No I’m talking about a USB connection for audio.
I just transitioned from 3.0.0 to 3.0.6 and the difference is amazing.
As I listen mostly to Sacred Choral music, I am used to listen to a mix of men and women voices.
With 3.0.6, voices are delineated exquisitely especially the medium to high register.
When many voices were signing with 3.0.0 (especially women voices), their voices seemed to be lumped together with an increase of sibilance so much so that after a while, I was experiencing listening fatigue, and decided to buy an Innuos Zenith MK3 (as replacement to a Zen MK2, but still waiting for it) and an Audience USB cable (quite expensive, but what a cable!, and still waiting for it).
But now with 3.0.6, I am shocked: the high notes are no longer fatiguing, the voices are no longer lumped together but clearly delineated and signing in harmony, the tonality is much more natural.
And all this is obtained with my current Zen MK2 and Audioquest Carbon USB cable.
I just bought this expensive Audience cable, and it no longer seems necessary …
Ted, what did you do to me !!??? (just kidding 
).
As for the extra energy heard by some audiophiles, I would guess it is not so much that more energy was added in the medium/high spectrum , but rather energy that was always there but somehow missing or not being expressed/extracted as it should have been.
I read in the thread that the PIC code lets the FPGA interface with the screen and the other bits and pieces of the DAC outside the FPGA. Based on the improvements brought about by 3.0.6, could it be that the PIC somehow granted more time to the FPGA to do its job by reducing demands on the FPGA or may be changing the synchronicity of the interruptions allowing the FPGA to do a better conversion?
Anyway, the results are beautiful: it is as if my senior Directstream DAC got a new pair of wings and is flying unrestrained.
Very nice!
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Does anyone here use the Dimmer scale to “Tone Control” their system? My personal journey has taken me from 3.0.0 to 3.0.4, back to 3.0.0 and now to 3.0.6. 3.0.4 did not work well in my system so my comments only refer to experience with the other two.
3.0.0 I preferred a dimmer setting of 40. I am still playing with 3.0.6, but an untidy 17 seems to be the honey pot for me. In all cases I have the screen off, but I find the dimmer setting to “tone control” the soundscape and the two mentioned settings brought about the best results so far.
Just curious if anyone else is using the dimmer and not at absolute 0.
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Jeeez, I am so jealous of some of the things you guys hear! Mayhaps my ears are just too old… (they’re 68—both of them)
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For my part, the screen is always off.
As for the dimming setting, I just went to look, and it was set at 50.
I then started slewing the dimming back and forth between 0 and 100 and I could not hear any changes in tonality (or any other audible effect on the music).
Sorry (I am using 3.0.6).
However, assuming that the perceived tonality changes may be somehow related to possible noise in and/or around your system, I should point out that I added an ifi AC iPurifier in the power outlet where my sound system is plugged-in and I also bought a while ago two sheets of MuMetal 0.010" thick x 8" x 12" from Magnetic Shield Corporation in the USA (http://www.magnetic-shield.com) that I placed underneath my DAC, thus isolating it from my integrated amplifier located on a shelf just below.
These additions may contribute (I sure hope so) in lowering the noise affecting my DAC and my sound system as a whole.
Hope this help.
Is there a dimmer control button on the remote? Just dialed mine back to 17. I can hear tonal differences at increments of 1 while at the DSD touch screen. Your recommended tweak brought mids back. I heard 3.00 HF hash and low register mids that I had to dial back with DSP with 3.00 . This dimmer tonal tweak is the bomb. It seems to balance out the low mids I would love to dial it in to perfection with the DSD remote at the sweet spot.
Thanks for sharing this. Those whose system does not resolve from dimmer. May I suggest Iconoclast SPTPC and UPOCC ICs
I have been away from my system for five days and just fired it up again. I checked my dimmer level and it was at 50. Now it is at 17. I’ll listen and see. Seems odd to think that the dimmer level can be used as a tone control. I am amused.
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If you are just starting out with this experiment, I would recommend trying 0 on the dimmer and then going to 50 and finally 100. Drastic steps should be more easily detectable. However I can imagine it is not very pronounced on all systems. It is fascinating that some (myself included) hear a change while others hear none.
After a lot of 3.06 listening and finding a few songs unbearable due to harsh treble I also went back to redcloud. Very enjoyable, maybe a little less revealing, but can fully live with it.
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With the dimmer off completely…I can’t see how what dimmer setting used would have any effect on the tonal balance… but as in all things audio…I guess it could…TED???
The dimmer for the screen is the easy thing to explain, the screen is a big RF radiator modulated by the pixels. The best setting is for the screen to be off. The screen is powered by a switching power supply that radiates in proportion to the current it’s delivering which is also modulated by the brightness of each pixel. With more sensitive equipment you could reproduce the image displayed just by monitoring either the DS’s power draw or the DS’s RF. Then there’s the work the PIC has to do to drive the screen, especially the screen refresh rate, that rate, unfortunately is somewhere in the audio bandwidth. I don’t know if that rate depends on the screen level setting or not.
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It’s a pity the pic code can’t stop refreshing the display if the display is switched off. That would solve a lot of problems.
Could you possibly be judging these various f/w’s using crappy recordings? That would easily explain why you might end up preferring Redcloud to any of the versions of Snowmass.
Why do you believe the PIC code is unaffected by the screen being off? I don’t get that from Ted’s post. Thanks!
Ted is saying the pic is still refreshing the screen and adding in noise even when the display is disabled/dimmed. Shame they can’t modify the code to stop refreshing the screen and adding noise when the display is disabled/dimmed
I didn’t mean to imply that, I was saying that the display makes noise in many ways, e.g. it’s tech, it’s power supply and the PIC controlling it. It’s also the case that the PIC needs to talk to the display regularly and that process can’t be easily disguised by changing it’s period to be outside of the audio band. I don’t know if that refreshing happens when the display is explicitly off or not, but I think it goes away when the display is off. Note that turning the display off may well be different than setting the brightness to 0.
PS Audio is aware of some of the things they can do to lower PIC/display noise, but on the other hand most of the code was written before the system as a whole was revealing enough to know there was an issue, e.g. there’s a whole lot of code to redo with sound quality in mind so even if it was the most important thing on PS Audio’s list (which it isn’t) it would take a lot of time.
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Ted - thank you for chiming in.
From my listening I have heard more difference from the dimmer setting than from the display being set to on or off. It has led me to believe that the dimmer scale is active and perhaps separate from the screen on/off. Is there anyone at PS Audio that could speak to the two functions being connected or independent functions? Since the dimmer setting of 0 does not defeat the screen and I hear a constant sound signature at each dimmer setting I have assumed the dimmer is always active.
Thanks for your thoughts -
Moral of the story: don’t use PWM backlit displays. 
Sorry, I am not happy with Snowmass 3.06. I have hoped it would solve my general problem with Snowmass, which I have reported months ago. Ted has increased the ramp up time with Snowmass. So, when I choose tracks directly from the library to be played via Bridge II with Bubble or MConnect as control points, there is an annoying fade in effect. Listening to classical music this is unacceptable, as if I miss the first two bars of the music. Red Cloud reacts much faster. I get the music instantaneously. I went straight back to Red Cloud, and hope Ted will find a solution one day. Why not reducing the ramp up time to the level before? Is it important soundwise?
You are right. I prefer to be able to listen to all my music with joy, compromising with the software version. With a top recording 3.06 is probably best.
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