PS Audio Music Server In The Pipeline?

While looking for a review of the CDT-8 I found this that also seems to do I2S

https://www.6moons.com/audioreviews2/jaysaudio/1.html

I don’t use a cd player, but I thought others may be interested

The Jay’s seems to be a great piece but for the amount I was going to realistically use it the CDT-8 Pro was enough for me at one third the price. Sounds good through the I2S output and takes less room.

Word of warning the display is not dimmable. It’s 80’s blue. The only other gripe is it’s a little slow on advancing tracks but for the price it’s not too bad. I have it on a Bob Grost maglev base which isolates it well.

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I would have bought it if it wasn’t SGD$100,000 to ship thanks to our little trade scuffle. The superior transport and chassis was worth it for me but the Nuprime will do until a new Memory Player comes out.

I’ve been using Auralic Lightning for years and never even knew it had a playlist limit of 999. All this proves is that it is impossible to satisfy everyone.

I’ve been streaming for 10 years and was under the impression that the hardware is not a big problem to get very good quality sound. The state of the art 7nit over here, the DCS bridge, costs about 20% of the next cheapest component they sell. My streamer is a card, packed with technology (FPGA, multiple processors, blah blah blah) the area of a cigarette packet and a lot thinner. The software is the really difficult bit and larger companies have failed to get it right.

Not having spun a CD for about 5 years, since I had ripped all my CDs and went on Qobuz, I have long forgotten making comparisons between Digital files read with a laser and those from a storage drive or the ethernet. I am honestly surprised that there is anyone who still gives it any thought.

I remember reading an article in about 2010, when I bought my Linn DS streamer, that digitally stored audio (live streaming was not around yet) would kill the market for audio source products. The basic premise, with which I agree, is that computer-based solutions become exponentially better and cheaper very quickly. Besides not predicting the resurgence of vinyl, it was a pretty accurate prediction. The reality is here, and the 2018 figures are not yetout.
https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/

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“I am honestly surprised that there is anyone who still gives it any thought.”

That’s like being over on the car thread and saying, they made that car work just fine. Why would you try to improve it? I understand being more interested in convenience and simplicity than extracting the best you can from your gear, but some people like to tweak.

I own over 4000 CDs and approx 600 SACDs and both formats are demonstrably better than any streamer I’ve used in my system. Play SACD or CD through the DMP I sit transfixed. ‘It is a musically engaging experience’. Others may well disagree - but that’s how I hear it.! Each to his own, as long as they know they will always be wrong…!

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We’re on it! I agree with you on the sound of the Roon server. Not sure why they never addressed that but then maybe they like it.

Agreed. Very clearly audible hierarchy.

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The DMP is a very specialist product and has now been discontinued. Others have suggested that the next best thing are Oppo units, but they’ve stopped making them as well. Something tells me that there is a lack of demand. I would be interested to know how many DMP units PSA sold in the USA and non-USA over the life of the product.

Data is data and can be copied and transmitted perfectly. Thank heavens, else a lot more than the audio world would be in trouble. Like the world financial system. If the DMP electronics apply a magic sauce, and it may well do so, and I assume it was designed objectively, then I fail to understand why it cannot be applied in another device to the same data.

CD sales in the UK fell by 23% in 2018 to 32 million, about one CD for every 2 people in the country. The only remaining national retail chain selling CDs (HMV) went bust a few weeks ago and closed for good. So you basically can’t go into a high street and find a shop to buy a CD anymore. I therefore expect CD sales to fall faster in 2019.

How many laptops have a CD drive these days?

My favourite SACD label, Alia Vox, and they used the format from the beginning, are now all available to me streamed at 24/88.1. I own a lot of the SACDs but could only over play the 16/44 layer as I never saw the point of investing in an expensive SACD player (only available from Sony, dCS and more recently PSA).

I certainly do not advocate getting rid of perfectly good CD or SACD players, or music libraries. I still own about 1,500 CDs, possibly more.

I will never buy another disc spinner. It is now a legacy means of storing digital data. Likewise, I will never again buy a car that burns carbon-based fuel. My kids will never own one.

