A oft commented upon observation. Audiophiles typically greatly magnify the y-axis to emphasize the magnitude of any change.
Audiophile hyperbole is at least as real as any placebo.
I am first and foremost all about the MUSIC. Just a quick look at spinning thread to see that. Music has to move me. There is NO-WAY I would heap praise on Windom if it didnāt have ā āfeelingā, was just a hi-fi pastiche . Your new DS is 5 years away from being fully burned-in so that is a massive factor in your dissatisfaction with Windom 
I really liked Snowmass and I wasnāt in any desperate hurry to change anything and, āFOR MEā, Windom wasnāt what I expected. Ted played it down, as he always does, Paul wasnāt his usual OTT hyperbolic-self. What I experienced really had me surprised and delighted too. My system is big, very powerful and extremely revealing of the source good and bad. I think Windom is the dogs doodahs, but others may well disagree and prefer Snowmass, that is great too! I only report what I hear and feel and no-way claim that I am rightā¦.Just my take on it! Obviously - I was exaggerating when I said there was a massive gulf, etcā¦
I am currently playing Takinā Off ( Herbie Hancock ) and it sounds the best āIāve heardā this Redbook CD sound but, when I play the vinyl, it has a greater sense of palpability, being there, tonal colours, scale, Dexter Gordon spitting through his saxā¦! But I still appreciate what the CD / Windom doesā¦ If I thought the DS was an average dac I wouldnāt have bought two of them. And, I will be standing in-line for the TSS. I have SACDs and standard CDs that sound incredible through the DS that, by comparison were at best, average through other supposedly top flight dacs! Anyway, I only care about what I like because, itās what I listen too that countsā¦
Thatās perfectly normal. Different tastes, different expectations. I used my Rossini + Clock for a year and a half. When I compared the DS DAC with my Rossini there was no question for me. DS just pressed more buttons in me. dSC was too clean, too airy, too sterile up to a point I was getting distracted. I have a horn +open baffle speaker so that may be the reason. I love the more fluid sound of DACs like MSB (new gen), Emm, Aqua Formula, PS Audio etc. If I had the money I would by the MSB Reference DAC or the Emm DV2. DS Dac was an upgrade from Rossini for me. It all comes to system synergy, tastes and expectations so there is no hard truth in highend audio. I already sold my Rossini through Audiogon a few months ago. But one of my friends is selling his Vivaldi One for the same reason as mine. He is also bored of itās perfect ādistractingā sound. I can make contact if anyoneās interested.
OKā¦ I went ahead and re-downloaded Windom onto a clean sd card from the download section on site (my first download attempt was from the Paul/Ted Yeti video link).If that made a differenceā¦I can not say.
On a previous post,I mentioned I could not shake off a upper mid/lower treble glare/brightness problemā¦ Well,I can now happily say ābye byeā to that ear-sore.With a fresh download and numerous off/on cycles āandā 100 hours-plus of feeding signal into the DS dac,I can now say with confidence that Windom has now come into its own as others have reported and the uptick in sound quality is amazing,although Snowmass was no slouch in that regard either.
Everything that I loved about Snowmass,Windom now takes it to another level. The feeling of a closer connection to the music and actually being one with the music is something to behold. I seem to be drawn a bit closer to the recording session than ever before,and for me,that is a strong highlight/attribute of Windom. The illusion of being in the same space/plain of a recording, with minimal artifactsā¦ is a real pleasure indeed.
I have to agree with Dirk 100%ā¦the more hours on Widom the better it seems to get. It defies logic, but, without a doubt, āreburn in timeā is a mandatory requirement after a good upload of Windomā¦even more so than any other OS update to date [at least to these ears].
I guess the bottom line isā¦one has to work through the problems with Windom before that magic kicks in. I wish all this fussing around with updates would go away,but for now,its either continue with the update āritualsā or leave well enough alone. I guess I never could leave well enough aloneā¦and Iām glad I didnāt!!!
Great job Ted!!!
