PS Audio PWD MkII vs W4S DAC2

I lived happily with a DAC2 for the last two years. It replaced a Benchmark DAC1 HDR, which I could I found unforgivably sterile, anylytical, and dry. The DAC2 had plenty of resolution, and added meat to the Benchmark's bones. Over time, though, I began to feel like the DAC2 was a little bit flat in terms of dynamics and imaging. It also bothered me a little bit that its volume control had a narrow sweet spot; to my ears it only came alive at 50 and began to feel unrelaxed north of 58 or 60.

The PWD MKII I bought last week puts my system in a completly different league. Out of the box I warmed it up for 90 minutes, selected the NativeX setting, and sat my wife down in the sweet spot to hear its first noted played. "Holy Sh*t! Are you f*cking kidding me?" was her immediate appraisal of the change.

I have never heard a top end so extended, yet so sweet and liquid. The bass, likewise, feels limitless and yet has a pitch delineation that I have not ever heard in my room. Detail retrieval in the midrange is stunning. Even in very familiar recordings I am hearing things I never knew were present on the masters. For example, last night's listen was Leo Kottke and Mike Gordon's album _Clone._ I heard occasional fret buzz on an open E string that had been obscured before. Even further, I could hear the pitches of individual strings on strummed chords in a manner completely new to me.

All this detail seems to come with no perceptible harshness or fatigue. I just want to keep listening to everything that I have.

I am one happy camper over here. Neal, are you still feeling the same way? Also, have you noticed any ups or downs in the break-in process?

Kng, for budgetary reasons I'm going to stick with my Squeezebox Touch until it goes belly-up. Then I'll go for the bridge or whatever updated version of it might be available. I expect the bridge will sound better than my SBT due to the extra digital lens.

Regarding break-in, I'm going to be zen and take my sweet time with it! I power on the system for about 5 hours a day, so it will take me 2-3 months to accomplish at that rate. The PWD was a stretch for me and I'll live with it for a long time, so if I can get improvements over the next 12 weeks without doing anything, that's like getting tweaks for free!

I will echo what a prior poster (Vhiner?) mentioned that even a 192 mp3 from Pandora now sounds damn near as good as redbook did before. That's stunning.

My PWD came with 2.4.3 installed; a perusal of the PS Audio forums showed pretty good consensus that people were happy with the sound of it relative to the other firmware versions.