Correct. I’ pretty sure Paul confirmed this recently. The replacement for DMP will use a non-OPPO optical disc reader, and will be CD only.
We couldn’t convince Oppo to sell us their player and its licenses. Nor could we convince them to keep making them under contract for us. We are now in the process of designing a new transport we hope to launch sometime in 2019 that will outperform DMP but will not be able to play SACD.
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A replacement so soon for the DMP? Are there not enough replacement drives if needed for the DMP? Trade up program? I hate when something you just purchased is soon replaced with the next newer,better,faster more expensive thing… 
Yes, progress sucks.
Elk,isn’t it strange that digital system design today is at a 1,000 miles per hour… but analog playback design is at a snail’s pace,all things considered? And,for that matter, pricing for analog at much lower entry fees for some outstanding home audio playback entertainment… As long as people think progress is the key to audio bliss…development will not cease to increase in digital…as long as our wallets stay open…
I had not considered analog v. digital development. Both are mature technologies, although analog obviously much older.
I suspect the major reasons are that analog’s format is fixed (vinyl, cartridge, table) where digital remains wide open. Also, the market for analog is comparatively tiny.
The technology lagging behind is speakers. They remain hideously inaccurate and silly expensive.
A friend of mine owns a hi-fi shop and sells more turntables and lp’s than anything else at this point in time. His biggest investors in home audio are the millennials… He commented that they can’t get enough of that analog sound compared to any digital format. And they are not afraid to spend the bucks to get there.
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Those crazy kids… ; )
Not to mention that there are a bunch of cool companies catering to their tastes, and putting out some nice vinyl in beautiful packaging, such as CO’s Vinyl Me Please.
Ok. Gotta ya. Any chance PS Audio might use a transport disc drive from another manufacturer other than OPPO for SACD? Or all the ones you have seen are just poorly built aka not up to PS Audio level of quality to use?
My understanding of what Paul has said a couple of times now is that the immediate future i.e. their next disc spinner, is being designed now and it will be CD only. The decision has been made. If anybody wants a PS Audio SACD player, now is the time to buy a DMP. Get one whilst you can.
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Yes that’d be the wisest as my suspicion is, people who eventually purchase the Octave will still keep DMP to also keep playing their shiny SACDs and stuff.
I guess those folks who go from discs to server will for a good part also try to rip their SACD‘s
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PS Audio is not the only company that is in this transport situation. MSB just recently released a Universal Transport with a “starting” price of $18,500 based on the same mechanisms. The other companies making reliable SACD capable drives like Teac/Esoteric are no longer selling to other manufacturers. The ones used in most “disposable” DVD players would be hard to justify using in a $6000 piece.
As far as I know, Esoteric are still selling their VRDS-NEO optical disc reader to dCS, and only dCS.
Yep, and you can option it up all the way to $31,000.
Paul, I am curious what you think the future is for CD’s? There is so much doom and gloom in the media about the imminent death of the CD but PSA seems committed to the format for the foreseeable future.
I know, there’s always this element of sensationalism we as a society seem to thrive on. Ignore it. The fact is most of us have hundreds if not thousands of CDs still in our possession. We need some way to rip and play them.
That said, the writing is clearly on the wall. Once streaming is really settled and ingrained into the culture and enough services have the quality we want, this will begin to change. For now there aren’t many streaming services that offer CD quality hassle free downloads and playback. Qobuz and Tidal come to mind but they are neither complete nor without their challenges.
Sounds like a great subject for tomorrow’s post. Thanks.
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Hi Paul - Don’t you think the convenience of having your entire CD library on a single HD is as big a threat? High end servers offering better quality than CD players seem to be sealing the deal. I still have 100’s of CD’s but they’re all ripped to a HD that I access from my ipad interface. Used to have cd all over my listening room. Now I can access my entire library with a single click. I can’t say I miss putting the CD’s in the player and my listening room is a lot less cluttered also.
Yes, of course it is and I find myself always going for the iPad to access my hard drive stored music first before I would play a CD. That said, I think it’s only a very small percentage of us storing on a HD.
Paul, I would hope you already have given consideration to what I am about to propose, but I will put it out there just to be sure. How about making some of the improvements to the DMP replacement a part of a “DMP upgrade program”. I have no clue if this is even possible, but if the new disc spinner is better sounding on Redbook those of us already invested in the DMP would love to get some of the improvements so that we can retain the ability to play SACD. SACD playback was THE reason I got the DMP. I’ve got a couple hundred SACD and adding more so I don’t want to lose that capability. Not sure what the improvements will be, though you did mention there may be a new digital lens in the Octave Server, so presumably that would be in the new disc spinner to. Thoughts?
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