Ted - Glad to hear that the worst is behind you, and that you’ve found the likely cause so you can avoid going through it again. Mine were primarily uric acid (gout related) which I’m now able to control with Allopurinol. When I brought in my captured stone to the urologist for analysis they said that it was the largest they’d ever seen anyone pass… and I said that I didn’t really need to know that! 
This puts a new spin on Direct Stream ; )
EDIT: In honor of your sacrifice, Ted, my naming suggestion for the first TSS firmware would be “The Rockies”.
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please, I’m bent over in sympathetic pain…
Holy smokes… Ok, let’s move along folks-nothing to see here. And I like(ed) tea!
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Mentioning Apple in the same sentence as PS audio is complete nonsense. My mac “Pro” was released late in 2013 (and many had heat problems). What self respecting “computer” company would fail to update their flagship computer for close to 5 years?
So many in my field (film and video) have left the Apple camp, and Apple left half the editors in world in a quandary when they abandoned their pro editing suite platform.
PS audio always does the right thing in my book. I’ll patiently wait for whatever advancements for the DS are possible, though it has far exceeded my expectations.
Bottom line, Apple only does what’s good for Apple. Companies like PS audio (and Black Magic design on the video front) have a mission statement that seeks to enhance their lives of their customers, and make a living doing it. That is not Apple’s credo, no matter what self delusion they believe.
Ted, keep climbing that mountain, and, if possible, keep us abreast of the character of the FPGA improvements you are making toward improved SQ. I am likely not the only poster here who is fascinated by the technical details and I am hungry for any tidbits you can offer.
Thanks again,
Dan
Right now I’m trying another rework of the upsampling filters. The Xilinx tools have an excellent FIR filter generator and I’ve used it up to now. But there are some things I’d like to try that a general filter generator doesn’t handle well. Of course doing better than a mature filter generator that’s been continually updated may take some work - on the other hand I’m only interested in one filter architecture and only one filter instance as opposed to a general framework both of which cut down the work by an order of magnitude. I suspect that there will be direct positive effects on any PCM as well as indirect positive effects on overall noise (which will help everything.) I’ve still got the older ideas in various stages of completion, but I’m trying to work on the things with the mostly likely changes in sound quality first (tho that’s very subjective.)
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In Ted we trust. Amen.
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My 10th grade math teacher was the king of puns, but I think that with this one, you outdid him. Keep it up! I’d better leave that one alone.
My late father-in-law also suffered from kidney stones. One of the worse pains imaginable. Glad to hear that your I’ve the worst part Ted.
……." but I’m trying to work on the things with the mostly likely changes in sound quality first (tho that’s very subjective.)"
You are too modest, Ted. Nothing subjective with what you do - ‘always sounds real to me…then again that’s subjective’ !
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Thanx Ted…
Questions: When you do your “sound analysis”, are you working at home or at PS Audio? What is your reference system, and does the sound of your system differ from PS Audio’s reference system? Any issues reconciling the two?
Peace
Bruce in Philly
I do almost everything at home. My system isn’t bad (and I have a backup headphone system): http://cgi.audioasylum.com/systems/3367.html Also a brief description about my room treatments: https://www.audioasylum.com/messages/hirez/224992/howdy-an-update
My wife and daughter have great ears (and enjoy music) which is nice for making sure I’m not overlooking anything.
Then I send the code off to PS Audio where they listen and give me their impressions. Paul and I listen for different things and that’s a good thing: we cover a broader range of customer preferences. I don’t think we’ve had a case where there was something they heard that I can’t reproduce or that I disagreed with. We don’t fight over things like frequency balance, sound staging (where our two systems differ greatly), or a lot of other things that people might tweak. At times, they do say things like “the bass seems a little sloppy” and I can usually find some technical thing to address address their issues. Paul is always pushing for things like “lower noise floor”, “more bass extension”, and I’m happy to try to find something that I can make objectively better that ameliorates those concerns as well as the concerns expressed here on the boards. Also I like to think that if I didn’t like their choice of which one out of the twenty that we could either get some more versions to choose from or that I could make a change that addresses the perceived weakness of a set of twenty. It hasn’t been a problem so far.
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Am I the only one that mostly reads these threads for those moments when Ted chimes in and brings order to the world?
I’m as obsessed about this weird stuff as anyone, but have observed that my system sounds better when I exercise and eat well. The room isn’t the last variable.
Ted, thanks for being so open about your work and process (and, unfortunately, health issues when they occur).
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You are not the only one. How you feel makes a big difference in how you perceive the world and how the system sounds. We’re not mechanical machines that respond the same way each day.
I too love reading Ted’s words. He’s a brilliant designer and human being. We’re lucky to have him here.
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Amen to that.
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That’s good!
Especially in case one is checking with short snippets of spectacular recordings and test tracks for singular aspects, another one is important who regularly listens to music for longer periods and for musical aspects/prat/tonality.
Equipment which is developed/optimized by only one of the two can fail a lot on the blind spot imo.
But I know you’re convinced that if something’s done the right way technically, it’s good throughout except of final voicing aspects …and probably that’s true.
Great stuff, Ted
The treatment of your ceiling bulkheads is wicked clever. My room looks much like yours in terms of the ceiling bulkheads containing HVAC ducting, beams, etc. I can see a project in my future. Thanks for sharing.
The coving worked much better than I expected. Just walking under the outside edges registers as an acoustically deader space, vaguely like an invisible anechoic chamber wall. We’re used to it but I often see people glance around the first few times they cross it. My ceiling is too low and I sure as heck didn’t want “trapping” of 1kHz (and up) just above the listening position. It was fun doing the ad hoc room treatments, the contractor was doing time and materials and we just brainstormed about how to do random things as we went.
I’m also cursed with low ceilings (7.5’) and the bass trapping to control the big room nodes has the room at a point where too much more absorption would make the room too dead. That said, the room still needs some acoustic work, and this looks like a good solution. I may try burying some Sonotube Helmholtz bass traps in the coving to deal with a broad peak around 23 Hz I still have . . . A good place to hide long resonators.
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