The DMP experience

Someone on the DMP Update Code thread made the suggestion that people who are unhappy with their DMP because the various functional problems this device has had from day one respectively the way PSAudio is dealing with the situation over a period of 18 months or so, start a new thread to keep the negativity out… Here it is now. Welcome everybody :sunglasses:

P.S.: Until I’m allowed to post in the DMP Update thread again, I consider myself BANNED. I did not insult anybody there, I even kept nice to the person who treated me with rudeness right after my first post. I posted 6 replies, after that, when I want to post another one, I keep getting the message that as a new user I have a (temporary) limit of 3 replies per topic, which would be totally absurd as a standard policy… and strange that I made it up to 6 before…

Thanks and I think it’s good to remember that while there’s valid concerns and problems for some, most people are quite happy with the unit’s performance. We have several thousand in the field. Forums are like newspapers. We never read about the good news. The everyday ho hum news that everything’s going just fine - that’s not news. But if something happens in a negative sense then that’s what we read about.

If I didn’t have a handle on that I probably wouldn’t step foot outside my front door so bad the news sounds.

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Paul…Are you saying that the forum members with legitimate functional problems in concern of a $6,000.00 piece of kit are just whining about it? And these so called happy owners are having no functional problems? Sounds like we whining forum members got stuck with all the lemons… :lemon: WOW!!!

Well, I ‘owned’ 2 x P10’s. I own a BHK Preamp. BHK300’s. 2 x BHK 250’s PWT. DMP. 2 x DS. 2 x Dectecs.

I have had problems with all of them, except one DS which hasn’t had any issues, be that electronic or cosmetic appearance issues… My mate has had problems with his BHK 250 and BHK Preamp and he only owns said products !!

I “really” like the musicality of the PSA equipment - but other than that I have had more problems with P S Audio kit than any other top flight audio equipment… I am only telling the truth, I am not exaggerating, or trolling… If it wasn’t that they are such excellent sounding equipment I would have moved on a while ago. But, it seems, my mate Tom and I are in the 1% !!

No. I guess it might have come across like that. It wasn’t my intention to minimize the problems some have. I consider the functional problems of users real and something that should not happen. We’re devoting every resource available to repair that problem.

I was only trying to point out that bad news travels fast as does not necessarily represent the real state of the world. Many, many users of DMP are happy about their products. It can be use case dependent, it can be whatever. That fact does not negate the problems others have.

Think about the two DACs we make. A few people have reported issues with hiss in their systems. For them the problem is real and no one is denying it. But, for the vast majority of DS users they are happy.

I am just trying my best to put things in perspective.

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That’s quite a collection of PS Audio gear, almost as much stuff as me! I’ve got a hunch that most PS owners own more than one piece of PS gear.

I don’t doubt you. I’m just trying to understand. Did you buy all of that stuff at one time, or did you continue buying it despite each component failing to perform? Really, it sounds like the guy who goes to the doctor and says, “doc, it hurts when I do this…”.

That’s just the P S Audio kit. I have 12 pairs of speakers. “Several” other makes of CD players, DACs, AMPLIFIERS… It would take me too long and I am going out now… I am using solid state amplifiers just now because my room gets mightily hot with the valves during this really hot summer… I will connect up the BHK’s for autumn and winter…

Paul…thank-you for your understanding that we… who do have legitimate problems… truly are going through a very frustrating experience with are beloved DMP.

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This will be quick as I am going out… 300’s and one 250 bought together. BHK Preamp and 2nd 250. PWT & DS 2 X DS… Both P10’s together.

You say that but when you buy equipment and when the fault gets sorted out you think that is it: until the next time, etc… It isn’t easy to knock one part of the kit on the head when you have started buying and you are committed. They shouldn’t have had faults to begin with for me to even consider stop buying what is after all top flight equipment. It isn’t my fault. I paid the money.

My last purchase was a BHK 250. It arrived with a faulty ( badly scuffed front panel ) and if that wasn’t bad enough it was a BHK 300 front panel… I paid full whack, so are you saying that I am my own self to blame that I shouldn’t have bought more P S Audio… I am the innocent part in this…

No, I’m not blaming you. Everyone has a different tolerance level. Right now, there are 5 pieces of PSA gear in my rack. If I had trouble with even one, I wouldn’t have continued. There are Pass Labs, (my amps) and Esoteric and Aesthetix and on and on, ya know? But I understand, I guess.

Yes, absolutely. I completely understand and sooooo appreciate your patience and good will. I am certainly not trying to minimize the experience, only point our both sides of the story. It’s never a good idea IMHO to get pointed too far in any one direction either good or bad.

That said I might comment on the “lemon” aspect of the product. There are of course cases where products are lemons. It happens. But this is not one of them (as a category). We see some people having agonizing issues while others it seems to work fine. This is a clear indicator of the bad software it was sent out with and the reason you see such great improvement across the board for the new 3.06 and what is yet to follow.

The original programmer relied upon the poor practice of using time out loops to fix problems. So, for example, the DMP system has to communicate with the Oppo system to work. Our OS says “hey, send me this info or do this thing”. Then we have to wait for a return from Oppo’s OS. The timing of that return data varies and we have no control over it. So, the right way to program this is to build a state machine where the state of our OS depends on the replies from their OS. If we don’t get the right info or in the right amount of time, we can try again etc. That’s not what the original programmer did.

