@fdreed comment went completely over my head. Thanks to @badbeef now I get it. Yeah, I agree. Funny.
About the Stellar pre, put me in the camp advocating the non see through box. About the D’Agostino, put me in the camp advocating the clear acrylic box.
Since when did a reviewer notice anything about a product they reviewed? Sorry, a bit harsh with that, but seriously, some of the reviews out there on some products make me wonder if the reviewer ever touched a review sample.
You can flip it top down so it shines on the shelf it’s on, and looks like a partner of the Halcros. It would be bitchin’ in your rig.
However much some of us might want it, it ain’t gonna happen - it’ll be a dull-assed box like all of our gear. : )
“(10) 9, 8, 7, 6, 5…”. Fave Midnight Oil disc… : )
There isn’t a (10) on the UK - TSS. The display switch on is (10)… I just assumed Brodric and yourself knew that … It’s to do with Brexit…
So your belief if they didn’t spend money on the parts/inside of the unit? I guess they can’t put money on the inside and outside. 
For a unit that cost as much as it does I’m sure money was spent in both places.
So, the meters show the pressure of the steam on which it operates? How big a boiler does it need?
Ummmmm, but my Halcros are very finely balanced in elevation by a highly complex propriety anti-gravity blue laser, which if implemented in one of your Stellar chassis would necessarily up the price by an order of magnitude, or more 
There’s a new chassis look for TSS along with a taller structure. It is very reminiscent of the current DS but more elegant and cooler looking.
This sounds perfect; a family resemblance but more refined.
Chassis design must be a significant challenge. As buyers of high end equipment we want our components to be pretty, but do not like the idea of real money going into the chassis. Yet a nice chassis is ridiculously expensive.
It seems @tedsmith is doing much of the software and hardware design for the TSS. For people who are principally software engineers, do they need a solid understanding of the hardware to optimize their programming, or is hardware just black box stuff that they don’t need to know anything about?
When I was in school it seemed like a good idea that they only had an EE/CS degree. If you built hardware, you’d at least have to be able to program competently. Similarly if you were a software weenie you’d need to understand the basics of hardware: I had to design and build a transistor (choosing the right dopants), design a microprocessor style sequencer (and bread board it), use a scope, do state minimization, Karnaugh maps, logic minimization, solve nets of resistors, coils and caps, etc., and a bunch of other stuff on the hardware side…
I’ve worked for companies where hardware was king and the software, in general, sucked. Conversely I’ve been in companies where software was king and the hardware teams were basically servants. It was an eye opening experience to work at a company where the hardware folk and software folk worked together to design the most cost effective or the most advanced system possible.
On the other hand, these days software people can’t really understand what’s going on in the low level hardware, things are just too complicated: there are whole teams designing good software tools that understand the hardware, etc. Still a person that deeply understands caching hierarchies, cache line misses, hardware synchronization primitives (e.g. atomic instructions), instruction scheduling, … can write optimized code much better than someone who is a “mere expert” in some set of higher level languages (noting, of course, that picking good high level algo’s completely swamps these issues most of the time.)
I’m pretty sure that someone that treated the DS hardware as a black box wouldn’t get near the sound quality out of it and conversely some one that didn’t understand the possibilities of the software couldn’t build hardware that wasn’t obsolete in a few years.
The TSS is more of a hardware extension of the DS than software, but a lot of hardware designers might not design hardware that assumes that software can control PLL’s, clock distribution, communication synchronization, etc.
@tedsmith When I was in my first year at military college (1983) I had to do a computer science course as part of a bachelors science degree. I’d never seen a computer before, and I don’t think I ever saw a computer mouse until 1986. Anyway, we had to learn pascal. I remember being given an assignment to write a program that would generate a calendar on a dot matrix printer for any year past or present. I had no idea how to go about it. The lecturers provided no assistance at all. I think all but 2 on the course failed it, including me, which really ramped up the pressure on my maths, physics and chemistry for the next 3 years to make up for the failed subject. I’ve been computer software phobic ever since.
We, as a company and as a community, are incredibly fortunate to have someone like Ted on the team building products that come from his deep understanding of both disciplines. How work is nothing short of amazing.
Estimated release date on this yet?
This year, definitely but as always there’s the inevitable setbacks. Ted’s redesigning parts of the circuit board and we will then have to order up a new pair to test. Work on the new chassis and display continue to snail forward (the opposite of sail) but
hopefully by spring we’ll be enjoying TSS.
So, I have read through this topic, and it seems as though this is a cost-no-object product. While that likely puts it out of my reach, I remain curious… any further ballpark estimates on what the purchase price on this beast will be?
I believe Paul mentioned 20 to 25 K…US
Roger that - I must have missed such a post from the man. I wish Ted the best - interested to know what his efforts can accomplish!
Holy smokes. I already perceive the value of the DS Senior to be about $30,000. I know he would not build this if it were not better. You are already approaching my $126,000 MSB DAC and have surpassed my DAVE IMO. If this is better than MSB for under 50 Grand I will buy it but also have to kick myself in the head. PSA is known to bring the value so I do not doubt he makes the world Heavyweight fighter here. Simply amazing. Thank both of you for so much hard work!
