I am not going to say the soundstage is much wider, but I will say that it is a bit taller and much deeper. There is much more 3D effect with Snowmass. More importantly, vocal and instrument placement is much more clearly defined and isolated.
I first noticed this with Van Morrison’s “Moondance”. It was like I had never heard the track in Stereo before. Once I heard it there, I had to play Fritz Reiner’s “Scheherazade”. Even looking right at my speakers, I could not tell the sound was coming from them. I could hear the sound coming from all over the stage as if I were in the 12th row at a concert. Sidney Harth’s violin is front left of center. Wow!
I would say with Snowmass there is a bit more energy in the upper mids to highs than with Redcloud. But there is no harshness…just clarity and effortless power. The lower mids to bass are strong and defined. They are cleaner than with Redcloud. The overall effect is still smooth but more energetic. Horns have a more realistic resonance to them.
The old ramp down and up was fairly quick, around 10 or 20 ms. The current ramp up is near a second - I didn’t pick a particular time, I just make sure to use the least resources doing it
There are some heuristics I added to help with clicks and pops:
I accept PCM 0’s as DSD 0’s to keep from going back and forth with the sources that pause DSD with PCM zeros.
I took some pains to zero out the upsampler, etc. when the sample rate changes, etc.
I keep sample rate and other meta data with each sample during the DSP processing to keep things aligned. Transitioning sample rates in Redcloud and before wasn’t as well defined thru the old upsampler.
Jesse Cook is spectacular, more open, more detail, more delineation of instruments in space… blacker than black is a good way to put it… the soundstage is not wider, just so much more separation in instruments. It gives the feel of wider, yet so much more detail and clarity. All nuance, not hit you over the head impact.
All I can say is WOW! I just saw Nick Cave live. Listening to his BoTman album. The base is so much more nuanced and texture on Lime Arbour. Extra toy what I remember from his show. Richard Thompson is next on the list and then I am moving to Kind of Blue. I am streaming using Roon from Tidal.
@tedsmith - thanks for the information. The pops occur every once and a while, end of track, low drama… Ted - this is spectacular, sound is so warm… I could listen to this for days…
I have not even started on the DMP - TIDAL ROON w/ Nucleus+ is just amazing… I never thought streaming would ever be this much like analog audio… amazing!
When Roon integrates Qobuz… holy crap! a turn table… AYFKM!
Looks like I will be dragged out of the music room by my wife, long past bedtime… subtle detail
It really didn’t take any back and forth comparisons. I hear it right away. With Snowmass, everything is more live, more dynamic, more dimensional, clearer decays, and clearer images in the back stage. Going back to Redcloud, everything sounds flatter. Amazing difference. I’m a believer. Bits are not just bits.
A little trickier for me to load because you need to load directly onto the SD card. AT first is unzipped to a Snowmass folder and that didn’t load Snowmass. Once I corrected it, loaded perfectly.
Quick thoughts. In my system, better in all respects based upon a brief listening session. Much more satisfying through the mid band, say upper bass through upper mid range. Much richer there. A little better height, couldn’t say it was better on width as I have a crappy room. Certainly not any worse width wise. Much more pristine sound, vocals emanate from a darker background. Greater sense of acoustic space. Really evident on piano music (I listen to a lot of that). It would be imprecise to quantify how much better it is but I’m a math guy so I’ll take a shot. At least a 25% improvement in SQ. It’s not a tweak. I think it sounds like what a limited edition of the DSD would sound like (using Redclouds but better internal parts). It would be at least a few thousand of an upgrade over the DSD using Redclouds. Big props to Ted and the crew.
@speed-racer - listening and it is scary - black background with delicate sounds, then the sax… this sound stage is just unbelievable! That track is like velvet textures on a very smooth and dark background. Man is the background black! That is where you got the height comment. Listened to it a second time and caught more detail. All of my snowmass listening has been FLAC so far; standard 44.1kHz. When Qobuz integrates with Roon, that will be scary… real hi res tracks…
I’m making it through the album and her range is limited; however, the arrangements are great and production is great. Thanks, I will add her to my library.
