Interesting that PS Audio is still putting money into SACD at this point. I wonder if they are planning to release a new DAC as well:

 

A new DAC would certainly make sense, but you'd think that the smart move would be streamers over disc spinners. Interesting indeed.

When he mentioned the actual transport mechanism is manufactured by D+M (Denon / Marantz), it made more sense. They probably don't estimate a large sales volume for this product.

I was surprised to hear they send out units to beta testers. I thought most manufacturers did everything in-house.

Being a real gear head, I do miss multiple sources though. At one point, back in the day I had my turntable, my 3 head Nakamichi cassette deck, my tuner, my Teac reel to reel, my Mission CD player and even a HiFi, high end Sony Betamax, that played at Beta 1 (rare, they usually only had speeds 2 and 3), that I used to play hours of music at parties, as to keep people from messing with my system.

 

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I have to press at least 4 buttons to turn on my stereo (preamp, power amp 1, power amp 2, and source)... it's kind of ridiculous and completely against the point of a modern consumer audio product. Listening to music on my stereo is a very deliberate choice, but I listen to much more music on my computer (99% of the time).

Same here, even though my gear has those 12 Vt. trigger inputs. I really should get some of those trigger cables.

But I miss the "foreplay" to playing music. I'd happily clean my album, then use my anti static gun and so on, before the main event. It made playing music more of an event. I think I even listened better back then.

There is definitely something to the ritual of getting ready to listen... music on the computer is much more casual and I am usually multi-tasking while listening.

It's a really bad sign that I have wished that I could listen to multiple streams of audio at once. Theoretically, I could turn on captions on YouTube, for example, but it clearly means the quality of the experience will be diminished by orders of magnitude.

Roon gives me back a lot of the ritual, but I also think the world has changed and I've changed with it.  I can force myself to sit with an iPad as controller and listen to full albums, but I'm not as comfortable doing it as I am listening with less of my attention.  My preference for how to listen deliberately is to fullscreen Roon, lock everything into exclusive mode so I don't get system sounds, then occupy my restlessness by reading Roon's equivalents of liner notes like lyrics, reviews, associated artists, etc.  If you've not tried Roon, it's not cheap but it's a great experience.

Edited September 8, 20205 yr by Sherwood

Cool, thanks for sharing!