You got me there. Not familiar with this, could you expound upon the nature of the controversy?
Frank was quoted as saying, āThe basis for the B&K 140 was an exact copy of our Mos-Fet 150 amplifier.ā He went on to write to the editors of all the audiophile journals at the time, complaining about the design theft. As far as I know, nothing happened from a legal standpoint. I donāt think B&K was enjoined from producing or selling the units, though they did create a āmk IIā version a little later. Whether it was because of this, or other improvements they wanted to implement, I donāt know.
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I had no idea. Thanks.
You are not alone. Speaking to two Rega dealers, both selling lots of their stuff and both fairly close to Regaās factory, they both said the P8 is the most popular as it is the best value for money.
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You should listen to the PS Audio Stellar Phono Stage, it may sway your opinion. 
While the Stellar Phono Pre Stage gets raving reviews and seems very attractive to many audiophiles, it is not for me.
The Stellar Phono stage is more expensive than the Linn Uphorik in Europe due to the export model of PS Audio and tax structures. While I consider the Linn Uphorik as a benchmark in Sound and Built Quality.
Other reasons not to buy the Stellar Phono Pre Amp are:
- lack of XLR balanced input, the new turntable I want to buy is the Thorens TD1601. It has XLR balanced output, which is superior to the single ended RCA connection between the cartridge and the Phono pre amp;
- the potentiometers on the back side being a potential source of trouble (noise), maybe not in the first couple of years but as the unit gets older;
- when the Stellar Phono Pre Amp was released I had just baught the Stellar Gain Cell DAC. The Stellar Phono Pre Amp is nearly EUR 1000 more expensive than the Stellar Gain Cell DAC, a pre amp including DAC. The price of the Stellar Phono Pre Amp is in no relation to the Gain Cell DAC;
- most people buying the Stellar Phono Pre Amp have Direct Stream, BHK or now called Perfect Wave gear that costs no less than triple the price of Stellar gear.
Recently there are extremely interesting Phono Stages or integrated amplifiers with XLR input released. That are more to my liking. And I know more of those are on their way.
Hi Paul,
A server needs storage and whilst many might like the flexibility of extended USB storage many others would fret upon whether that extended storage is adding noise.
As manufacturer of a server you need to identity the SSD that contribute the least possible noise and then do whatever you can to further mitigate that noise. Nuno at Innuos told me they spent a heck of a long time on the SSD to mitigate physical vibrations and EMF etc.
Iād recommend you guys need to do likewise.
Iād also propose that 1tb and 2tb should be the two options.
Cheers,
Alan
I think if hard disk noise and choice is such a problem, the only solution can be to isolate the audio in a way that it doesnāt harm anymore anyway. Everything else makes that whole system unmanageable for a manufacturer or customer. Digital audio seems to get more complicated than any turntable/tonearm/cartridge combination challenge ever.
The funny thing is, when people were convinced that the principle of what they thought is lossless and accurate processing of digital rules audio quality, they completely missed the noise matter and probably a few others which are not unveiled yet.
While I support the argument of Alan fully and agree with what you say I ask myself if the Audio industry is doing itself favors in ever increasing bit length and sample frequency.
All for valid reasons, but as TVās have reached sufficient resolution with 4K I canāt see the point in more storage consuming and noise inflicting audio file formats than those that are available today.
Keep the file formats as they are, no more please, and improve on whatever can be improved, butā¦
Get real PS Audio, last couple of years Paul has been referring customers to Blue Coast Records. Their standard is now DSD 256, 24bit 96kHZ are other increasingly popular formats, especially for those who ripped their Vinyl collection. It doesnāt take a crazy big collection to hit that 1TB limit.
It is unbelievable that the same person who held a rant with John DARKO of an hour about USB cable quality doesnāt seem to bother about attaching external drives to the high end (also cost wise) Octave server.
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Thanks, Alan. Perhaps the best way to do that would be a user accessible internal SSD. Thereās problems there, but perhaps we can overcome them.
Whatever we do I am certain weāre not going to make everyone happy. 
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I like Brystonās approach. You can add an internal SSD if you would like, attach USB drives or flash memory, and/or access an NAS.
Not only is the versatility great, you can store your music in any fashion you think is superior.
Bryston had the same concerns abut internal storage as PS Audio has expressed. It is expensive to include, supporting end user access/their drives is problematic, etc.
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Thanks Paul,
Yup the paradox is that you need the storage in or near the server in order to serve up those delicious 1s and 0s but then that storage goes and adds damn noise. Very inconsiderate of it!
I tried a few things as always tinkering. NAS. Samsung SSD. The files on SD cards in an SD card reader hub powered by a 5v Uptone Audio LPS-1.2.