Think of it this way - if home servers and downloads had existed in 1983, would anyone have ever bought a CD?

Sometimes stuff just becomes technologically redundant.

For the Octave, for me it would be most important to keep the cache/import function of qobuz. The SQ is better than of streaming all music directly.

That’s what the Octave server is about.

I ripped my discs roughly 17 years ago, and said the same thing about never spinning one again. Until I heard the DMP. It was built as a device that could play SACDs out digitally via I2S to the DS DACs. For SACD library owners, that was a large part of the appeal, but the surprise was how good CDs sound. I kept all my discs, and was glad I did. I had done so not ever thinking that I would be playing them from a spinner again, but that I like a hard copy (not on an HD) and that ripping would improve over the way I did it 17 years ago.

It also allows me to burn DVD-ROM discs of my DSD rips of vinyl, music masters, etc. and play them.

None of this would be a huge deal if it didn’t do something I’d not heard in a digital chain (at least at this price point). It just has an anolog-like “rightness” and timing that is akin to what I heard the other day at Gus Skinas’ studio over at PS listening to DSD master recordings. In the past 17 years all of the aspects that go into digitizing music and playing it back to analog (which is to say ALL musical recordings that are not fully analog) have improved slowly but surely. But computer-based playback is just now getting close to pulling up even with the sound of analog and DSD.

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Ok… that said. I still prefer the sound of my CDs and SCADs played on the DMP than any streaming device in my system. That’s all that matters to me… I simply don’t care about what others prefer. Good for them. I am only interested in playing “my music”… CD sales have “supposedly” been in decline for years but I can still buy whatever I want to buy on CD … What else matters… !

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I think a lot of audiophiles go through the gestation period new formats and platforms. Devialet, for example, is annoyingly good sound with annoyingly bad software. CD was revolutionary in 1983, but people did not throw away their records and players as it took until about 1990 to refine to something like it is today.

I never got in to SACD. dCS players could decode SACD for at least there last 15 years, but with their recent Puccini all-in-one spinner/DAC they abandoned it.

My Devialet provides a 24/192 usb stream of vinyl input, should I want to record it.

My kids aged 18 and 21 understand vinyl, the older one is an avid collector, but think CDs are something from the Middle Ages, even though older one knew every word and note of the Lion King CD.

That is ceasing to be the case. Hyperion are the leading independent classical label in the UK, they also distribute, for other labels and major orchestras like Mariinsky and the London Symphony, and many are now only available as downloads. No physical version.
I have bought a lot and they are generally of exceptionally good quality.
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/ol.asp?ol=7
Most of them are not available for streaming online, so the only option is to buy a download.

Steven - sort of one of your classic non-responsive responses ; )

Quite possibly!!!

Because I listen mostly to classical, “analog rightness” is irrelevant, but then I put on a well recorded and pressed 1960s jazz album and know what you’re talking about.

Whereas digital-lovers go on about the benefits of high resolution, I’ve always felt that well recorded and engineered 16/44 is more than adequate.

Then I listen to some whacky modern jazz on ECM streamed at 24/96 and have no thoughts about whether it’s analogue, digital or whatever.

I will never know how good the DMP is unless I buy the last remaining one in the UK, for sale at £1,350. I’d rather spend the money on tickets.

I think, even with all the issues that people have written about, that for 1350 GBP I would take a shot. It’s almost an arbitrage position if you don’t like it someone would buy it for more than that. Of course, as my wife like to point out, I am probably wrong…

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Hi Paul,

A bit of a detailed question. I run a Roon Rock on an Intel NUC. I put it in a fanless case and am thinking of buying a SSD to get rid of the noise from the hard disk. If I do this would you think that as long as the NUC was on the network that the eventual Bridge III would be able to access the music off the SMB share ignoring Roon altogether.

Basically I am trying to make sure I don’t keep throwing money at Roon if eventually I will get the Bridge III only to find out the music and hardware wont work with the Bridge.

Does that make sense?

My understanding of Bridge III is that it will have USB port that will allow connection on an external drive. It will be able read the music files directly from that drive, thereby eliminating the need for any type of PC.

magicknow