Opinions on PS Audio Direct Stream DAC (Mk 1)
PS Audio is clearing out factory refurbished Direct Stream DACs, the original version from 2014 or 2015, for about $1800. I'm wondering if I could get opinions on this DAC. It's old technology as far as digital goes, but it got nice reviews when it was new. It can do DSD64 and DSD128. It upsamples everything internally to DSD.
I'm interested in musicality and musical involvement, especially dynamics (macro and micro), accuracy of instrumental timbre and extracting the beauty out of the recording, low noise floor and high resolution.
We have upgraded many of these Directstream DAC’s to our Signature Series PLUS. This brings these DAC’s up to and beyond the level of DAC’s costing many times more. (over 10k) We now have developed an upgrade for the Bridge II network card that fixed the problem with the poor sound quality when using these Bridge cards. They sound awesome now with the new upgrade. |
@jk_richards So tell us more about the streamer. Does it sound as good as with an external streamer? What is the cost? |
Most of the upgrade is done in the DAC itself. We noticed a common issue with DAC's being services here. All of them using the Bridge card had the over heated heat sinks (discolored) and the insulation on the power transformer wires were burnt and brittle. You could see the insulation residue on the bottom of the lid. With the bridge card installed in a stock unit the power supply ends up being over worked. That stock power supply is just not big enough. We install two larger heat sinks along with several other mods to fix this issue. The bridge card sounds as good as an external streamer if you have a good network. Cost depends on the level of upgrade your DAC has. Will be available the first of the year.. |
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