We need a Ted Smith phone app in which we play music and if it’s a good load, a photo of you smiling appears, if it’s a bad load, a photo of your dressed up in an abominable snowman suit pops up 
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I’ve got the abdominal part down 
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don’t let a bad load bring that part up Ted
Does this present the potential of bricking your DS should it happen to become rapidly power cycled during a storm and you have foolishly left your upgrade card inside of your DS?
I’ve aborted loads many times with the power switch. Only the boot loader needs to be alive for an upgrade and an upgrade doesn’t mess with the boot loader. I’d guess the odds are really low that leaving the card in with update software will result in a big inconvenience. I sure don’t want to wait for an update on each power up.
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Glad to hear that this is a not an issue for the DS! 
Hello,
Thanks Paul and Ted for the new great firmware for my Dac, Windom.
But I have a few questions, for which I cannot find the answers in the forum.
When touching the screen on the item in the left upper corner, there comes a new window. Touching then on the right upper corner brings again a new window, with 2 tests and a button for debugging.
Touching in that window the test-button runs the tests and after running the tests, the result is displayed for test1 but not for test 2.
What is tested when running the tests and what does the displayed results mean.
And also what is debugging and should we enable it for listening?
Thanks
Initially I felt the same, but it’s just better dynamics overall, and on lower volumes you might not “feel” the lows so much as before. You must adjust the output level (80 for me is spot on).
Gotta admit, I’m a ‘set at 100 level’ guy. I will concede though that your preamp may not like such a high-level input. Fortunately my preamp loves it 
Tried going directly from DAC to main but it didn’t sound as good.
After your comment I re-listened to ‘Private Investigations’ and the title track and all I can say is WOW what an improvement! Damn! So little time, so many tracks to revisit. 
@tedsmith, I have the Sonore Ultradigital between my Sonore Ultrarendu streamer and the DS. Its website says it supports DSD256.
I wonder, how different is it from your Matrix X S/PDIF 2 and will it send DSD256 to the DS once your next mountaintop is done?
It is usually the case that it is better to set the maximum signal level if it does not lead to overloading of the receiver. But the DS output has a transformer and if the signal is too high, saturation of the core may occur, which will cause distortion. On Ted’s advice, I have recently been listening with the attenuator on (20 dB). In my system it gives better sound.
Great News, Ted!
When I tried the attenuator, all it did was flatten the soundstage and kill some dynamics…I couldn’t turn the attenuator off fast enough. I also tried different DAC volume levels and always came back to the 100 setting as it sounded the best in my setup.
Re debug screens: one of the screen’s shows the raw communication registers from the FPGA to the control/display processor - things like which inputs are active, the current sample rate, bit width, format, etc. Leaving that one up will interfere a little with the sound.
The other debug screen test measures the limits of the VCXO: is it working and does it reach the desired frequencies. This test will hardly ever change much and is run at PS Audio (or where the boards are built), decoding the test results is a pain to describe and will only cause more needless concern amongst the more “OCD” of us.
These tests can change drastically from release to release and don’t show any useful info except in certain circumstances.
The current tests are safe but that may not always be true (they won’t break hardware, but they may try to recalibrate something that can’t be fixed outside of Boulder.)
[Edit: mute your system before doing undocumented things, I think the current tests are safe, but you never know…]
If a device that works over I2S with DSD64 and DSD128 claims to support DSD256 it probably does and it will very probably work with DS software that supports DSD256.
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I reported earlier in this thread volume reduced to 50 seemingly randomly.
Reloaded Windom from SD card again and no recurrence since…
I feel like Paul misled us with his hype about Windom. He said it’s not as big of an improvement as Snowmass, but brings a smoothness and richness to the sound. Smoothness and richness doesn’t begin to describe Windom. Windom may be the single biggest and most important improvement to come along in my 40 plus years as an audiophile.
Before Windom I was entertaining the thought of upgrading my speakers, that thought has gone out the window. Listening to my system with Windom had become highly addictive, and a major distraction in my life. Windom lays bare the essence of the music. I’m hooked and drawn in by every disc I plop into the tray of my DMP.
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High praise, indeed.
[Paul is always underselling. I just take his muted marketing style with a grain of salt. 
]
11 posts were split to a new topic: DS: Problems with pops and stacic