I hereby take back all the bad things I've said about PS1.....

[White Mike]

Originally Posted by Hi-Finthen

That being, the S.Q. of the PS1 must have included a high degree of R&D as well as implementation of high quality and near SOTA circuitry boards as one could imagine...

I'd be very surprised if that were the case. I'd put any possible SQ credit down to the AKM DAC chip (particularly with people bypassing large chunks of the PS1 circuitry). AKM have made very good (read: underrated) chips for a while. Marantz have used AKM chips in their low>mid range gear and so do Roland/Edirol. Of course it helps the PS1 cache that the particular AKM chip in use is no longer available and hard to find any extensive information for.

Now all I need its to take a few full-page ad's out in Stereophile and ask the editor to try my old Edirol UA-25 out... you know... to get the ball rolling on the next miraculous-giant-killer-for-the-masses.

[chesebert]

I just put in an order for one a IEC adapter .... let's see what VD power cable can do.....the player's bass performance has improved greatly over the past day...now it can almost match TP in bass depth; still lack in bass articulation and complex bass lines delineation......

Which means the PS1 has better bass depth than Saturn! sweet

I think I am still in awe of the mid-range.....this is Ayre C5 territory. I actually think PS1 would pair better with more transparent amp; I had PS1 paired with the NAD, which is why I have always said it sucked....wrong combo

I have a wireless controller so A/Bing is very easy.

[Hi-Finthen]

Originally Posted by chesebert

stock plugging into the wall with the freebie RCA sounds bad..sound stage suffers and slight forward midrange and muddy sound. (there is a fine line between muddy and musically natural

Caveats: it can sound bad unless these "freebie RCAs" are replaced??? Not to be plugged derectly into the wall; And these two differences then clears up "muddy sound", increaced soundstage and decreased forward midrange; Got it...Hmmmmm

And I suppose the speakers not being full ranged also helps in this illusion of bass being near equal to your referance too...

[chesebert]

Originally Posted by Hi-Finthen

Caveats: it can sound bad unless these "freebie RCAs" are replaced??? Not to be plugged derectly into the wall; And these two differences then clears up "muddy sound", increaced soundstage and decreased forward midrange; Got it...Hmmmmm

And I suppose the speakers not being full ranged also helps in this illusion of bass being near equal to your referance too...

you are correct, my spkr is not full range...but it goes pretty flat to about 35hz in my room; and that's good enough for me; and the difference in bass performance can be easily heard between Creek, Saturn, TP, Ayre C5xe, Edirol R09, Presonus CS, PS1, Eastsound, Zhaolu, and I can't think of all the other stuff I have circled through my rig

TP and Ayre C5xe are probably equal in bass performance...not a fair comparison since I have added VD cable I have gained few more oomph in the bass region for TP; I am sure C5 would have benefited equally; sadly C5xe was only a demo from sometime ago.

[tfarney]

Y'all do understand that you've slipped over the edge a bit, yes?



Tim

[chesebert]

I am practically certain that PSX, in its absolute term, discounting sound signature, is at least as good as Rega Saturn in the midrange and HF extension.

I just bought another PSX as backup.

[selfdivider]

Good to hear that you've also found the sweet spot with the PS1, Chesebert! I'm the guy who was kind of stirring things up a bit on the other thread, b/c I returned the 840C for the PS1.

In the Stereophile review, the PS1 that the reviewer got definitely seems like it had tracking issues, was a 'lemon.' I don't know what he means by hearing 'whirs'... Also, another no-no: the reviewer didn't keep the PS1 on. As Chesebert mentions, the bass doesn't open up until a few days later, and the PS1 starts to sound its best after about a week of having been on. It's weird. For the 1st couple days, the music through PS1 sounds a bit uninvolving, although you can clearly hear its potential. Then after the 5 day period, it just gels and blooms together... all the elements of music. Another complaint by the reviewer was that you had to control the PS1 with the game controller w/ cords. You can easily circumvent this by just buying a PS2 DVD remote for like ten bucks! So basically, most of the criticisms addressed by the reviewer could have been controlled, had the reviewer taken a bit more care to seriously consider the PS1. The fact that he still preferred it - even w/ these inconveniences - to the $1K Music Hall player is remarkable, I think.

PS1 definitely doesn't have the resolution of the Transporter, but music isn't always about ultra-resolution. It more than compensates by what it does dynamically, and through its gorgeous tonality. You'd swear the sound wasn't digital. No hash, just great, authoritative and powerful warmth. And Chesebert hit the PS1's strength right on the nose: the midrange performance is to die for, regardless of price.

I haven't yet swapped out the power cord, but I've heard it improves things. I use Cardas Quadlink interconnect & the sound becomes better exponentially, over the stock RCAs. I did buy an output modded PS1, but contrary to my expectations, the stock PS1 sounded better for some reason. I can't explain why that is. The modded PS1 did seem to resolve more, but the stock version sounded plainly... bigger, in soundstage, and just the presentation of the music itself. More rounded and coherent.

[chesebert]

I have just finished a DBT session with my wife as the sole participant she is blind folded and I matched the volume to within 0.1dB (Note: PS1 only output about 1.8V instead of the std 2V for RCA output, which introduced some difficulties in switching...).

The verdict is she likes certain songs with PS1 and others with TP. Hardly descriptive but there you have it

[spookygonk]

Sounds like you need to swap the wife out.

[chesebert]

This whole experience with PS1 is very unsettling......how can a mass consumer game machine match the supposedly Class A CDP like Saturn or C5Xe ???

Are all the CDP manufactures deliberately making bad sounding products so we can upgrade to their $6k, $10k player?

I don't think I will upgrade my CDP anytime soon now; there are probably 200million original PS1 sold so its nice to have endless supply of these if my current unit and backup decide to break on me.

I may still get a SOTA DAC for the transporter down the road, although I am 100% satisfied with the TP sound as is...so that's not that high on my to-upgrade list. (1st thing first, I need a bigger house so I can buy the Harbeth M40