Cool! Yeah - my Thing lately is (as I think @Jazznut put it more succinctly the other day) lately Iām about making my Vinyl rig sound close to the pluses of digital, and my Digital has to have (if possible) the magic and feel of vinyl. It is fairly easy for either to go off the rails.
Off to listen to some Choro live at a local Taqueria. (Sheesh - now I sound like a Workingmanās Steven). There were luminaries from Brazil and San Francisco last week, so this is a new Iteration today. Betterān a poke in the eye with a Sharp WIndom though, I reckon ; ). (ā¦Tedā¦Kidding!)
Forget if I posted this (and it is crappy iPhone audio/video and 15m long, but hey) - hoping to talk Paul and Gus into recording them for us all:
The guy in the red shirt is Rogerio Souza, who has played with Baden Powell (a Brazilian master, mysteriously named after a Postmaster General of the US) and others. Darren and I literally stumbled onto this, as we were going to lunch at the place next door, which had too long a line. Love it when that happens : )
Please let Paul know if you would be interested in this sort of thing for Octave Records.
How does one measure that. ; )
Senior with Windom vs Junior ā¦ (this is dup from the old threadā¦ FWIW)
FYIā¦ I owned the Junior, upgraded to the Senior last yearā¦ In all honesty, I found the Junior to be more ācomfortableā to listen toā¦ I loved the Seniorā¦ it had more detail but I also missed the Juniorās more comfortable sound.
Now my Senior with Windomā¦ the Senior has the more comfortable sound of the Junior as I remember it. I like this. Thank you so much. I would be happy without another update (but of course I always want more!)
For those with a Junior and who have Senior envyā¦ donātā¦ they both are really good DACs. I only upgraded to the Senior because my Junior was a bit buggy.
Peace
Bruce in Philly
I used to listen to music using a laptop (JRiver) going through an Intona USB isolator and then to the DSD DAC.
Once I switched to an Innuos Zen MK2 music server, my wife and I were quite surprised: suddenly, all musicians seemed to play music together instead of separately.
I have since upgraded to an Innuos Zenith MK3 and and have been listening to Windom since the October 2 release, and I can assure you: the musicians are all playing together like never before!
During that time, I have also upgraded my USB cable (Zenith MK3 -> DSD DAC) and XLR cables (DSD DAC -> integrated amplifier) with cables from the Audience Audio Cables company (amazing products).
The Audience USB cable provided amazing 3D imaging (especially in depth) and overall accuracy in tone, richness and timing, while the XLR cable filtered out much of the high frequency noise providing very focus highs (like a focused lens replacing the blur vision with a clear picture removing much of the digital harness in the highs).
Finally, the loading of Windom eliminated the last remaining layer of digital harness in such a way that for the first time since Snowmass, I no longer experience listening fatigue.
So, my advice would be to explore potential cable upgrades and/or music server upgrade, and I do recommend trying out an Innuos server (Zen model at a minimum): you may be surprised how much coherence such a high quality music source can bring to your audio system.
Hopefully, you have a good dealer that could help you in that regard.
Or, you could also wait for PS Audio Octave music server 
ā¦
Note: Innuos MK3 models came out recently, which means it should be easy to find MK2 models on the used market.
Good to hear sir. Iāll keep at it and hope that brightness I hear āburnsā away.
Well I believe I was finally able to get a good load going back to Huron straight to Windom.
Still, I do agree with @badbeef.
While I was finally able to get rid of the harshness from the previous loads (wish I canāt understand why this is happening on the first place) and enjoy the darker background and separation, there is some poetry (distortion?) missing from Snowmass 306.
I do disagree about the difference between the two being subtle.
In fact, I had to slightly retune the speakers position, further closer and back to the front wall, which means to me thereās a difference in the frequencies response.
If I have to use a word to describe the lack of real life presence compared to Snowmass might be decay.
Fact is that the two releases offer a different presentation, this is to my ears unquestionable.
