Octave Questions

I agree and bought mine in a stand-alone system, but quickly put my Aries Mini into use in the office and appreciated its potential. I previously was using the Aries with Lightning, which has a much better classic search engine.

I really struggle understanding these SQ differences if both players are bit perfect and use the same asynchronous interface (usb or Ethernet).

For me, going into the dcs Vivaldi upsampler (Ethernet) via Roon or via minimserver sounds exactly the same. As does when using the UltraRendu, in my second system.

Really hope psaudio will make octave Roon ready. Then we will enjoy the new hardware, without having to move the entire library. Just like innuos

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I agree with everything you said in your post except for the comment about saving a significant amount of money. Somebody spending $5k to $6k for the octave server probably has at least $10k to $20 k in their system if not more. A $500 lifetime subscription to Roon is a rounding error relative to the total cost of many systems the Octave sever will be feeding.

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You are so correct.

I know:

  • Gus Skinnas is an excellent recording engineer
  • the Sonoma recording equipment is very good
  • that PS Audio builds good sounding Audio gear
  • maybe I am mistaken, that the initial hurdle is a US$ 6k investment for hardware, while Roon works on just as much as any device in which we already invested much of our hard earned money.

But, does anybody know:

  • whether it will really sound better than Roon?
  • the hardware specs, storage capabilities and interfaces?
  • whether the hardware and software will allow us to add our ripped CD and LP collection?
  • how proprietary the software is, does it interface with other music servers, or a we buying into PS Audios Recordings only?
  • what the user interface really looks will it be as good as iTunes (Apple Music) or Roon?
  • how much and how to pay for Octave Recorded Music and Octave Server and/or Software services / licenses?
  • what the more affordable Stellar server will offer and how much of an investment that will safe?
  • how long is PS Audio capable of keeping the servers the air and up to date? the Forum works very well, but the Power Plant Server was out of service pretty fast
  • what the life time of the hardware will be? PS Audio is good at sound quality. But product life times of other I2S sources like the DS Memory Player, NuWave Phone Converter resulted in the currently total absence of any PS Audio proprietary I2S HDMI music source.

Iā€™m sure that the Octave server will sound good. The level of expertise available to call on at PS Audio is high. However the argument that Roon sounds poor is an ancient one. I think that they have come a long way to improve the offering. My personal implementation of Roon sounds very good. But I run ROCK on a fan-less device. I have friends with non Roon systems, but with very expensive DACā€™s and servers and the music is not better to my ears. They are actually quite surprised at the way system sounds.

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@watchdog507 - Love my N+ for SQ and the SW (ROCK) has been flawless since day one. What impressed me was not the SW being flawless. I expected that cause Roon has an amazing SW team and amazing reputation for first pass successā€¦ look at Roon Radio and the latest update this yearā€¦ what got me jazzed was how good it sounds in every way. I love it so much Iā€™m delaying going the next step to top end server like PF 2.16X for a few more years. We live in interesting times with a lot of top end servers to chose from with serious competition. We live in great timesā€¦:sunglasses::nerd_face:

My next server will have to be amazing in every way. Thanks N+ for allowing me years to take my time deciding which serverā€¦ need to save my penniesā€¦

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As the product is not on market yet, all of your questions are obsolete I guess and canā€™t even be answered yet by its developers even if they liked toā€¦but do you really think the server could be so proprietary that it only works for Octave recordings? I guess this was just provoking, not serious, right? I really donā€™t get the deeper sense of such posts except if itā€™s negative intended fake conspiracy.

Octave will come out and it will be great. How great; the market will decide. I am definitely interested in digesting all the feedback. PS Audio will do fineā€¦ they will chart a PS Audio course, just need to decide if that train is going where you want to goā€¦ however, you can be sure it will be a nice locomotive with a PSA sheenā€¦

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Saw a post from PSA that Octave is to be released about 2020, it is hard to imagine the PSA engineers have not answers to most of the questions I posted.

I think those are very liable question you need to ask your self prior to investing US$ 6k into a system, set up by a single manufacturer who tells the establishment that it will sound much better, but has been struggling to maintain long product life cycles of their own digital sources of which I made reference.

It is a fact that all current PS Audio DACā€™s have a I2S interface of which PS Audio claimed that it is superior to other interfaces, but that they do not offer a single I2S source anymore. It is a observation of facts that one should consider. In case Octave will offer I2S interfaces it will certainly be very positive for those who bought into that concept. If it offers a more affordable Stellar unit the better.

Scepsis in they way it was formulated comes from the fact that platforms like Roon are open and system independent. It can rely on a wider customer acceptance, thus wider financial support and be hopefully very reliable.

I have read posts that Octave equipment will not support Roon, if that is true, what happens to the hardware if the server goes down? I prefer these services to work together, as such cooperation guarantees the user return of investment.

