If you search the forum, you may find the date that Paul has out out there. My guess is another year. I’ve just renewed Roon for another year instead of getting lifetime in anticipation of Octave.
-Maybe 2nd quarter of 2019?
-US$ 6k-ish, hopefully slightly less
That’s about right on both accounts. At least that’s what we’re hoping for.
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Hah! That’s good. Catchy tag line. I am guessing now a little less than a lifetime, something closer to the second quarter of 2019.
Yup, that’ll be it’s price range and we’re shooting for the second quarter of 2019.
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I just struggle a bit with Jriver to care that if I move files to another directory, the library isn’t updated in a way that all those moved files show up as newly added again in „recent albums“ views.
I just tell this as an example, which kind of library and import functionality is quite important if one comes to this point.
I don’t think this was mentioned in the course of this thread, but will the upcoming music server be able to support room eq like Dirac or ARC? Right now my music server is a modified mac mini (using the LAN Rover between it and the DAC) and I’m running Dirac on it, which makes a big difference taming the room nodes in my smallish room. I have a purely networked audio system (both local files and streaming), and while I’d very much value getting better sound from a dedicated player, I don’t know that a switch would be net positive if I lost Dirac support. Thanks
So far we’re not planning anything like that but the core engine inside Octave is very powerful so who knows what wonders we might stuff in there later.
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OK. thanks for the response and for keeping this in mind.
Will the Ds or Ds Jr be capable of the majority of features of the Octave with an upgraded Bridge iii. Other than storage, what would be missing?
Yes, once the new Bridge would be in. Aside from storage, as you point out, they will not have the same quality of Digital Lens inside so won’t sound quite as good but hopefully they’ll be close.
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Whoa. This is the first we have heard that the new Bridge card is going to be an inferior sounding Octave player. Now there is no reason to keep my Bridge II card as there is no reason for me to get the new Bridge card. UltraRendu here I come…
No, Paul said this right from the start…everything else would make no sense anyway for the big Octave imo. There’s always something slightly better…doesn’t mean other non PSA alternatives are better than Bridge III will be…for me the bridge card instead of a separate unit is a „no brainer“ generally.
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I want to be sure that I understand this and determine if Octave will work for my needs. First, let me say that I am a dinosaur when it comes to music servers. Let me explain what I want Octave to do for me. My principle music collection is approximately 3500 vinyl albums. The albums are arranged by artist on open shelves in our listening room. I like playing vinyl and SACD’s (I have about 600 SACD’s). My wife loves the sound of vinyl, but she is not much on playing vinyl. She was very impressed a year or so ago when we went to NYC to audition new speakers and the dealers handed her a tablet and said pick some music you would like to hear that they had on their in house music server. Now she wants me to get a music server. 
At our age (we both early boomers) am not going to stream or subscribe to any kind of music streaming service. I have a TASCAM hi-rez digital recorder that will make DSD (.dff files) needle drops of my vinyl. The meta data in the case of these needle drops is on the vinyl label. When I pull the file from the TASCAM to my PC I add the artist and title to the file name and the two tracks are Side 1 and Side 2. A typical album in the .dff format is about 1.8 GB. Currently I transfer the file to a thumb drive (USB drive) and then plug that into PSA DMP, press PLAY and the file is sent to my PSA DS DAC over an I2S HDMI cable and the DSD copy of the vinyl is played. So here is what I need from the Octave music server and what if have read about it in this thread.
The physical style of the Octave will be the same as the DMP and DS DAC (I think the answer is YES)
The Octave will connect to the DS DAC via an I2S HDMI cable (YES)
The Ovtave will handle DSD (.dff) files (YES and even 2X DSD files)
I can easily transfer files from my PC to the Octave using a USB A to B cable (not sure if this is a YES)
I estimate that given the typical 1.8 GB size of the DSD album file I can have about 1100 albums stored on the 2TB HDD in the Octave (Is this a YES? - Can I upgrade the Octave to a 6TB HDD?)
I would like to have the needle drop files arranged the same way my open shelf storage of the vinyl albums are arranged. Thus, I would want to have a Clapton folder where all of my various Clapton needle drop files are located, and the same for an Eagles folder, and the same for a Beatles folder, etc. I assume the GUI will be on a tablet ( this will cause a huge argument because I hate all things Apple and my wife is an Apple user 
). Will it be possible to have the tablet display the folder collection in alphabetical order? Then if I want to hear EC’s Slowhand, I would tap on the Clapton folder and then on Slowhand to play the album. This is the part that I am very unsure about. My open shelf system is very easy to use and I want the music server to work the same way.
Basically yes to everything you want. The only issue will be the meta data which you can enter by hand though Octave uses acoustic ID so it will automatically go through your library and scan its contents and if there’s a corresponding CD or stored version of the same music it’ll tag it and then offer a wealth of information.
But, otherwise, yes, you’ll be able to do exactly what you want then control it through an iPad or mobile device of your choice.
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Paul, Thanks 
For those of us who have carefully tagged all our rips I assume having the Octave server search for tags will be optional. Roon is supposed to work that way but I haven’t always been able to get my own tags to display correctly (especially when I have multiple versions of the same multi-disc album). It’s one of the reasons I’'m mostly using JRiver these days.
Paul can you give us an update on Development progress? Have you had another listen to the hardware? Is so what are you thoughts so far?
How is the software coming along? Are you still hoping to release a product in the First Quarter 2019?
magicknow
Beat me to it !
Wa about to ask the same questions!
Bruce
Hey guys, thanks for asking. We’re still mired in the UI UX discussions but making good progress. Finally. For the hardware there’s the new output board and it is finished but not yet installed. Got waylaid by the move. The new SOM carrier boards are finished and Matt’s chosen the SOM of choice - killer SOM that has about 10X the horsepower we could even possibly need - as he describes it, “total overkill” which I LOVE! I have not ye been able to hear anything more. Sadly. I really had my heart set on using the prototype at RMAF but it’s not going to happen. I am still hopeful for first quarter 2019 but the hope dims a bit after the developments or lack of them.
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