But, Ted…He’s not wrong about this. At all. In any form.
Whatsoever.
- Clique-ster-'n-Chief
The hints are safe.
Grassy knoll. Lindbergh baby. DS PIC code.
You forgot the Babushka Lady.
She’s from Berwyn, Illinois.
That’s what they want you to believe…
We have 2 discussions going on here. There is the technical issue of failed firmware upgrade, which PS Audio has obviously been taking steps to mitigate - using Etcher etc to burn and verify an image versus unzipping a file. But then there is the other more nebulous issue is that of a load being technically successful but the owner perceiving that the load doesn’t sound right. Assuming I am reading your comments correctly, PS Audio is making efforts to address the 2nd issue too. I should say though, it’s going to be hard to satisfy people who feel that there is something “not right” in their load. Especially given that Windom and presumably future firmwares will be seeking to further reduce noise which is obviously having positive and negative subjective responses from users. One persons “not right” might be another persons “perfect”. I did struggle with the changes that Windom made and I was going to write it off but I tried it one more time and finally came to appreciate its charms.
PS Audio engineering (of course) wants the new procedures to be bullet proof. And I think it should be clear that they aren’t going to be ready soon. But every release has had some that stayed with an older release, that’s nothing new. And the rest of the sound quality concerns have been here since the beginning: people have always “argued” about how anyone else could tell if something is really better, if I and/or PS Audio are really listening to the right music, or on the right system(s), some even gave me grief because I didn’t tweak my system the way they thought I should. I keep lowering noise where I can find it and finding things to make better technically. Most people with each release move forward, and there will always be some that don’t (at least at first.)
Totally agree. I was just pointing out, as a general point aimed at no one in particular, that no matter how bullet proof any measures are to ensure a good load, there may always be those who don’t think it’s good. 
Ah… thanks.
I was in my bed when your post arrived at this side of the pond…
She was killed by Badge Man then carried away by the Three Tramps!
Ain’t it the truth. For those of us who’ve been around long enough, this goes all the way back to the FW releases for the PWD. 
I’ve been curious about this, Ted. Do you think it’s possible that your continued FW improvements could reach the limit of exposing what would have been an otherwise unknown limitation of the equipment design?
It has to at some point - but so far the known hardware bugs, tho at times inconvenient, can be worked around. The most obvious example is the need to build 20 copies of the same source and listen to them to find the one(s) that damage the input the least. There are a few things I messed up on and a choice to use only one of the most expensive parts (the reclocker) instead of two. Another obvious limit is the analog noise floor: for the most part the software can’t lower the analog noise floor. Once again, more parts could have lowered that a little more, but that gets expensive fast.
The design of the analog part of the DS is purposefully simple and a benefit of that is that there are probably fewer got-cha’s than a more complicated implementation.
I didn’t expect Snowmass to be as big of a change for most customers as it was, but I knew that the changes were good changes. The same is true of Windom, it was the smallest change in the code of any release, but they were carefully considered changes. Still I have places to make more improvements and I’m sure I’ll also learn more doing the TSS software.
Thanks Ted! 
After burning in my new DSDsr on Snowmass 3.06 and becoming familiar with the DSD sound I decided to load Windom per the MAC installation instructions. I followed the MAC Etcher instructions provided by PSA using a new 2 MB SD card. I removed the SD card once the firmware was downloaded. Immediately following the download my system sounded more open with greater insight into the musical detail. I played some audiophile warhorses to test the load, and all sounded good. This was Saturday evening.
I shut down the DAC and Innuos Zenith MkIII server. This morning I started up both the server and the DSDsr. My initial impression was where did the sound go? I had to turn up the volume from the 9 O’clock position to the 11:30 position. Also, it sounded flat and compressed with little to no detail, no sound stage. My Sangean clock radio sounded better. No joke. Seriously something is wrong. Other than powering down both the Innuos and the PSA DSD and then starting them up nothing has changed. I wonder if it is a bad firmware load, but why would Windom sound good upon initial load, and then sound atrocious when re-powering my DSD? At this point I have not attempted any further firmware downloads and will be contacting PSA Customer Service before making any changes.
I am now listening to my Metrum Onyx DAC, and it sounds glorious.
Have you remembered to turn the dac volume back up to 100 after shutting it down. It resets to 25 on power up
Thanks for the reminder as I appreciate your interest. After powering the DSD up and verifying a complete initialization I set the DSD volume to 100%. Also, confirmed Windom on the DSD status display.
What you are experiencing is the same as I went through with my second DS/DAC… DS1 was plain sailing. DS2 was a sh!t to install and keep it on track. You will have to load Yale and a reboot then load Windom and a reboot and play it by ear from there. Nightmare at times loading new code.
Here’s where I am at the moment. No need to pursue additional attempts to update the firmware as for some reason the unit won’t accept them. Rather odd IME.
Issues with Windom 4.01 FW Load and Innuos Zenith Mk III DAC
Apologies if this has already been covered but I couldn’t find anything.
I installed Windom with no issues. Sound quality is a solid improvement. However I have lost the ability to control the DS built-in volume control via the Roon control (I run Roon into the Bridge II). Roon shows the DS volume I’ve set using the remote control, but any change to the volume slider in Roon has no impact on the DS volume control.
When I updated I didn’t change any Roon settings, of course, and I’ve gone back to Roon > Settings > Audio > DS Device Setup > and confirmed that Volume Control = Device Volume.
Has anyone else had this issue? Any fixes proposed?