iFi's Pro iDSD (official) - NEW Firmware - MQA and more.

[André Gosselin]

On 1/2/2019 at 3:10 PM, AMR/iFi audio said:

 

At the moment we have no firm date but we do acknowledge the need.

I do not own a ProIDSD, but I was quite excited when I initially read about it. However, I felt really depressed when I heard that gapless playback was not factored in when the product was initially designed and that firmware would need to be changed to support it (if this is possible, as you wrote in a later post). It sounds as if gapless playback support for the ProIDSD is an aftertought. I find it hard to understand how such an essential requirement in a network renderer can have been ignored in a product that took years to develop. I just hope that gapless playback will effectively become a reality in the ProIDSD, and that its implementation will not be of a "proprietary" type requiring the use of a specific controller, but rather be based on the same UPnP protocols as used for ex. by BubbleUPnP on Android.

 

Regards

[André Gosselin]

23 minutes ago, BlueSkyy said:

1) Has anyone powered two PRO devices successfully from a single iFi-sourced power supply?  If so, which iFi power supply did you use?  (Note:  It one point I did use a single power supply with a homebrew umbilical and the two powered up, appeared to work and the single power supply never appeared to overheat or otherwise "complain"  but I never listened critically to that setup.)

2) Has anyone chosen to use a single linear power supply of another brand with the stack and, if so, did it work out successfully for you?

I personnally connect the ProiDSD and ProICAN with a DC4 cable sold by Sonore. The iDSD is powered by one rail of a Uptone JS-2 set at 12v.This setup works perfectly.

[André Gosselin]

4 hours ago, BlueSkyy said:

I decided to go with the JS-2 and two separate UpTone provided cables.  Hopefully the good stuff will be with me late next week.

Do you mean you will use one rail to power the iDSD and one for the iCan ? If so, I think you are then wasting one rail on the JS-2, as one rail set at 12v is more than enough to power both iFI devices linked by a proper DC cable. I have been using such a setup for the last 2 years without any problem, and with a great SQ.

 

Regards

[André Gosselin]

3 hours ago, BlueSkyy said:

But now, to my "horror", I see that there is a new version of the iDSD and am wondering if I will be forced into upgrading. 

 I checked the user manual of the iDSD Pro Signature. The "new" device still relies on the awful Muso software to control the streamer. No mention is made about support for gapless playback, which was notably and unexcusably absent from the streamer capabilities in the previous edition, and I suspect it still is.

Is there a document somewhere pinpointing the differences between the two iDSD Pro editions ? Until I see it, I will withhold my judgment. 

[André Gosselin]

24 minutes ago, BlueSkyy said:

Because I don't stream or use the MUSO software but, rather, play files from my NAS via JRiver MC, I have always had perfect gapless playback in my situation.  I tried MUSO once and became so thoroughly disgusted that I said never again.

This is quite sad indeed, because if you only use the iDSD Pro as as DAC and ignore it's embedded streamer altogether (as I personnaly do), then you end up having paid a lot of money for unused features, which can be really called useless features. I would have hoped that iFi Audio would have come up with what it just should be: a pure DAC, stripped from its badly implemented streamer firmware.