This is how I ended up buying the DS years ago. I owned a $25K MBS, and lined it up for a “perfect” A/B/C real time switching comparison with the DS. For good measure, I added a $2K NAD51 into the mix.
The DS with 1.0 FW was within striking distance of the MBS. In fairness, the NAD held its own at the pricepoint. I decided the DS was in the price/performance sweetspot and I bought it and never looked back. With the FW upgrades its a no brainer.
Looks perfect, great job!
I’m still listening before making any final judgements, but sadly I don’t seem to be in the “immediately noticeable improvement” camp… That’s not too say anything negative just yet.
Although, my remote control has stopped responding multiple times now requiring reset. Anybody?
Go back to Redcloud or something and then back to Windom. Sometimes it needs a kick in the head (and yes I know how crazy that sounds.)
Sheer Audio voodooism 
Installed Windom flawlessly and I am now listening for over an hour. Mindblowing !
"Blue Bay Moon " by Colin Hay - sublime !
Hahahaha. Ok ok, I’ll try that.
Senior with Windom vs Junior …
FYI… I owned the Junior, upgraded to the Senior last year… In all honesty, I found the Junior to be more “comfortable” to listen to… I loved the Senior… it had more detail but I also missed the Junior’s more comfortable sound.
Now my Senior with Windom… the Senior has the more comfortable sound of the Junior as I remember it. I like this. Thank you so much. I would be happy without another update (but of course I always want more!)
For those with a Junior and who have Senior envy… don’t… they both are really good DACs. I only upgraded to the Senior because my Junior was a bit buggy.
Peace
Bruce in Philly
Found a minor bug:
When playing SACDs natively over I2S it displays: “Input DSD Rate DSD64 24 bits”
and When playing SACDs natively over Coax it displays: “Input DoP Rate DSD64 24 bits”
Note: This is a new bug, which was not present in snowmass. Snowmass correctly displayed the bit depth for DSD signals.
I haven’t tried to create any consistent repro steps yet, since I figure that this isn’t going to be fixed in windom.
I just installed Snowmass 3.06 again. I only lasted one minute, maybe two. We get used to good quickly and sometimes we can’t appreciate it properly, but losing this good is painful. At Windom, every sound is surprisingly precise, I wasn’t even prepared for it, I started to switch the phase because I thought that the singer’s voice should be located more widely. For me, great progress. Once again, thank you to Ted, Paul and all colleagues at PS Audio. How many more opportunities will I have for such thanks?
Do MBS (isn’t it MSB?) dacs have a FPGA with firmware upgrades similar to how PS Audio does it or is it a chip (made by MSB?)? Just curious. I heard one of their DACS once at someones house once and it didn’t sound all that different from what my system could do which includes a DMP and DSD. I think the DAC was 19 grand.
Aural memory is toast now. I listened to a couple songs with redcloud before loading Windom back up. There’s a big drop-off there. If Redcloud is a 14er…Windom is a 20er. Holy $#&@ worthy difference. Problem is now I can’t accurately compare vs Snowmass.
In my DS DAC when playing SACD via I2S the information on the display is correct.
MY EQUIPMENT
DSJ, Amp: Benchmark AHB2, Headphone amp: Benchmark HPA4, Speakers: Audio Project Trio15 (modified).
IMPRESSIONS
I choose to not read any other reviews before I had listened myself since I wanted to be neutral and not decide mentally beforehand. I will put it plainly and not overdo the words.
My immediate impression was Whole, Full and Real. Not just little but much. With previous upgrades I whent through a set of music pieces by listening to parts of them, to get a quick feel. This time I instead ended up listening to the whole pieces. I was simply touched by hearing the whole instruments, notes, voices etc. Gone was eventual slight sibilance coldness etc that could make me a bit tired before. Old recordings that was good before, was now more involving, fuller and richer. And all this because of more Whole notes and decay as I believe.
I bought DSJ when Yale was installed, because it emphasized tone and warmth, compared to the other DAC´s I was interested in. Now it feels like I get the same Aha-experience again, but a lot lot more of course, since the other upgrades has added their improvements.
Thanks Ted for your work and interest to improve over and over again.
/Herjolf Wettlestam, Gothenburg, Sweden
This update seems to fix a problem that I’ve been having while playing thru Audirvana. There was a very slight delay at the beginning the songs where the volume would only gradually increase to the set volume. Now this problem was gone with Windom.
Mind-boggling, jaw-dropping, gob-smacking. Incredible presence, incredible transparency, incredibly wide but specific sound stage. I listened to the Mozart E flat wind serenade, some Mark Knopfler, the Abbey Road re-mix, a Diana Krall cut. All were revelatory. Details I’d never heard before were audible. This is the most dramatic improvement any of these firmware releases has achieved.
If you switch back and forth between DSD sources from different inputs it starts mis-reporting the bitdepth for DSD as 24 bits.
It’s a trivial, yet annoying bug which wasn’t there in Snowmass. This is the sort of bug which probably would have been caught in a beta release.
DSJ MENU ISSUE after the upgrade.
The sound is clearly improved but I just came upon a menu problem.
When I hold the menu button pressed in and continue to step forward in the menu tree it stops when I get to the max volume option and locks there. No chance to move forward, quit the menu, change the volume or turn it off on the remote or DSJ´s own power button. I need to turn it off via the rear power button.
What to do? (well no crisis since I just need to do a full restart, but still…)
I’m curious Ted what % of the current FPGA processing power is being used with the new Windom firmware? I recall you saying you were snatching resources from other systems to use the new firmware. Have we arrived at the point where the FPGA is the limiting factor in future updates?
Great job on the new Windom!
As I said in my previous post… I’m not sure how much my current interpretation is influenced by listening to Redcloud for a few songs (a jolting drop off), but I’m now feeling the love big time. I don’t know if I really had a bad install, but first attempt at Windom had better base with a loss in high end clarity that had me feeling it’s absence. Lost that sense of being immersed in the music. I’m not feeling that at all right now. There might really be something to this multiple install attempts needed thing for some.