’t allow me to have a dedicated music room so I’ll be listening in the main living area. However, I have planned to have a dedicated ‘services’ room, adjacent to the living area, immediately behind the front wall (the wall behind the speakers). I plan to have only the speakers (B&W 800 Diamonds) in the living area. The rest of the gear I plan to locate in the services room which I plan to be independently ventilated (and cooled). So remote control is essential! :yum:

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That will be an awesome setup when you are done.

I hope so, thanks. :crossed_fingers: It’s all a bit of a gamble. I’ve tried to plan in things I’ve picked up from PMcG and other forum community members. However, I’m under no illusion that it’ll still need ‘tuning’. Best I can hope for is that any problems can be addressed by set-up or room treatment. :wink:

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Big part of the draw for PS Audio for me is Paul’s trust in engineering ‘BIG Brains’,

Ted with the Directstream,
Bascom with the amps,
Darren with the new amps…

Octave seems a new wheelhouse for Paul and the Gang,
Collective effort or is there a defining vision from… Someone… Driving the product?

Curious,
It’s just a thought :blush:

Thanks.

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Now that DS MKII has been pushed out to summer Of 2022 is there any chance the Airlens (streamer) will come out sooner? It would be great to break it in with a new cable and then add the MKII Right in so we can see exactly the sound improvements of each. Just wishful thinking.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Wishes Upcoming PSA DirectStream MKII

This sounds very promising… Roon has a huge advantage of being able to seamlessly combine locally stored audio files with Tidal and Qobuz streaming, so I’m glad to hear that the AirLens has incorporated a Roon endpoint. And I saw Paul say in a post here somewhere that it’ll have AirPlay as well, which would be great for when my kids or visitors want to play something.

But there’s one sine-qua-non feature for me that I have to ask about: will it have support for an IR remote control at least for play/pause/skip? I’m really keen for a compact streamer to replace the Squeezebox Touch that currently feeds my DS DAC (via optical) and the essential features are Roon, a good display I can see from the listening position and support for an IR remote.

In the MKII thread, jamesh responded to a similar remote query that the AirLens would be smartphone app controlled. Works for me. I have been quite keen to see what the app UI will look like and do. Personally I will compare with Bluesound’s app. Not a Roon fan myself. But need DSD support that Bluesound does not have.

Me toooo! Can’t wait to replace my SB Touch with the Airlens .

Sorry, I’m kinda dense in understanding the forthcoming offerings. I want to digitize my CD collection, and I’m not likely to subscribe to a streaming service. Is PSA’s forthcoming offering going to facilitate my goals, say, through getting a NAS, putting Octave software on an AirLens, and networking the two? In this case, how do I rip my CD’s to the NAS?
Or are the evolving PSA offerings not suited to my transition from CD spinning to digital conversion?

Pretty much any of the decent streamers on the market should be able to access your files on a NAS.

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I’ll answer to the best of my Limited ability. “Octave” is the name of their upcoming platform, or, software. The Airlens will be strictly for streaming music from a service, like Qobus, Tidal etc. Later they will launch their “server” which will have storage built in and streaming ability. I believe the Server will allow you to connect a USB CD player to it so you can rip your music into its onboard storage. Does this help answer your question?

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Thanks, I think so. I get a forthcoming PSA server running Octave software, networked to a NAS, and connected via USB to my PSA transport for ripping purposes, and perhaps by I2S to DS DAC. I’m wondering if some other faster CD drive like Mac superdrive my be equally good as the PSA transport.

Dunno if I want to wait for a PSA server to be marketed.

Hi Milorp, there are lots of other threads about how to rip CDs to a NAS. It depends a bit on how automated a process you want, or how willing you are to do your own tag editing (album artist, track artist, track name, etc), and how fussy you are about getting a perfect rip. I use a PC with Foobar on it to rip into FLAC and then edit the tags with MP3Tag. But I grew up coding in Fortran. I used to have an Antipodes that could do this for me. But apparently a Bluesound Vault can do it too for much less.

At this point, on my own, I have over 2TB of music on my NAS. So I was quite happy to hear that the PS Audio streamer (AirLens) without disk drives or onboard SSD storage would launch first, not the server. I am particularly excited to use it to serve up my SACD DSD files via I2S over an HDMI cable to my PS Audio DAC. Just been waiting for this for years and years now.

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The Bluesound Vault 2i is $1,400 and the Zen Mini Mk3 $1,550 - both with 2TB. They have their ±’s, the main one being for $750 the Zen Mini Mk3 can be fitted with an external power supply. Ripping with the Zen Mk3 is totally automatic and fast. Both are optimised for Roon, which is brilliant for modifying file data such as tags, artwork etc.

Ripping manually really depends on the databases the software uses and they can be a real headache. I used MP3Tag and it is pretty painful in comparison.

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My iMac with BluOS app outperformed the Vault 2 configured as server / ripper only (DAC not utilized)

  1. sound quality
  2. power consumption
  3. convenience.

The BluOS and apple AirPlay 2 streamers are integral parts of my NAD amps.

iMac in sleep mode consumes much less energy than the Vault2 in sleep mode.
The iMac server operates even in sleep mode and MacOS is smart enough to activate only the minimum required hardware, ie. The screen stays off if you are not currently working on it. By the way, there is no audible difference whether I am working on the iMac or not.

Biggest problem when ripping CD’s on a automated system are the cover arts.

First hurdle / problem is the limited availability of cover art.

Then If the cover art is found, it is sometimes a completely different image as on my CD Cover.

Than on-line databases offer such inconsistent quality, that half of the cover file formats are not displayed properly by the streamers and/or control apps.

I have decided to scan all cover art myself to a consistent pixel count and file format (jpg) staying below 600 kbyte such that all artwork is displayed on any streamer and controller without trouble.

Editing the metadata of the ripped files is most convenient if the library is on the same computer.

I love the big screen user interface of the iMac to browse my local library and Apple Music.

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My personal view on the usage of renderer, streamer, and bridge…

In my time with digital audio the thing that plugged into network on one side and DAC on the other has taken many names. The term “renderer” was probably the most defined because the upnp/dlna standards use the word “renderer” to mean something specific in the standard. Early network devices were called renderer because they met this standard. Except, upnp/dlna turned out to be not so great for audio so it fell a bit out of favor and so did the term renderer.

The word “stream” is commonly referred to mean “from the Internet” and it’s only been very recently where the “from the Internet” audio streams were worth piping through your hifi. I assume, for this reason, using the word “streamer” a few years back for something that was targeted at hifi would make one hesitant. I, personally, would not have wanted to “stream” or use a “streamer” for Internet audio to my system even 6 years ago.

If a company was not building a renderer, something that conformed to or only conformed to the upnp/dlna standard, and they didn’t want their device to hold the low-bitrate / poor quality “stream” association what should they call it? And that’s where “bridge” came from. However, “bridge” means nothing in relation to what it does. What standard stuff should a bridge support? Where does it get its audio bits from? Again… ball of confusion.

Since we do have very good ways of pulling a stream from the Internet into our hifi then the term “streamer” makes a ton of sense today. We can be happy to put a streamer into our systems with very good results. Streamers are expected to stream all the normal hifi stuff including Tidal, Qobuz, Roon, etc. If a manufacturer wants to support more than the standard stuff great but the priority of these devices has moved from local (upnp/dlna type) to Internet streams. Call it a streamer.

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