PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC without the transport

05-04-11: Levy03
i'm in my late 40's and have never been married. way to late in life to compromise or change my ways. i yam what i yam!.

Exactly...I'm that old and decided why marry ? Who wants contractual obligations without benefit ? If I were young and had kids it would be a different matter. My Hi-End rig is not community property !
Cheers !

Ah...Mr. Levy...a replacement already. Good man!

I've been experimenting with the various Beta bridge upgrades. I've gotten very mixed results. It still seems like 2.8 gets the nod sonically. Has anyone found a version that sounds better than 2.8?

I'm concerned that there may be a problem with the bridge hardware. A software fix for all the issues might not get it done, since PS Audio has worked on this for almost a year.

I hope the bridge can have all of its issues solved, (it does sound great for what it does and I love listening to it) but maybe PS Audio bit off too large a project? Do other similar systems have these issues still too?

i was thinking the same Sgr. i won't be surprised to find myself buying a new bridge for $1000+ down the road sometime (after psa discovers the current hardware can't cut it).

i'll guess that the target price point played into the design a little to much regarding the hardware design. like you, i'm using and enjoying the thing. it still has way to many bugs for me to believe software tweeks will get it all sorted out.

however....i know nothing about this sort of stuff so my opinion might not be worth the standard 2 cents =)

we'll see.

I believe PS has acknowledged that the CPU used in the Bridge isn’t robust enough for decoding FLAC (or might I say, “could be more robust”). I may be wrong. I do know however, that many folks with an understanding of these matters consider the CPU the weak hardware link. Decoding FLAC requires more “processing power” (memory…“whatever” it takes…) than other codec’s and hi-res FLAC (e.g.: 24/192) requires even more than 16/24 FLAC.

I believe that PS is working on the FLAC codec and writing new code in an effort to make the FLAC decoding process more efficient. In theory, this may very well resolve the issues involving the decoding of hi-res FLAC files. Hopefully, the software solution will indeed resolve these issues. If it does, then the main hurdle will be the implementation of gapless playback.

Obviously, sound quality is of vital importance and it does appear that PS is aware of the correlation between firmware upgrades and sound quality – so hopefully, they will be able to duplicate the SQ of the very best versions (e.g.: “.08”), or perhaps even surpass older versions, in the final firmware version.

Once these major areas have been addressed – and remedied –then PS can concentrate on tweaking Tag-n-Play, eLyric, and all other interfaces and forthcoming protocols.

Bottom line is that I do not believe the current Bridge is a lost cause. I may be wrong, but I am very hopeful that PS is truly on the brink of perfecting the Bridge. I guess the real question (or concern) is just how much longer will it take them to finalize execution…