Just curious about what people’s experience with PS Audio DACs have been or if anyone has tried the latest stuff. I’ve heard most people call them warmpoo but haven’t heard or seen many people try them recently considering they update the firmware quite often.
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Not heard a thing about them ever, Paul McGowan loves them though.
“warmpoo” that’s a new audiophile term for me though. 
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Has anyone here tried the psaudio DACs? How do they compare to other similarly priced DACs? With so many fans here of their power conditioners, I’m a little surprised that there isn’t much discussion of their DACs and amps.
My oversimplified view of psaudio is that they are the American version of Chord: big personality old guy leading a lot of the technical design philosophy, unique approach to solving digital reconstruction that they are deeply committed to, and have a fan base that will never leave them (but outside of that are very polarizing).
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I have the Directstream DAC MK2 after getting the MK1 for a good deal. They had a pretty great trade in incentive the first month of release so I went ahead with it. Before I go into sound, I like the idea that the DAC can continue to improve with firmware updates and how their DACs are still around after almost 8 years. There’s quite an active modding community for the MK1 and the MK2 basically implemented all of those mods and will continue to improve on the formula. There’s plenty of inputs and a lot of different tweaks you can do in order to match your system.
In terms of sound, it has a character that helps engage me with the music that my other DACs did not have. I’m not sure if I just happened that a few of my other upgrades went well with the pairing or if the DAC does have something interesting about it. I’ve lent it out to many of my friends to try out and they also came back saying that it does vocals and soundstage width very well. It’s overall a very good DAC and compares with their own DACs (Bricasti M1, Sonnet Pasithea, Luxman DA-06, Rockna Wavedream SE, TT2, etc). It does a great job with music that isn’t super well recorded and gives a more “analog” sound. Obviously YMMV but I’ve been enjoying the MK2 so far and haven’t really felt the need to upgrading after my 2 year DAC journey.
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I’m glad you wound up getting the Mk1 even after the warmpoo comment. Shows that you should always be your own ultimate judge. Have you tried the new “mountain top” beta firmware upgrade PS audio has been touting on it yet?
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Yep, I upgraded last night. Been out of town and taking a break from audio so not really sure what all the differences are but the upgrade went smoothly and things still sound good. Not gonna go crazy over the differences since I already like my setup how it is.
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Just to clarify, have you done mods to this MK2 or were those mods more in reference to the MK1?
I’m still curious about the MK1, seems like a great value on the used market for 2-3k
I haven’t done any mods to the mk2. The only mods for mk2 so far are different transformers. I considered changing them but I haven’t really felt the need to get them upgraded yet.
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