PS Audio DirectStream DAC

[Rick U]

I recently sold my DS but that unit with all of Ted’s upgrades was fun and always punched way above its class. I remember reading Ted’s post’s and he said he was about at the limit of the hardware on the DS.

[Weirdcuba]

and, whatever happened to their Uber DAC that was supposed to retail for around $20K? Seems I lost the thread on that one (but perhaps that's the next step for the DSD?)

[crwilli]

Originally Posted by Weirdcuba

and, whatever happened to their Uber DAC that was supposed to retail for around $20K? Seems I lost the thread on that one (but perhaps that's the next step for the DSD?)

Maybe the 2 box unit?

[doggiehowser]

Originally Posted by crwilli

Wasn’t there a rumor that Ted was working on an ‘ultimate’ level DAC?

I would expect that to be the reason for no more updates to the DS.

To be fair to Ted, he has been working on the Mk2/Obsidian DACs for a while now (2-3 years) but being the tinkerer he is, he found that the optimisations that he made on the next gen stuff could also be transferred to the original DirectStream and he's made at least 2 (if memory serves me right) if not 3 firmware updates for the original DirectStream that have been big jumps in performance as well.

Ted (and PS Audio) could have ended support for the DS DAC about 2 years ago and launched the new models then but I think each time he made an improvement on the DS DAC, he had to go back and figure how to make the Mk2 even better again.

[John49]

Originally Posted by JMD

Ted's doing both a DS Mk II and his two box TSS. The Mk II will come first later in the year. A few months ago he provided direction and a parts list to upgrade the transformers to a higher level for those that wanted to in the original DS. Supposed to result in a big improvement for about $100 in parts from Edcor.

I missed this. Will have to look for it. Thanks JMD