Will have a friend coming over this week (previous owner of DS Snowmass) to double check my finding, heās more in the contemporary music that I am, but we both rely on real life harmonics when trying to improve our systems.
He builds cutting edge components based on reliable designs, being an engineer, while I have to spend on off the shelf components and pay for the ignorance out of my pocket.
Edit: A mix of the two is probably the end game that we might aiming for.
Thanks for the advice! Doing what you suggest would diminish the āfreeā quality of the Windom update 
. Perhaps if I gave Windom a 300 hour break in period I would feel differently, though I wonder if whatās breaking in is more me growing accustomed to the new sound. I question if Iām going too far down the rabbit hole to expect software to break in as well.
I think the going rate is a half-dozen placebos to one āThis Cable is Life Changingā, give or take.
Iāve noticed that a few of you that prefer Snowmass are doing some DSP processing upstream. Thereās absolutely nothing wrong with that. But as an experiment you might try turning off explicit DSP, sample rate conversion before the DS, even any digital volume: if you can run the bit perfect test youāre there. I suspect that some processing thatās going on might not have the best dither, or might use a minimum phase filter, etc.
I am enjoying listening without my room correction convolution filters in play for the first time with the DSD (and Windom). Iāll redo the filters in the coming months to see if I can eek out a little improvement/undo some of the damage my room does to the sound stage
Hi Lonsonā¦keep piling on the hours and Iām sure the improvements will be forthcomingā¦patience grasshopper.
Thanks a lot @tedsmith for chiming in.
I personally aborre any possible interference on the digital audio path and in general. I use āvodooā harmonizers instead of equipment to equalize the room and work on cable matching to get the best of my humble system of which I am very proud of, including your own Directstream.
After years of tests I found hqplayer a viable solution and spoused @speed-racer settings instead of the bridge.
Would definitely get rid of the extra render as soon thereās a viable solution to stream native DSD, and I have Octave on my radar for the next coming year. This is the reason why I am holding up on the Matrix converter.
Meanwhile, if you have a better suggestion in how to deliver DSD will be happy to give it a try.
Suffice to say we all love ice cream because weāre here. Its difficult to create a flavor thatās universally loved by everyone. Different tastes will radiate to different flavors. Fortunately, Tedās ice cream shop has a variety to choose from 
My initial Windom load was bad and it made me dizzy listening to it - the tonal balance was completely off.
Then, I managed to get a good load by going back to RC and then Windom, and then re-boot.
The instant I played music on the good Windom load, I was hooked - there was no need for any break-in period - none whatsoever. It was so sweet, so devoid of digital harness that there was no going back to Snowmass. In the case of Snowmass 3.0.6, I did need some break-in and in fact, what made Snowmass listenable to me was the replacing of the Wireworld XLR cables by Audience XLR cables ( I got my new Zenith MK3 around the same time).
Which is why I was suggesting a good music server - I myself told my dealer (Codell Audio in Montreal) that I did not think that a dedicated music server would surpass my laptop because after all, bits are bits : right ?
But then, my laptop failed. I replaced it with a brand new Dell laptop, but it failed as well.
So, I said OK - thatās enough : I will give the Innuos Zen MK2 a try, and I was amazed.
You can read about it for yourself, but these guys have spent lots of time eliminating noise everywhere: better s/w architecture in conjunction with good use of RAM memory to eliminate jitter as much as possible, linear power supplies, less powerful CPU to reduce noise normally generated by standard CPUs, etc. They tried to cut noise where ever they could.
The result is a very coherent digital signal being fed into your DAC: it does make a great difference, and it does not cost anything to go to a dealer and try a used unit or borrow one for some listening at home.
In any case, Windom was amazing immediately upon loading with significantly less digital harshness than Snowmass (but like I said, my Audience XLR cables had already removed a layer of harshness).
I never heard any digital harshness with Snowmass.System synergy I guess.
Let me be more blunt: if you are processing the digital stream before the DS and donāt like the result you have more places to look than just which release is running on the DS. And if you are criticizing a release (which is fine) please mention if you are modifying the signal first.