Anything wrong with PS Audio DirectStream DACs?

Ozzy chasing firmware is rather a sad indictment of a design.

A mature design shouldn’t require or necessisate a constant every six month new magic firmware in order to upgrade the sound quality.

Either you have a design figured out or you don’t.

Compare the PS audio company to Chord.

Chord’s Robert Watts came up with his trasients time aligned filtering design many years ago with the QBD 76. All of Chords future dacs all were based on more filter taps, due to improved hardware, his filtering designs and concepts remained the same.

We are much more in favor of hardware based upgrades as you can do much more by changing hardware.

One of our dacs is completely hardware upgradable and an original dac that is five years old can be competely brought up to modern standards for far less than trading it in and starting over.

There is only so much you can fix with firmware and in reality you shouldnt have to.

If you pick a design, its voicing and technlogy you need to have a constant vision of what your product is supposed to be only features based on new sources that weren’t available should be the norm.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

I dunno instead of having to upgrade to a mk 2 version etc. as other companies charge, the PS Direct Stream firmware upgrades are free!
Free is always a good thing!

ozzy

Ozzy you totally miss the essence of the conversation.

Real innovation is accomplished by upgrading hardware if you have maximized your design then firmware upgrades in the case of PS is changing the flavor of the sound based on who knows what?

Changing from one firmware, to another  and having the sound change is a sad sign of an incomplete design or it is a gimmick to keep people talking about your product. 

The only reason for upgrading firmware is to fix incompatibility issues that arise from new changes in other hardware such as a new Roon upgrade that affects your product and then requires a fix. 

Did you ever notice that most companies very rarely upgrade their firmware in the case of the established market leaders DCS, EMM Lavs, Esoeteric, etc.

Even Chord who uses a FPGA rarely offers firmware upgrades.

As I final point upgradability in hardware means you will never have an obsolete product, tell that to all the previous Perfect Wave dac owners can you magically turn a Perfecwave Dac into the current Direct Stream Digital don't think you will magically be able to upgrade your firmware into an entirely different platform.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

+1 ozzy