The more I listen to Windom, the more I love it. There is just something about it that has my entire system sounding much better. The sound feels a bit more intimate, greater sense of space, and more natural. I really can’t express how happy I am with the upgrade.
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My soundstage grew greatly under WINDOM…but I certainly had trouble installing it. Once in a while just try again, don’t obsess and one install you make get lucky. Its worth 5 minutes of time a week.
T
Why not just post the files on PS Audio’s website in an unzipped format to begin with?
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A nice idea, but downloading a chosen firmware would take five or so separate downloads which the user would have to track and then place on an SD card or USB flash drive. I predict this would lead to even more problems.
Thank you Ted and PS Audio Team, Wisdom is another amazing update. Cheers!
I finally got a chance to try the new Windom firmware this weekend. I have not had my DSD for long so I was not familiar with the issues regarding loading new firmware. I had been listening to Snowmass prior to attempting to load Windom and encountered the usual problem in loading. I then tried loading Redcloud which worked. When I tried again to load Windom, no luck. In fact it "bricked" the DAC — powering on resulted in a single flash of the standby light followed by darkness and no response.
I feared I would have to ship the unit back to PSA, but a quick check of the forum revealed the existence of the "boot rescue disc" — Essentially, a two-step reload that takes the unit back to "Yale". This worked a treat and brought the DAC back to life.
Being a bit gun shy, I restored Redcloud (since I had clobbered the Snowmass SD card with a copy of Windom) and proceeded with my listening session.
I immediately noticed a dramatic improvement in sound compared to Snowmass — Much fuller and a huge increase in imaging and depth. We listened to the new Abbey Road 50th anniversary edition CD and I was literally in tears by the end. I didn't know the system was capable of that kind of imaging. I felt as though I had experienced a private concert with The Beatles from the 2nd row! All this from a Beatles album, and a CD no less!
Now that I understand the quirks involved in updating firmware, I'm anxious to try Windom. From what I've read in this topic, I don't know what to expect. Your mileage will definitely vary.
One thing I can see, it appears the PIC firmware in the DSD is in need of some improvement to make the upgrade process more reliable. I'm not complaining too loudly, though, as no other company has gone to the trouble of making downloadable hardware upgrades available to customers. Good work guys!
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The imaging is indeed extremely precise under Windom. But my sound-stage contracted from going two feet past the edge of each speaker to being contained in-between my speakers with Windom. This is disappointing to me.
I know that I can probably re-arrange my system to get windom tuned-in. And perhaps in time I will do this. But hopefully before I feel the need to re-tune my system for windom, the next OS will be out and hopefully it will sound better than both windom and snowmass, and have a winder soundstage than either of them.
For all the people worried about possible error in unzipping Windom load - please read this post from Ted: Was Upcoming DS release - Now Windom has been released
In other words, if the unzip version were to contain any error, the loaded Windom firmware would fail the CRC check : a CRC check is extremely reliable, which means it is virtually impossible to get a successful CRC check with a corrupted download.
And without a valid CRC check, the DAC will not boot.
So, all that remains to explain the occurrences of bad Windom downloads is this hypothesis from Ted:
“I think it’s a configuration parameter problem, the parameters aren’t handled in any systematic manner and the upgrade process isn’t robust about validating them as it converts them from the old version to the new…”
Update: And I believe there is also a CRC check for the ZIP files.
So, you have to get two consecutive successful CRC checks (1st check upon unzipping the firmware file, 2nd check upon DAC re-boot) with corrupted files - that is pretty much impossible.
If this is the issue I’m done with digital audio forever (it’s not the issue)
I can recommend a few good turntables if you want? 
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I would say you have a bad Windom load or are not running volume at 100. My first load i liked richness and fullness but killed soundstage. Second load earsplitting. Then did power cycle after a load ejecting the SD Card first. Pretty great. Volume to 100 OMG.
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FWIW, I’m one of the fortunate ones that so far have enjoyed seamless upgrades. I use a fresh, unused SD card for every upgrade and do a full format on it before loading the new firmware files.
I download the firmware from the PSA website, create a folder for it on the desktop of my Windows 10 machine and unzip the files to that folder. Only then do I drag the unzipped files to the freshly formatted SD card.
Next, I always use the “eject” function to sever the connection with the SD card before removing it.
Then, place your mojo hand on the DSD, burn a candle, and proceed with the upgrade.
Remove the SD card and do a cold start to re-initialize (just because).
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There is “an” issue, that’s for certain. We can say that people have issues varying from being unable to perform an update entirely, to perceiving having a bad load and having to do potentially multiple reloads and that there’s no definitive way to insure that one actually has a proper update. We can say that PSA believes the zip files may be unzipped in odd, unintended ways and that, to them, unzipped files are more reliable. Those are all facts, and certainly an issue(s).
The zip issue may not explain the bad load issue, I really can’t say, that’s beyond my technical understanding. But given the preponderance of evidence, its at least a worthy question to ask.
And certainly, computers and any process related to them has, as proven across history, the potential to behave in unintended ways. Its perplexing that some hold computers as being beacons of certainty.
In my case the volume does not go higher than 93 after three attempts of downloading Windom. Problem?
There’s an option to set a limit for the volume, yours probably got stomped by the update process. Press the little “gear” icon and you can change it.
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Would you have posted this response if I had started my comment with something like "that is a reasonable question, but…:
There is clearly an issue. It’s an issue that Ted is aware of. It’s an issue that I am aware of(read farther up, I experienced the issue first hand). Please take this as a tonally neutral question, but what do you mean by a preponderance of evidence? Do you mean that most people who are having or not having issues are running zipped or not zipped files? There is a preponderance of correlation between zipped vs non zipped files? Or do you mean people who get an SD card from PS audio have less issues?
EDIT: I’m multiple glasses of wine deep right now, and I’m not trying to sound as confrontational as I fear this post sounds.
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I tried loading it several different ways. I tried redcloud, then Windom, then reboot. I tried Huron, then windom, then reboot. I tried Snowmass, then windom, then reboot. Try all three of those, again, letting the system burn-in for several hours each time after the reboot with windom at full volume. Burning-in did seem to help a bit the first time, but it wasn’t enough to restore the magic for me.
Windom simply lacks synergy with my system at present. It’s as simple as that. I may sound totally amazing in other systems (as so many are reporting here), just not in mine as it is presently configured.
My position is to ask questions, I truly have no answers 
Questions and no answers sounds like a great lyric…
Thank you. At set up I was able to increase to 100 but on the main panel it is still at 93 and does not go up.