Iām back to my Zenith SE with itās SSD. Innuos admit that the SSD does add noise but theyāve done a lot to reduce that as much as they can. Outta my price bracket but Emile at Taiko and Jord over at Pink Faun both pay at lot of attention to keeping the SSD as quiet as possible precisely because itās the most problematic component other than the PSU for adding noise.
User configurable with a list of recommended āfans favouritesā might well be the way to go.
On a more personal note. Saturday afternoon and weāre still in lockdown2 here in London. Quite content though as watching the blu ray of Bruce Springsteens Western Stars with the sound from my Oppo going into the Directstream and your magical M1200s. Just wanted to say thanks as the DAC and amps are amazing and much loved. I canāt even picture replacing either for years to come.
Hope everyone is well over there in Colorado.
Cheers,
Alan
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Paul offering custom SSD installations might cause a bag of trouble, because your tech support might become busy doing nothing else than solving compatibility issues. And even get stressed out because of it.
Off course you can not make every body happy, but competition offers larger storage devices. Certainly Innuos for less money than the Octave. They are equally not in the SSD business as PS Audio.
But the business PS Audio is in, is expensive equipment.
The customer feedback you get is: please make that expensive equipment more valuable and future proof by not limiting the storage too much.
Another possibility for not having to deal with different SSD devices could be offering more storage bays I would agree with Alan that 1TB or 2TB would be a great choice at introduction. So 1TB units 1 storage device and 2TB units get 2 storage devices.
As time progresses PS Audio can work on larger SSD storage devices. It is to be expected that they become less costly as time moves on.
At the time PS Audio has the larger SSD devices ready for implementation, all new units can be shipped with those then and existing Octave owners could buy them as upgrade package (if necessary together with a firmware update).
Advantage would be that PS Audio never has to deal with mixed SSD devices in the inventory and production. Damaged devices can get an automatic upgrade should repair be needed.
But 1TB only is no attractive proposition in 2021.
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Aurenderās entry level units, the N100 series, allow for a 2 TB or 4 TB internal drive and will also catalog everything on any external NAS storage, but the downstream output is buffered through RAM so the drive spins mainly in between tracks.
Once connected to our router, the internal drive is visible from any computer on the wireless side of the network, so managing files is a drag and drop proposition using Windows Explorer and JRiver to rip, rejigger metadata and upsample/downsample files.
Very convenient.
This is what I have seen with any streamer/server with onboard storage, as well as with directly attached drives/storage. It is very easy to view, upload, and edit music files on such a system.
Thanks, but might I differ with you? 1000 gigabytes of storage is more than perhaps 80% of peopleās libraries. Do some have bigger? Yes, 20% do and those can become enormous. One of the developers weāre working with on Octave has 8 terabytes of music. This is HUGE. He could not with two lifetimes listen to that much music. It becomes a hoarderās dream.
So, yes, weāll likely have a few choices of storage available, but I would suggest 1 terabyte is a LOT of storage.
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Yes it is. For this point in time, that is.
I agree 1 TB is a lot of memory, but so uncompressed high res Audio also occupies a lot of it. And am happy you consider mor storage options. Thanks for that.
Please consider also the following:
Storage capacity is like amplifier power, the more headroom the better:
- every storage device collects junk data over time
- speed and quality of data extraction from the SSD
- piece of mind of those investing in the Octave system
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Iāve had a Melco N1A for quite a while. It has 2 * 2tb in it and is configured as Raid 1. In spite of the discs theoretically being backed up I once lost the lot - Iām pretty sure Melco will have fixed whatever bug caused that.
I now do my own regular backups (via the Melco Backup utility) and implement a strict grandfather, father, son routine.
Just from another point of viewā¦
My Melco N1ZS10 (upgraded for free during warranty repair by Alan Ainslie, technical right-hand of Melco founder Maki) is provided with a by floating suspension isolated 1T audio grade ssd.
My complete digital library is stored on 2x 4T ssdās, usb-connected with the Melco. A separate server is used for complete back up.
In my quite resolving system differences in sound quality playing from external ssdās in comparison with the Melco audio grade ssd are easy to detect, with average recording quality these are hardly or not at all perceptible.
So i choose to provide the 1T audio grade ssd only with third copies of favorite well recorded / mastered music which turns out to be a most satisfying solution.
Melcoās audio graded ssdās are special built in small numbers within Buffalo Memory Division, avoiding all sound quality compromises that are inherent in a convention IT market ssd.
With this experience and knowing audio grade ssdās usually come at a price Iāld prefer quality over quantityā¦