I have been in your same situation. And I found out that nothing beats a well built endpoint. In my case, it was the dCS Vivaldi upsampler. If I were you, I would experiment with such high end endpoints (dCS network bridge, chord mscaler etc) before investing in another full fledged server. It will be very difficult for a server to beat Rockā€™s convenience.

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@jvvita - agreed, the N+ gives me years to try out many high end options. In addition I agree w/ @watchdog507 on the opinion of Roon. ROCK is amazing and I was in shock at the SQ of my N+ā€¦

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Interesting set of questions that I will attempt to answer as best I can.

  • Gus Skinnas is an excellent recording engineer
  • the Sonoma recording equipment is very good
  • that PS Audio builds good sounding Audio gear
  • maybe I am mistaken, that the initial hurdle is a US$ 6k investment for hardware, while Roon works on just as much as any device in which we already invested much of our hard earned money.

But, does anybody know:

  • whether it will really sound better than Roon?
    Yes, that much is quite easy to demonstrate.

  • the hardware specs, storage capabilities and interfaces?
    These have not been finalized. However, I can say the server is in a PerfectWave chassis (like the DS). It has a built in ripper. It has a built in SSD hard drive (not sure yet of what size). It can accommodate any number of external USB HDs.
    It has the usual suspects of digital outputs including I2S and USB. Its interface is from a mobile tablet of your choice and is downloaded free.

  • whether the hardware and software will allow us to add our ripped CD and LP collection?
    Yes. Use the built in ripper if you wish, or copy your existing library, or simply keep your existing library on an external drive and connect.

  • how proprietary the software is, does it interface with other music servers, or a we buying into PS Audios Recordings only?
    Not sure what you mean by PS Audio recordings only. The server has nothing to do with Gus or Octave Records. It is a music server like Roon that handles all streaming services and music stored on a HD, or ripped to the internal HD. And yes, the
    software is proprietary and possible to be used only on PS hardware.

  • what the user interface really looks will it be as good as iTunes (Apple Music) or Roon?
    Certainly better than iTunes or Apple Music. More like Roon. In my opinion itā€™s bettered Roon in many respects, but thatā€™s going to be a subject of great debate for some time to come.

  • how much and how to pay for Octave Recorded Music and Octave Server and/or Software services / licenses?
    Octave Records is a completely separate entity and unconnected from Octave Server and software. Octave Records will release music in both physical form and downloadable. Think of it like any other separate and unrelated music publisher like Blue
    Coast Records (for example).

  • what the more affordable Stellar server will offer and how much of an investment that will safe?
    The Stellar version of Octave will not have the built in HD and will not sound quite as good as the premier Octave Server, but very close. It should be on the order of half as much cost.

  • how long is PS Audio capable of keeping the servers the air and up to date? the Forum works very well, but the Power Plant Server was out of service pretty fast
    This does not rely upon external servers. Everything is internal except for access to the metadata and that will be from an independent service unrelated to PS Audio.

  • what the life time of the hardware will be? PS Audio is good at sound quality. But product life times of other I2S sources like the DS Memory Player, NuWave Phone Converter resulted in the currently total absence of any PS Audio proprietary I2S
    HDMI music source.
    I donā€™t know how to even answer this.

Thank You @Paul for these answers. All make perfect sense to me and I am VERY excited to get this server and give it a try

Me too! My few times with it left me wanting more and anxious for it to ship.

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Thank you for answering Paul,

On the last question about life cycle time:

  • as far as I understand the Oppo shutdown caused the cease of existence of the Direct Stream Memory Player and that was not PS Audioā€™s choice
  • why PS Audio pulled the plug on the NuWave Phono converter I still donā€™t understand. It was a unique product highly recommend by many, not the least like JOHN DARKO. The Stellar Phono Stage perhaps sounds better, but the NuWave Phono Converter was is a killer feature A/D converter with a pretty good phono stage. There must be a huge market for it with all those Kii, Dutch&Dutch 8c, Avantgarde Zero, Canton Smart Line, etc. DSP controlled active speakers with digital input. I looked on Marktplaats and eBay and only found one unit in the US for sale. An excellent option for those using the Direct Stream DAC without preamp. Wish it came back at same price level.

On the metadata server: will Octave be capable to import iTunes libraries with self scanned cover arts?

agreed on Nuwave converter - it looks to be an excellent product, shame itā€™s not available.

You seem to have a lot of detailed questions about gear you are unlikely to ever buy, going by your posts. Just curious.

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Thanks. We pulled the plug on the NuWave phono converter because of low sales. We then cut the price in half and sales picked up dramatically until supplies ran out. Unfortunately, we donā€™t know how to build that converter for the price it wanted to sell at. There was a reason it sold for more when it launched.

As I had mentioned, we honor the user data first, so if the cover art is already in the import, then thatā€™s what weā€™ll use.

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What do you know about what other people think or are buy? Am I making such presumptions about your buying behavior?