He instead added a separate timer. If he didn’t get a return he added a timer to extend the wait in the hopes of getting his answer. He finged with that stupid loop long enough to where it worked most of the time and called it good. The code is riddled with these sloppy timers, which is why Barry wiped them all out and started over building a proper state machine.

The reason I bring this to your attention is the lemon comment. Think of how this system now works and it’s easy to understand how some machines are worse than others. In some machines the Oppo system works quicker than others and thus, they would be seen to work “flawlessly” like the reviewers. Luck of the draw. Maybe your machines was the opposite and it doesn’t match the timing loop. Dud. Lemon.

When Barry’s code is applied there are no timing loops. Barry’s code patiently waits for Oppo’s reply then executes its commands. Yours will then operate as flawlessly as the next person’s because the minor differences in timing don’t matter (we’re talking milliseconds here).

Make sense?

Had I understood enough of programming when we launched DMP I would never have let it out the door. The unit’s we had to test were all within the parameters that most of the units were. They worked fine. A little quirky, yes, but I had been assured this was an easy fix. Little did I know his “easy fix” was simply extending or reducing his timing loops to get closer. Just bad, bad programming. Something that will NEVER happen at PS Audio again. EVER. We now have instituted code review, systems are in place to ensure this can not happen. Mistakes in coding? Sure. But never again simply bad code.

Shit, I am just an analog engineer but now I’ve had to come up to speed enough to understand what’s going on. Now I do and that’s the reason I agreed to fire the programmer and the reason I hired an expert software programmer to manage our engineering team.

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What type of issues were you having with your BHK 250’s and preamp?

Thanks again for explaining even deeper how the coding of the DMP has evolved. I haven’t done anything with software since college (almost 40 yrs ago!) so your explanations definitely help. The one issue that “seems” to come up, first with DS now with DMP, is variations in operation. All units with the same code should work the same, correct? So if they aren’t operating the same then there is some variation in the code, correct? How this is happening is the question, is anyone looking into how this could happen?

Paul…again thank-you for the detailed explanation of why we have this ongoing dilemma with the DMP…It does make a bit more sense to me now. Hopefully… all will be good to go in the not so distant future for all of us who are now stuck with the “code of lemon” condition.:weary:

What is the warranty on PS Audio equipment, and does it protect me if I’m the unfortunate recipient of a lemon?

Haven’t you previously said you’ve recently bought a stack of PS Audio gear and the DMP and DSJ have been giving you problems? You have the opportunity to return them, or you can wait it out for a fix like some others here. You need to be aware hardware breakdowns happen, and they promptly get fixed under warranty (3 years, and they’ve been known to fix stuff out of warranty as well). The problems you’re finding with DMP and DSJ are likely to be software related, and those things get fixed when they get fixed. And that might take years. Or less. Fortunately for you they are now quite mature products and final fixes are much closer for you than they were for the early adopters.

You are correct and I am of the same standing as you. But it was 3 purchases . First time it’s bad luck. Second time I have been really unlucky. Third time I had a meltdown with my dealer, distributor and Paul. You have to factor in that it is spread over a period of time so the first time has kinda been forgotten about especially as the equipment is working perfectly when I order up the next batch, etc, etc… It won’t happen again – because – I will not accept it at all. The vast majority of my issues were down to poor cosmetic appearance … There were electronic problems too but mainly cosmetic issues with appearance.

The 250 power amplifier front panel was so badly marked I wouldn’t have bought if it was secondhand… All the packing including the plastic bag were intact so it was damaged pre packing… Because I “really rate the musicality” that’s why I tolerated much, much more than I ever would do…

I took a Audio Manufacturer to Court and won. They had to pay my legal costs as well their own costs: over 200K… Thought I couldn’t afford to take them to court but I did… They should have settled up with me… Anyway… got to go out now…

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I thought Paul explained that aspect. Something along the lines of variances in timing from the OPPO side in different OPPO units that the PS side has not been tolerant of. Until the code restructure to remove the open loops that were susceptible to these timing variances. So all DMP units will behave the same even with these OPPO timing things still being existant. The proof of that will be found in the pudding, because that theory collapses if problems remain after the new code has been polished.

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I have only two replies left… So you are basically saying that the Oppo thingy you decided to use in this 6,5k device is CRAP! Now that they don’t produce them anymore, they are obsolete anyway. Anyhow: as a engineer I would have made a thorough preselection to make sure each and every drive is up to optimum specs. Alternatively choose another drive mechanism. The poor programmer seems to have done his very best to work with what was a wrong decision in the hardware department and therefore he got fired later? I believe we have heard from the new programmer that he has problems with the Oppo OS as well and no matter how often you repeat how much better the new code allegedly works, still the same errors are reported by users. Almost two years after release, before that “8 years of research, 2 years of development”? There is simply no excuse for a device at this price point having only the slightest hint of a functional problem right from the start, period! Next question: did the people responsible for Qualty Control did get fired too? As it turns out to me, the DMP is nothing more then a half-finished laboratory experiment, but someone decided to release it nevertheless.