@ Tedsmith I’m curious whether Snowmass will have a successor, and if so, when can we expect it?
@John_Dubya - yeah, great question… mount holy crap! Is @tedsmith saving it for the TSS… what does he have up his sleeve…
Yes there will more FPGA releases for the DS and the DS Jr that will improve the audio quality. I can’t promise another difference as big as Snowmass, but most will be able to hear the differences. The TSS will have the next release and then a little later the new features of that release that the DS and the DS Jr hardware support will be released for them. There is still some more Snowmassness (compared to earlier releases) to be had and some Redclouness (compared to earlier releases) as well. Also a few things that I already have working on the TSS will make a difference on the DS and DS Jr. No idea of a release date at the moment.
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Thanks, Ted
I’m sure it will be worth a bit of a wait, but I guess I’ve gotten used to having a new DAC every year.
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We all have been very spoiled! Thank you Ted!
@sixpack1 - Yes, you hit it on the head. We are spoiled! Thanks Ted! As usual, a very good comment with excellent context.
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@tedsmith, I (vaguely) recall that in the context of Redcloud you suggested that a volume setting of 80 or so minimized THD (although not the SNR). Is this still the case in Snowmass?
If so, is this (the increase of THD at max volume) something that you might be able to address in a future firmware update?
(Apologies if this has been discussed already; a search came up empty).
Thanks.
Redcloud has a bug with one internal register being one bit too small. This only shows up with the volume high and fairly dynamic music or music that’s riding the maximum levels for a while. Since SACDs can go about 4dB higher in level for short periods it would happen more often with them.
The advice I gave for working around the bug was to lower your volume up to 6dB if you are hearing “blurbles”. Each volume step on the DS is 1/2 dB so you may have needed to lower the volume 12 steps to 88 to make sure you never encounter it - with most music you probably don’t need to go that far.
That bug was fixed in Snowmass.
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Thank you.