Snowmass DirectStream Sr. upgrade - Available in the Downloads Section

Yes, I switch off the display when doing critical listening. But when comparing the DS to products it directly competes with, its LCD display clearly has much room for improvement, especially on the showroom floor.

Take, for example, the crisp, clear and legible LCD display of the Auralic Vega G2.

Put it beside the DS in the store and I know a few wives who will overrule their husbands based on that alone.

This is why I’m asking if the LCD display of the DS can be made to look better. Sure, it will take some lines of code, but it can be done, can’t it? In which case, perhaps it should be done?

However, if someone at PS Audio confirms that “MS-DOS” style fonts are all it can do of because the LCD chipset’s limitations, then I will, of course, accept it as what it is. Then I may look into adding an external display. :smiley:

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Totally agreed. that looks great.

Worth investing on the touchscreen UI I think, be a bigger differentiator between the DS and the Jr, so would make sense as a business case.

Nice full color album art on the Bridge, unfortunately very small.
Ex long term Squeezebox guy here, from back in the SB2 days.

The Touch display when playing music was terrific.

The Open source spirit with Squeezebox fans was exemplary.

Hows this for thinking outside the box Paul? :slight_smile:
Look into UI coding for the DS’s screen.

Release an open source Developers Kit for it and let us Directstream fans get to work on it!

We submit our efforts for consideration.
Some inspiration from back in the day creating VU meter displays for the Touch.

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How it’s done is described here. Roon Knowledge Base - Displays

You can also use your standard divice, the one you use with Roon. This is the Display I get from my iPad Air. The picture is even better than from a smartphone.

Every device which has a browser. Type the IP adress from your roon server or roon rock in the browser followed by a colon the port 9100 and /Display. Example: http://192.168.xx.xx:9100/display/
Than go to the display settings in Roon and activate it. Thats all. You don’t need that chromecast thing. Every browser in your network will run.

Really awesome display of the G2 thumbsup

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I’m not an expert, but there are a few things involved with CD audio that might be involved. One is (Reed-Solomon) error correction for misread bits. The other is error concealment when the misreads exceed the threshold for correction. Some feel that even correction near the threshold becomes audible, and concealment surely can be. It’s like filling in missing sequences of dinosaur DNA with frog DNA. Unexpected results can occur.

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I am a Roon/DS (Snowmass)/Bridge II (3.6.17) user.

I am getting a pretty severe crackling about 4-5 seconds after I pause a track. So far it only notice it happening with 96-24 flac tracks. Have not been able to get red book flac files to crackle (yet). Have not tried any DSD

I have re-loaded Red Cloud then back to Snowmass to no success

Scratches?

Terrible things those…

tried the snowmonster on 2 different systems i own (with the DSD in combo with the DMP & I2S supplied connectors)

the common denominators:
revealing

BUT

Not musical
Very Fatiguing/Very Shrill

it’s soooo shrill that i feel like my ears are bleeding - be it DVD, BLU-RAY, or CD or cable TV
(even my dog left her favorite listening/sleeping spot when i would play the newly released UpDate @ any volume - even soft background music…a dog-gone shame

she’s now reclaimed her spot since i reinstalled RedCloud

glad i didn’t have to pay anything to try out the latest…

also glad to know others can revel in their renewed digs…

I have to confess that I am falling into this camp. … Snowmass is fatiguing for me so far. I let the new 3.10 for the DMP and Snowmass for the DSD settle in over the weekend by infrequently using TV and DVR inputs and all other times running a cd from the DMP into the DSD and listened all day today. I ended up rolling some tubes to tame the sound and that helps. I haven’t gone back to RedCloud, but I may. I don’t hear all the startling improvements do many do. We’ll see if I get used to it this week. . . .

I assume the answer is yes, but have you tried rebooting the DSD with the SD card taken out?

Yep. Same here. Lon and I were just talking about this in email. I installed Snowmass and 3.10 on Thursday and had attenuator engaged while playing a cd on repeat until Saturday when I played for first time only a couple of songs. Then yesterday listened for a few hours. It still sounds amazing but I am just not hearing the drastic differences/improvements you all are hearing. Sounds like it did on Redcloud. Then again it took me about 2 months of break in when I got my DSD and DMP in August to realize the SQ is superior to my Oppo UDP 205. Maybe it needs more time?

I’ve rebooted it both ways. Rebooting it WITH the card helped a little earlier today. I’m going to let it settle in a while longer. The good thing is we do have the option to go back to an earlier firmware.

Wow lonson this is strange…I remember you use some tonality tweaking gear…did you try to compare it without? Strange phase effects could happen otherwise.

However something must be wrong as Snowmass is anything but fatiguing with a need to tame (I guess to most who reported here). I think there really must be a strong phase anomaly in a setup where it sounds like that. But I understand that this is your setup and you have to fit it in there…

Unlike some previous releases the ultrasonic noise is identical between Snowmass and Redcloud. In the audio band at most the phase should be more correct in Snowmass than Redcloud so I wouldn’t expect the differences to be large as you have encountered.

If you haven’t already done it, the suggestion about rebooting again without the SD in after first reboot to updating to Snowmass is a good one. Also after upgrading to Snowmass check your version numbers on the version screen to make sure everything got properly upgraded. (E.g. like this screen

)

What if we don’t use Bridge? Still upgrade to the latest?

Yes…

It’s not a phase issue jazznut. I defeated all my tone settings and that didn’t help. I’ve had to dial my treble way back from RedCloud levels, and that was the fatiguing aspect. And I have the right software loaded showing on the screen.

I rebooted it again with the card out and will listen again tomorrow. My wife is home and the stereo is not going to get used tonight.

Also it would be great if it can display multi-language characters properly. (Korean, Japanese)

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Ok, that’s really strange how different those updates can turn out for some and hard to find out why, unless maybe someone uses unconventional speakers like open baffle, single chassis, omnidirectional etc.