Anything wrong with PS Audio DirectStream DACs?

supply and demand

Responding to CAkids comment…. The DirectStream DAC has a very long break in Period. A week is insufficient for the deck to really come into its own. Listening for a week I was disappointed with the presentation of the direct stream DAC but could hear the potential.

Into the second week the DAC really woke up. Some have claimed in other reviews it takes as long as 200 or 300 hours or longer for it to fully break in.

I owed the PS Audio Direct stream dac senior and direct stream player back in early 2017 , purchased new from Kevin Deal of Upscale Audio for what I thought was a smokin good deal . Both were purchased for less then the price of the asking figure of a single PS Audio component. 
With their screwy strategy of jacked up list prices and getting 40 plus percent off the bat from a dealer I jumped on it .

However maybe I had bought a pair of lemons because I experienced a few very annoying screen glitches so after using them for about three months I bought a Denafrips terminator which quickly replaced the PS Audio dac senior for performance and value.

I have wondered the same thing, and for a while I'd been messaging the sellers, asking why they were moving on, and the consistent reply was "moving up the food chain."  So to me the explanation is simple - many were sold esp in the last 3-5 years, many of these ended up with an audiophile committed to their never ending pursuit of something better, hence a market glut.

If you think that the best long term measure of owner satisfaction is current used fair market price vs original list price, and also agree that the prices of the best used gear rarely drop below 50% of their original list price, and realizing that the original list price for the DSD is very much inflated due to their marketing strategies (very lucrative trade-ins, low sale prices from dealers before they went direct, etc), you'd conclude that this DAC is still considered to be a sought after component.  BTW my math here is a $6000 original list price and current used market value $3500 +/- $500.

My 2cents - thanks OP for starting this thread!

so much heat here on this thread, so little light

as pointed out below, 6k list, units selling at 3-3.5k...what’s the problem

for an expensive dac that is a reasonable depreciated value

ted smith updates these, extends their lifespan - they sound very nice, very smooth and rich

yes there is limit to software updates given a hardware platform, eventually all units get superceded with newer ones

problems, if you want to call them that, is:

1. ps audio directstreams have been out there quite a few years now, good company good customer service, good marketing, so they have sold quite a few of these, so there are many out there to be traded (can’t say this for more ’niche-y’ gear)

2. there are some very good sounding dacs, close to or equal to a DS Dac, for quite a bit less money now... even the used price

3. there is scuttlebutt out there that ps audio is superceding the DS at some point in the near future

4. half the people who play with this stuff never sit still and enjoy what they have, they swap they trade they ’upgrade’ their stuff all the time, this is especially true for dacs as streaming becomes more popular each day

5. some other folks must simply have the newest hottest thing out there to be happy... fills that inner need, to feel bleeding edge or successful or hip, or whatever they call it...

on the porsche forums there comes a slew of 981 cayman gt4's for sale when the 781 ’newer better’ version starts customer deliveries... does that make the 981 2016 model a lousy car all of a sudden? c’mon boys and girls... that 981 was the one that everyone wanted 4 years ago and we were cursing dealers for marking them up to customers and cursing porsche a.g. for making just a single model year run????