You probably want to listen to a variety of things before you form any opinions. At times less distortion and less noise can show “warts” in some recordings while greatly enhancing the enjoyment of others. At the end of the day, whichever release you like best is fine.
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Thanx Ted… yea, maybe I am too quick with responding… takes some time.
Regarding the recordings… this is why I noted in some request for your next DAC that you have a “switch” for bad CDs. I am being half serious here. With equipment this revealing, well, our pop CDs can make our ears bleed. I would love a tone control switch to step the top down just a tad for these types of recordings. I know, this should probably be in a pre-amp, but… maybe it could be better implemented in the digital domain? I don’t have tone controls so I end up not listening to some music because of this evil.
Peace
Bruce in Philly
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I was referring specifically to the Bill Evans, Live at Top of The Gate release. As best as I can tell, the analog tapes were encoded as DXD (which is high-res PCM) and then those DXD files were transcoded into various flavors of DSD (and also to PCM versions that are lower-res than DXD). The DSD512 version is definitely a transcode from DXD. See the following blurb at this link:
So if one subscribes to the view that PCM files should not be transcoded to DSD files (and likewise that DSD files should not be transcoded to PCM files), then it would seem, on paper at least, that the DXD version of this album would be the best one to buy.
No, it is brighter. At the moment I find it edgy. But it needs time to destroy my braincells that will allow me to conform to Teds New Order of Things.
TNOT
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I was commenting on missing information after Sunlight. I reloaded the update yesterday and let the system run over night. Just finished a listening session this morning. I had to reorient my speakers with less toe in as things were a little too strident. (Think Eva Cassidy live or Morgan James “Call Me” that are my go to stridency tests) Boy did that make a huge change. The crickets are back on Chris Jones, yeah. Although my memory is fickle about sound, this is by far the best DirectStream has ever sounded. More air, better differentiation, wider sound stage and more stage depth. All in all a great swan song for a great PS Audio product.
I appreciate all the people who went “insect hunting”for me. Ted was certainly right about treating this update like a new piece of equipment. That’s what led me to changing speaker position.
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MY GEAR: DAC Directstream Jr – AMP Benchmark AHB2 – SPEAKERS Pure Audio Project Trio 15 Voxative.
I installed Sunlight today without any problem. I have been quite content with Windom and was wondering what could possibly have been improved? I had read lots of positive words about it but decided to stay as objective as I could which actually was not so hard. I started by listening to a set of recordings i use when reviewing and played them first through Windom, upgraded to Sunlight and listened again with a fairly fresh memory of both characteristics.
To put my impressions in short. More separation, more neutral, more accurate and clean in all areas regardless if it was an instrument, voices, orchestra or the room.
From what I heard there is not more of anything like bass / room / width / depth / mids / treble, just more accuracy and less added sounds (= distortion). All notes like high pitched notes from a female voice or a violin or drums etc, is now more clean, separated and undistorted. I noticed this extra when listening to instruments in an orchestra. They were more separated from each other which made me enjoy orchestra recordings more. They otherwise tend to become moulded together and somewhat blurry.
Windom is still a very good firmware, especially if you have analytical hardware or want to soften the sound and add a bit voluminous gentler touch. Some say Windom has more bass but in reality I don´t think there is more, if they mean a deeper bass, just a more voluminous sound. That can be nice with some music, but as I heard, less accurate. So if your preference is neutral, accuracy and come closer to the genuine sound then Sunlight sounds like the better choice to me. Let me emphasize in the same time that Sunlight is in no way analytical, not at all, it is actually very musical and with a rich natural tone to it. Closer to real life sound.
My hardware is neutral in sound and it worked well with Sunlight so I will keep using it and feeling grateful for now enjoying the music even more. Thank you Ted and PS Audio!
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4 posts were merged into an existing topic: A Good DAC For Mediocre Recordings?
Depending what part of the NativeDSD description, you can get the impression at one place that it’s taken fron a DXD file, and in another that it was analog tape to DSD. Another possibility is that, like the 2L, it might utilize a feed off the DXD ADC (before the ADC conversion) that is then converted to DSD.
This is how 2L does it:
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After that, Ted’s problem. He set the bar quite high, let’s see how he will exceed it.
Just throwing this out there. Could the precieved brightness or edginess that some are experiencing with Sunshine, which lowers distortion, be revealing the inadequacies of hardware components in the DAC that are not of the highest quality, say like the transformers?
Kinda like if you upgrade to speakers that have higher resolution, they may reveal inadequacies of components downstream.
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Occam’s Razor suggests an alternative given the majority response to the release. It’s always the case that there are some people and systems that don’t synergize with each new release. (They can use the last release if they want.) But by far the biggest majority of systems synergize well. I don’t think this points to the DS. Clearly the DS isn’t perfect, but its faults don’t really explain the smaller number of systems that don’t react well with each release.
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That whole album is great. Harry Pearson liked it way back when and it still stands up. -Too bad she passed, but her life was complicated by diabetes.
My DSD with the transformer upgrade seems to get better by the day, burning in with a burn in track on repeat since Sunlight was installed.
My Kitsune Holo May DAC arrives tomorrow and I’m looking forward to a shoot out.
I’m hoping that an r2r Dac offers a rich alternative to chip based dacs. From what I’ve heard, this may be the case -more involving sound is what I expect. I’ll report back after (OMG!) 500 hours of burn in.
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I wouldn’t say I personally perceive an increase in brightness or edginess, but after listening to a wider variety of music, I noticed more of my attention was being focused on the high frequencies, probably do to less distortion and a cleaner presentation. My ears and brain were awoken to a plethora of new information, not bad, just slightly distracting. I decided to decrease the toe in of the speakers, and voila, the overall presentation sounds more balanced and natural, and as a bonus the soundstage width increased tremendously!
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It’s counterintuitive that a software change that doesn’t change the frequency response may sound better after resetting up a system. But we do that all of the time when we get new components. It’s all too easy to be working around a shortcoming of a device, cable, speaker without knowing it. The only way to get back to neutral (or whatever the goal is) is to periodically revisit old decisions. At times people were working around a foible of a previous release of the DS software combined with their systems without knowing it. After “rebalancing” some find they are in a better place overall. And some simply enjoy older releases more, which is cool too.
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I wanted to go back to Windom just to do a comparison to Sunshine, but didn’t find it in the firmware archive. Will it be added in at some point?
Request:
Can we have access to the first release? I would love to compare the first to the last.
Peace
Bruce in Philly
3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Loudness Wars
I see that they have a DXD 24-bit version of this album, I don’t recall that being available when I bought the rest. I suppose I need to buy it and listen. Unfortunately, I am slammed with work for the next 3 weeks and probably won’t get to this until the first week of June. We’ve got a major go-live that we’ve been working on for nearly two years. The heat is on!!!
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We all knew. We just didn’t want to hurt your feelings. 
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