I like your words, “romantic” and “analytical” but I would reverse their attachments. In my system/world, Windom is the “romantic”.
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Wow, the first track Bubbles on Wandering is wild! I can literally feel the balls bouncing around!
Yeah…that one marble is like 110 degrees to the right…glad you liked it
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Interesting 
Two very different takes. But I guess our setup and rooms are going to be very different.
Or we could assume you are totally wrong and I’m right 
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Since install Windom sounds f*ckin’ freakin’ awesome in my system. Only just once rolled back to Snowmass 3.00, just for fun. Didn’t last long, Windom does miracles! And no bad load experiences over here 
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Thanks again for this wonderful gift @tedsmith & PS Audio !!!
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Couldn’t resist to post some first impressions found on the www…
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It is remarkable what Windom is doing to my digital system. If I was to walk into my listening room and didn’t know what is playing, I would say my turntable. It sounds so much like analog it’s uncanny. It has the fullness and density that digital has always been lacking in the past. It has more detail and a bit clearer than my turntable. The turntable still a bit more organic but duller around the edges. The most important thing is it is so much more musical than before. Now I can listen for long periods without having to turn the system down which is quite an accomplishment for digital. My turntable is a Well Tempered Reference with a Benz LPS MR and Esoteric E-02 Phono stage so the DS with Windom is punching above it’s class.
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That’s funny. I was also thinking my DS with Windom was starting to sound surprisingly like my LP-S on my Avenger. 
Funnier yet that you say that, Tony! Last Saturday night, I was positive that Windom was sounding exactly like vinyl. In fact my Roy Eldrich in Paris cd was even skipping. A couple quarters on top of my DMP fixed that, though. Ok, there were oysters and bourbon being consumed, but really.
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But that’s not possible…digital was better than vinyl since the last 3 decades already for the experts 
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As part of reloading Windom, I passed through the land of Red Cloud and stopped for a listen. And did the same for Snowmass. I found Red Cloud to have a more pleasing and musical tone than either Snowmass or Windom. Snowmass moved in the direction of more bass, detail and correctness, which went even further with Windom. For me, I agree, there must be something pleasing about the extra noise. I wonder what beneficial part noise plays as Windom drifts into the arena of starkness, even clinical. I like Windom, it’s different, I enjoy the detail for periods of time.
I’m not a sound engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do wonder if when crafting music reproduction if the mantra of less and less noise is always best? I wonder if when creating that art, if well crafted noise has a place? Is part of the sweetness of tubes or vinyl noise related vs digital? Or is noise always bad?
If digital is completely purged of all noise, does it then become like analog? What is at the core of the 1’s and 0’s in terms of music, is beneath it all a state of musical purity? Or does digital need some sort of noise to sound, well, less digital? Does noise free digital no longer sound digital? Is it noise that creates the digital sound, or is it the core of digital itself?
To me in my system RedCloud was amazing and I would have been okay stopping there. Snowmass was excellent but I think RedCloud was a tad more “musical”, whatever that really means. Windom is also excellent and I am okay if no further updates ever come out. I have noticed that Windom is slightly more detailed and has better bass response than Snowmass but its horizontal dispersion is not as wide. I’m quite happy with Windom and will stick with it until Ted rubs his magic crystal ball again. BTW, I had no problem updating to it.
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There have been some research papers that have been trying to identify just why people find listening to vinyl so enjoyable - here’s one - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steffen_Lepa/publication/311101365_Not_every_vinyl_retromaniac_is_a_nostalgic_-_a_social_experiment_on_the_pleasures_of_record_listening_in_the_digital_age/links/589a0419a6fdcc32dbdeecaa/Not-every-vinyl-retromaniac-is-a-nostalgic-a-social-experiment-on-the-pleasures-of-record-listening-in-the-digital-age.pdf
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Interesting study, thanks. From I gather that vinyl is quite a bit more noisy than the CD. I wonder how is removing more and more noise from the DS/J releases is bringing the digital sound closer to vinyl? A number have posted in this thread that Windom sounds more like vinyl than ever. But isn’t hi-res (not counting MP3 etc) and low noise the antithesis of vinyl?
A deep mystery…
The digital crap like jitter, sampling nonlineararities, at times digital clipping, etc. are the antithesis of vinyl.
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Where does noise fit into that equation? Or are the ones you listed noise?
I don’t think noise is the issue here. My analog is super quiet. When I play my records, I don’t hear the noise, only the music. It depends how good your analog system is. I think the important thing is how accurate each system can reproduce the original signal. That’s how the different system can merge in sound quality. They should sound the same if each is reproducing the signal perfectly.
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The study mentioned that noise is higher with vinyl, it was part of wondering why people like a technically inferior medium.
Part of the measurements versus subjective enjoyment debate (again)!