Indeed PSA seems to be going a different way, and I understand some of the reasons for that. Bringing out a couple more rounds of upgrades for existing DS Mk2 owners would, IMO, be a gracious way to retire this product and keep customer goodwill.
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I forgot to mention another contradiction I overlooked in my first post, that being the built in streamer in the new DAC were we not told the streamer brings in and creates noise and adds another load to the power supply?
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Suckered again, just like UEFI/secure boot. Only costlier.
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Yes we were, which is why they came out with a seperate streamer. So I wonder if theyāll be retiring the Airlens since the new DAC now has a built in streamer?
Here is my take on the situation. The DS Mk1 had many miles on it, Ted learned what was needed to improve on what the 1st version lacked and the Mk2 was born. He made additional updates on it and that was itā¦ At some point one needs to realize youāve squeezed what can be squeezed out of a piece of equipment . There may be more to extract from the Mk2, but it would require hardware changesā¦ , like transformers for exampleā¦ There was plenty of praise by Mk2 owners on how great it sounds and that has not changedā¦ At some point, PS Audio needed to move on. Its a business and they only survive by developing new productsā¦
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The updated firmware we did get to lower the noise floor showed that there was certainly more that could be gotten out of the MKII sonically without hardware changes.
The way I look at it, we bought into a platform specifically designed to evolve, with an explicit promise that it would. The videos PS put out with Ted revealed a roadmap of things he planned to try, using the extra FPGA space and chip. Users were relying on PSās continued development of the platform, and thereās plenty of evidence that exists of statements to this effect.
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I wonder if Ted is the only one who can properly do the previously anticipated FPGA upgrades, and is unavailable to do soā¦
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Itās interesting to reflect back on the development of the DSD MK1 and later the DSD MK2. In those days, I remember that Ted would compile the same code multiple times and program each into FPGAs so the resident āgolden earsā (Darren, Paul, Ted et. al.) could weigh in on which sounded best. The winner would be what was made available to the masses. I thought it was a great approach with sound quality as the ultimate criterion. Unfortunately, some reviews of the MK2 included objective measurement data that wasnāt flattering. Regardless of how good it sounded, some saw the measurements as a āproblemā. Iām wondering if the latest PMG DAC design was, at least in part, influenced by a desire to appease the measurement crowd? There seems to be more discussion of numbers this time around. I hope the focus on sound quality is never compromised in the interest of better numbers. Based on the early impressions of the AXPONA attendees, that doesnāt appear to be the caseš.
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One aspect of the DS Mk II that Iām sure Paul will not miss is the auditioning of new firmware and picking the āwinnerā. Originally, Paul, Darren and sometimes others (but not Ted) would be doing the auditioning, but the last two Mk II firmware updates (Massive and Mt. Blue Sky) were done by Paul alone. Here is what he said after auditioning Massive in January 2024:
He did it again for Mt Blue Sky, but there were only 20 versions to audition ā¦
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Sounds like the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie - "Set it and forget it!ā
I donāt see the airlens going away as it can be used with other DACS.
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Anyone else notice the similarity in appearance of the new chassis to those of DCS products?
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I assume everyone has. 
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Weāve always loved designer Alex Rasmussenās work. He did the dCs look as well as all of PS Audioās for many years. The original P300 Power Plant to ll of our G Series, and before that all of Genesis electronic looks.
The PMG line is, of course, the PS swoosh machined into the front panel., Iconic.
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The AirLens is not going away. Correct.
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Very nice
Thanks for the reminder. 
The funny thing was that many of the versions sounded much worse than what we were replacing. That process of choosing the best sounding compile was always a crap shoot. Drove Ted and me crazy because the code itself was always identical, just the way it compiled was the difference. Very crazy process.
The new PMG Signature also uses FPGAs but not for the actual DSD engine. Thatās been perfected and fixed with dedicated chips. The new device uses the FPGAs in the follow on SpectraWave sequencer, a 64 tap 22mHz precision ladder DAC used to push out the unwanted noise and produce a pure DSD signal ready for low pass filtering and output to the world.
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Alex himself is also iconic in the industrial design world (he also did the Constellation Audio look) and heās well known in his home town of Santa Barbara as the Surfer Dude.
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Ted is the only one that can write the code. It is, and was, his code. PS Audio was always in charge of the hardware for making the DSMKII into a product, but Ted designed the internal circuit boards as well as the source code for the FPGAs.
Last I heard he was working on a new DAC, based on his original concept, but maybe going to shop it around with a new partner. We wish him the best of luck as he is a brilliant engineer and coder.
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Correct and for the ten years or so we built that platform that was the case and produced a world class beautiful sounding DAC. But, as you know, progress moves on. Always will.
After more than a decade of supporting that platform we felt it had reached its maximum potential. Indeed, there was more room on the FPGA to have offered some additional sonic magic, but the FPGA wasnāt what was limiting the technologyās potential. It was the follow on hardware configuration.
In this design chain, the output lvds of the FPGA went through a series of high speed video op-amps to increase its signal level, through a low pass filter, and then out through an audio transformer.
The signals themselves, based on lvds technology, were very low in level and once amplified had inherent noise which resulted in relatively poor measurement results in the -80dB range.
Thatās when we reached a crossroads and chose to investigate an entirely new path, one still based on the core technology of a DSD stream converted directly into audio. The divergence is in what happens after the DSD signal is generated. As mentioned, in the DS MKII chain, the lvds output was further amplified and then LP filtered through an output transformer. In the new PMG Series, we take a very different path, one that not only sounds better but measured 20dB better as well.
The new path was quite a science project but worth the improvement.
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