Thanks Paul and Ted (and others). First thing I heard was low rhythmic crackling, which I’d never heard before. Uh oh! Listened a bit and it seemed my long-time condo neighbor was running a mixer or a drill or something in his kitchen and this build picked it up - or maybe it was just complete coincidence. Isn’t P15 supposed to regenerate that? In any event, soon gone.
First impressions. This build is what I put money into audio (esp. PS Audio gear for): so quiet, delicate, smooth, lower bass clear and seemingly more pronounced, greater sense of space. Ensemble music seems slower because of all this, especially with the quiet because I’m hearing each note more distinctly. Exposes system strengths and weaknesses like never before: in my case need for warmer, sweeter spdif between Oppo and DS, and the weaknesses of the HDMI to I2S sound from the Oppo via internal and external cards a couple of us have noted in another thread. I suspect the sense of lower volume comes from less noise. Be interesting to see if overnight run in adds anything.
Innous Zenith > Roon > DirectStream USB or Bridge > Accoustic Arts Pre > Bryston 7B ST > Maggi 3.7i and 2 x Rel R328 — All balanced cabling — Torus powered
I had thought I had reached the end of the audio SQ quest. Snowmass transformed the DAC. More texture. Tighter, deeper base. No clicks going between formats. Faster transitions between formats.
Listening to Joni sing All I Want (Tidal MQA via USB0 I can hear the details on the guitar work that I have never noticed. The image is holographic taking full advantage of my Maggies. The soundstage has expanded. Did not know that was possible.
I just saw the Czech Philharmonic with Alisa Weilerstein perform the famous Dvorak cello concerto. The version I just listened to via Tidal MQA came close with Snowmass.
Many of the comments here are exactly in line with my impressions. This update sounds distinctly different from Redcloud. Immediately after installation there was in increase in upper-mid / presence band energy, but about an hour in the tonal balance seems to have settled back a bit – possibly the transformers degaussing. The overall effect remains, though, in that there’s a greater sense of immediacy to everything.
Far more noticeable is the incredible coherence of the entire audio signal. I’ve never heard anything like it before. Digital has a tendency to sound like one frequency is competing with another, like there is a limit to resolution and truthfulness which is lower than our ears can resolve, like there must always be compromise between harmonic structure and timing. Snowmass seems to say, “No more compromise, you can have all the music.”
This internal per-channel clarity allows two speakers to be coordinated with such precision that the relationship between the signals they’re being fed is clearer than I’ve ever heard. The result is imaging and soundstage magic which makes the speakers disappear and instruments take on more three-dimensional bodies.
I could go on for hours, but I want to listen. This is the most beautiful, believable music reproduction I have ever experienced. So much gratitude to Ted and the team.
My first impression is Wow! Dire Straights Guitar has more body overall sound more natural. Even more Depth than before. I am going to let it play all night with the 20db pad on to degauss the output transformers than listen more in the morning!
The most impact seems to be that my stereo is driving my Rel subwoofers more coherently. That is easiest to hear in orchestral music with the tympanic passages.
@Tedsmith - I have never heard a single pop in 6 months of running my PSA gear with redcloud. I hear pops in about 75% of the tracks. I think I’m up to at least 25 pops in the last few hours… initially it was novel and cute; like listening to an LP. However, it becomes annoying after the 20th pop. Now I understand why so many were complaining. So, this is my 1st formal issue.
The first impression I get is that the audio sounds distinctly more open as if the sound hangs in mid air more. It also sounds more effortless, more detailed, and decidedly more natural. it also sounds less harsh to me if that’s at all possible as Redcloud didn’t sound harsh at all, but Snowmass sounds less to my ears.
Ted, if I remember correctly, the hallmark of this update is your own custom coded upsampling algorithm? This replaces a “stock” Xilinx upsampling algorithm? Or something along these lines. I’m trying to remember a post your wrote a little while ago describing what it was.
I am not hearing any clicks playing PCM. Try downgrading to Torrey and then upgrade again. Well, first I would just power cycle the DSD, then downgrade/upgrade again.
@speedracer - I just set Roon to output MAX PCM rate… will listen for a while, thanks… I have never used anything by redcloud. I was using DSD w/ 64 since I got Roon Nucleus+ and never heard a pop with redcloud. So far after 3 tracks no pops. Need a lot more time…
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